Sheryl Crow Feels Fearless

A lot has changed for Sheryl Crow in the last three years — she got engaged, terminated her engagement, fought breast cancer and adopted a baby boy, Wyatt, now nearly 10 months old — all of which is reflected in her new album, Detours, in stores today.

"The last three years were a real awakening for me," Sheryl says. "I've felt a fearlessness I've never felt before."

That fearlessness is apparent in Detours (fittingly released on Super Tuesday), in which she unleashes a no-holds-barred attack on the Bush administration in such politically charged songs as "God Bless This Mess."

Sample lyric: President George Bush "spoke words of comfort with tears in his eyes/Then he led us as a nation into a war all based on lies."

"It was almost like, 'OK, the gauntlet's been thrown. I'm going in,"' Sheryl says. "I'm not the only one that feels the way I feel. And I don't feel afraid to say the way I feel."

She surely does not — also featured on the 14-song disc are tunes about gas shortages ("Gasoline"), Hurricane Katrina ("Love Is Free") and cultural differences ("Peace Be Upon Us"). On a personal level, Sheryl, 46, belts out numbers about her son in "Lullaby for Wyatt" and her battle with cancer in "Make It Go Away."

And how about her much-publicized romance and breakup with seven-time Tour de France champ Lance Armstrong?

There's nothing direct, but the heartbreaking song — literally — "Diamond Ring" features the lyric, "Diamonds may be sweet/But to me they just bring on cold feet."

"I get to talk about it on my own terms, hopefully in a poetic way, in a way that's inspired from the spirit," she says. "The gory details aren't as interesting anyway."