Name:
Sheryl Suzanne Crow.
Born:
Februrary 11, 1962, Kennett, Missouri.
Family:
Her parents were members of a local big band in which her father, an attorney, played trumpet. The family was very musical and owned three pianos.
Education:
She graduated in 1984 from the University of Missouri where she majored in music education with a concentration in piano.
Career:
Following college, she worked in St. Louis as a music teacher and moonlighted on the weekends singing. After a couple of years of teaching, she met a local producer who helped her get work singing commerical jingles. Her success at this convinced her that she should move to LA and pursue a career. At first she sang backup for such stars as Michael Jackson and Don Henley. She then released her debut album in 1993 and scored a hit with "All I Wanna Do", firmly establishing her as a star.
Depression:
In the April 2003 edition of
Ladies' Home Journal Sheryl Crow spoke about her lifelong struggles with depression. As a child she would go through long bouts of depression and also struggled with sleep paralysis and a fear that she would die during her sleep.
Of her chronic depression, she has said "I grew up in the presence of melancholy, a feeling of loss over things that maybe I don't have or never had…It is a shadow for me. It's part of who I am. It is constantly there. I just know how, at this point, to sort of manage it."
Crow has also stated that her depression is inherited. "It's like a chemical thing in my family. My dad and I both have severe mood swings. We laugh about it, but we have really high highs and really low lows. I've had bouts of clinical depression and I've had bouts which are just garden-variety, or event-caused."
Although she hasn't yet spoken out publicly, recent events in her life such as her breakup with Lance Armstrong, a breast cancer diagnosis and the less than stellar performance of her 2005 album Wildflower have put her at high risk for a recurrence of her depression.
