Sheryl Crow [ tickets ] has come a long way since her 1994 breakout hit, “All I Wanna Do,” the third single off of her 1993 debut, “Tuesday Night Music Club.” The sunny, summertime anthem propelled the cheerful roots rocker into pop-rock stardom with a steady stream of chart-topping hits and nine subsequent Grammy Awards.

Despite several life-altering hurdles--including a very public break-up with Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong, an alarming bout with breast cancer and a whirlwind campus tour to stop global warming--Crow has continued creating politically-charged, socially aware songs for the sole purpose of getting it off her chest. Now, with an adopted addition to her family, Crow is more focused than ever on speaking out about the injustices she sees as plaguing the nation.

“Detours,” the sixth studio album of her career, touches on everything from the Iraq War (“God Bless This Mess”) to the devastation and subsequent stoicism of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina (“Love Is Free.”)

LiveDaily spoke to Sheryl Crow from her Nashville home about the new album, her plans for a late spring tour and more.

LiveDaily: I have only heard about half of the tracks off this new album, but it's obvious from those that this is a thought-provoking album. What in particular influenced this album as a whole?

Sheryl Crow: Well, the theme that runs throughout the album, which is pretty consistent, is that throughout our lives we sometimes go off on journeys that take us off of our planned path--or it takes us far away from who we think we're going to be or want to be. Even as a nation, I think we've seen that happen in the last seven years, just how far away we've gotten from what we were and what this country was meant to be, so politically and even personally the album thematically is consistent to that idea.

How did you handle the songwriting for this record? Was it something that you went in knowing what you wanted to say or was it an unintentional personal purge that worked out in terms of the feelings you were having at the time?

It was more like that. Having a new baby and also really just being acutely aware of the environment. It really made me want to write about things in an urgent fashion. It created an urgency in me to write from a very honest standpoint, and I feel like we've really gone to the wheel and we really let a lot of things get past us. I just felt like I couldn't not write about this stuff.

I read in a previous interview a while back that, after the release of your best-of album, you felt less pressure to get on the radio. Is that accurate and, if so, do you still feel that way?

Yeah, I don't even know how you get on the radio anymore. It goes over my head and I think we've kind of gone the way of entertainment. I think that's become much more tantamount than perhaps artistry, so, yeah, it's not really my desire to write that way.

So you're not writing with the intention of getting on there, you're writing to just unleash what's in your head.

Yeah.

You've become a pretty public figure with some big topics like the war and global warming. Do you feel like musicians have the responsibility to provoke their fans?

I don't really feel a responsibility. I think more than anything I feel an urgency. It just seems that we're sort of at a point now where we really need to be looking at what's happening. We’ve kind of gone to sleep. Partly we've gone to sleep because it's just easier to be distracted than to actually have to really understand and emotionally invest in what's going on. It would really demand that we do something, so for me I'm not concerned with changing people. I'm more interested in creating a dialogue and really just addressing what's really happening out there.

You do that with a few of your songs but "Love Is Free" is a pretty ... I don't want to say heavy song, but you bring Hurricane Katrina and what happened to New Orleans to the forefront, and you do it in an upbeat way. It's a really catchy song. Can you tell me a little bit about how you did that?

I recorded my second record in New Orleans, and really had a great experience and a great relationship to the city and the people down there. I think when the whole thing with Katrina went down and the way that our administration really left these people high and dry and the fact that we've sort of lost our connection to those people, it just really made me want to write something. In fact, it just surfaced. It was less intentional and more just a sense of urgency I felt about it. It's really about the stoicism of the people of New Orleans and how throughout history these people managed to weather a lot of ups and downs, and yet they have this great stoicism that helps them to get through even the worst of times.

I know you've written some politically charged songs for awhile now. This album isn't the first. In the beginning, was there any degree of hesitation when you were writing songs like these? Was there any part of you that wondered how they would be received?

No, I really wasn't thinking about any of that stuff, mainly because I'm out here in the country at my farm and I have this new baby and all I could think about was just writing about the truth, writing about things that really matter to me. It just worked out that way. Stuff just came out and I wasn't really thinking about who was going to hear it or whether I was going to get it on the radio.

I found out recently that you're scheduled to play the opening night of the New Orleans Jazz Festival. Is that your first time to play at that event?

Yes! It's my first time to play at Jazz Fest and I'm really excited about it.

Have you been before as a fan?

I have been, yes. And this will be fun. It's the first time I guess in a long time that the Neville Brothers are going to close, so I'm hoping I'll get to come back and see that.

That's in late April. Do you have plans for a tour behind this album soon?

Yeah, we're going to tour starting in late May and we'll tour probably through August or September in the States. We're definitely going to try to get over to some places we haven't been in awhile--Japan and certainly Europe and South America.

That'll be fun. Will you take the little guy with you when you do that kind of stuff?

Oh yeah! He's a little traveling man.