Sheryl Crow - Be Myself

Rating: 4/5

Review:
A good album from Sheryl Crow

I like this album a lot.  I wasn't too sure about it on first hearing but it's grown on me on repeated hearing.  I'm not sure it's a classic, but it's very good - and Sheryl Crow has certainly still got it.

This is an album of generally rocky, quite tuneful songs at the more pop end of Crow's output.  It's a really enjoyable listen with more depth than may at first appear.  There's plenty of toe-tapping stuff - for which the opener, Alone In The Dark sets the tone - but there's some still beaty but more mournful stuff in the lovely Strangers Again, for example, and quite biting social comment in other places.  Woo Woo, for example, is about the sexualisation of young people, with lines like "Every time I check my twitter, someone's butt is in my face" and in the title track she says

"Hanging with the hipsters is a lot of hard work;

How many selfies can you take before you look like a jerk?"

Well, quite.  It's good lyrical stuff which, as always with Sheryl Crow, repays careful attention.

It's a consistently good album, and while there probably isn't anything of the brilliance originality of classics like There Goes The Neighbourhood, there's nothing weak here.  The band are great, production is excellent and Crow herself sings and plays with real class.  Overall I think it's very good rather than truly great, but it's very enjoyable, it certainly bears repeated listening and I can recommend it.