For this album, Crow worked again with producer, musician and songwriter Jeff Trott, a long-time collaborator throughout her career. Trott co-wrote many of Crow’s classic hits including ‘If It Makes You Happy’ and ‘My Favorite Mistake’.

Crow says her main goal was “to investigate what made my early songs strike people as being authentic and original. So for the first time in my life, I made it a point to sit down and really listen to my old records. I’d drive my kids to school and play the old stuff as I came back home. That helped me remember what it felt like when I was just beginning as an artist. But it wasn’t about repeating myself. It was about revisiting where I came from and seeing where that would take me now.”

“The other thing that makes ‘Be Myself’ special to me is that it’s really topical,” Crow continues. “This past summer, because of what was going on in the world and particularly in the United States; I began to feel a sense of urgency about writing.” Crow and Trott agreed to enlist their old friend Tchad Blake to engineer and mix the sessions with whom they hadn’t worked with for 18 years, “and we turned out some good old-school Sheryl Crow tunes,” she adds.

‘Be Myself’ is like each of her preceding releases: thoughtful and candid. It’s unlike them too, mainly in that it represents contradictory movement — a look at the world today powered in part by a return to the energy that first lofted Crow and her music into the limelight.

‘Be Myself’, her ninth studio album, is now available for pre-order. Fans who pre-order the digital format of the album from iTunes or Amazon or any format from the Sheryl Crow’s official website will receive an instant download of the first single ‘Halfway There’, featuring Gary Clark Jr. on guitar. Special bundle packages will also be available through the store and include the album on CD, vinyl and with a limited edition lithograph.

A video for ‘Halfway There’ has been created utilising cut-out animation style which presents the song’s lyrical questions through a whimsical Monty Python-esque satirical imagery. Click here to view and share.

An American music icon, Crow has released eight studio albums, which have sold 35 million copies worldwide. In the UK, four of her studio albums and ‘The Very Best Of’ all reached the Top 10, and her success was further reflected with four Top 10 hits and a further twelve which entered the Top 40.

In the States, seven of the albums charted in the Top 10 and five were certified for multi-platinum sales. In addition to such #1 hits as ‘All I Wanna Do’, ‘Soak Up the Sun’, and ‘The First Cut Is the Deepest’, Crow has notched 40 singles on the Billboard Hot 100, Adult Top 40, Adult Contemporary, Mainstream Top 40 and Hot Country Songs charts, with more #1 singles in the Triple A listings than any other female artist