Sheryl Crow

2 stars

Sheryl Crow is engaged to five-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong.

In theory, this information would not be necessary for a review of “Wildflower,” Crow’s new album.

But I can’t help but wonder whether her impending marriage forced a drastic reimagining of her sound. It’s been a while since she’s had the youthful vigor to pound out something like her perennially catchy single “All I Wanna Do.” But now she can’t even embrace the past-her-prime-but-still-partying persona that artificially sparkled on her more recent efforts. So what’s a girl to do?

Trapped between these forms of Crow, she can only howl and attempt to create Liz Phair-esque feminist think-pop, but without the anger or the passion. Occasionally, her theatrics even approach parody of the genre itself.

“Good Is Good” begins by telling the listener that “Good is good and bad is bad and you don’t know which one to have.” Wow, that is so profound. You analyze your love problems so well; you don’t know whether to make the bad choice or the good choice.

But now you’re marrying Lance Armstrong. So shut the hell up.

She emphatically repeats that “every time you hear the rolling thunder, you turn around before the lightning strikes.” So maybe she’s a back-door woman. That’s mildly interesting. And yet, a tad unnecessary. If this is meant to be as simple as “you ignore bad stuff whenever you think it’s coming and that’s a bad thing,” she should dump Armstrong and find a new boyfriend. And if it is meant to be a reference to the weather, well, that’s just weird. Plus, she needs a new weathervane.

The mediocrity continues into the title song, which ends with “That’s the way it is / When nature plays its lovely hand / You’ll understand everything.” Only thing is, I don’t. This pledge to wildflowers may be meant as some sort of metaphor: when love comes, it moves everything out of the way, just like a wildflower displaces native plants and shrubs.

Or some such hippie nonsense. But this is just a metaphor for metaphors’ sake. It doesn’t give you a deeper understanding of the situation than if it had been said straight-out.

“Letter to God” is proto-Aimee Mann without the believability. The existential crisis here is not actually meant to challenge her thoughts on the conditions of her life; it is just an exercise in intellectual auto-eroticism.

Hmm…let me think about how I could prove that I am really trying to push boundaries here. How about invoking a non-denominational God? And showing His power? And then questioning whether I can really believe in the religious life? She seems simply proud of herself for asking the questions rather than showing interest in the answers.

This is not to say that the album is completely worthless, or that there is nothing to Crow’s attempts to reshape her sound. In its Mann-liness lies possibility, and most of the tunes have some underlying musical accompaniment that makes them pleasant enough in the background.

Perhaps marriage to Armstrong will give Crow the gravitas or the passion to make an album strong enough to be listened to for its own sake.

—Staff writer Scoop A. Wasserstein can be reached at wasserst@fas.harvard.edu.