‘The Globe Sessions’: Sheryl Crow Shares Some Favorite Mistakes

Sheryl Crow must be one of the unluckiest artists never to have a No.1 album in her home country – or, for that matter, in one of her most consistently successful international markets, the United Kingdom.

At home, she’s reached the Top 10 of the album chart on nine occasions (including once with a compilation) and hit No.2 three times in a row. In the U.K., she’s had six Top 10 LPs and, incredibly, landed in runner-up spot three times in a row there too. That total included the album that entered the American countdown on October 17, 1998, The Globe Sessions.

Named after one of its recording locations, Globe Studios in New York (with other sessions taking place at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles), this third studio release came in the wake of Crow’s massive success with both Tuesday Night Music Club and its self-titled follow-up. The artist herself again filled the producer’s chair, as she had done on Sheryl Crow.

The Globe Sessions got off to a great start with the release, just ahead of the album, of its classy lead single “My Favorite Mistake.” That became a Top 10 hit in the U.S., the U.K. and on the international artist chart in Japan, leading to the further singles “There Goes The Neighborhood” and “Anything But Down.” All three were No.1 hits on Billboard’s Adult Album Alternative chart.

“There Goes The Neighborhood” featured an appearance by longtime Rolling Stones collaborator Bobby Keys on saxophone. Other guests on the set included Benmont Tench from the Heartbreakers and fellow notables such as Lisa Germano, Mitchell Froom, and Wendy Melvoin. Amid Crow’s new compositions, there was a notable inclusion from the pen of Bob Dylan. He gave her the then-unreleased “Mississippi,” an outtake from his Time Out Of Mind sessions. Dylan re-recorded his own version for 2001’s Love and Theft.

‘Passionate thrust’

Critics applauded the new album’s sense of unforced creativity. “For Crow,” wrote James Hunter in Rolling Stone, “The Globe Sessions isn’t a big pop record figured out within an inch of its life: ‘Here are just some things I recorded,’ the album title suggests. In the end, it is Crow’s singing that unites the record and conveys its passionate thrust.”

Listen to the best of Sheryl Crow on Apple Music and Spotify.

The Globe Sessions reached No.5 in the U.S., where it won a Grammy for Best Rock Album, and started her sequence of three No.2s in a row in the U.K. That run was maintained by C’mon C’mon and The Very Best of Sheryl Crow.

Buy or stream The Globe Sessions.