Not breast cancer, which she's battled into remission. Not public heartbreak, which is less raw now. Not writing bolder lyrics, which means less radio play.
"The last three years were a real awakening for me," Crow says, during a stop to promote her first album since 2005. "I've felt a fearlessness I've never felt before."
That bravery is the product of a one-two punch - the diagnosis of a life-threatening illness only days after the collapse of her engagement to bike champion Lance Armstrong.
Last spring, she poured out her feelings in a studio built at her new Tennessee farm. With newly adopted baby Wyatt keeping her company, she knocked out 24 songs in 40 days. The result is "Detours," a CD that veers from the intensely personal to the unabashedly political, from cancer and love lost to Hurricane Katrina and the Iraq war.
"A lot of defining moments brought me to a place where by the time I sat down to write, I felt not only inspired but urgent about what I was writing about," she says.
A key feature of the new disc is a more strident political stance taken by a songwriter more known for such good-time hits as "Soak Up the Sun," "All I Wanna Do" and "If It Makes You Happy." And while she's been outspoken before about social issues - attacking genocide on "Redemption Day" and guns on "Love Is a Good Thing" - Crow says her new fearlessness can be heard in the evolution of one lyric in particular.
Six years ago, her song "Steve McQueen" originally contained the lines, "We've got liars in the White House/And all our pop stars look like porn." She reluctantly scrapped it, afraid to offend Bill Clinton fans. In the final version of that song, "liars" became "rock stars."
No more.
On the new disc, Crow goes right after the current commander in chief. On "God Bless This Mess," she sings that President Bush after 9/11 "spoke words of comfort with tears in his eyes/Then he led us as a nation into a war all based on lies."
"It was almost like, 'OK, the gauntlet's been thrown. I'm going in,"' Crow says. "I'm not the only one that feels the way I feel.
And I don't feel afraid to say the way I feel."
Steve Berman, president of sales and marketing at Interscope Geffen A&M, says the album's content seems perfectly suited to its recent release date - Super Tuesday.
"She's not afraid ... of running from what's happening in the world today," he says. "Sheryl, as an artist, has the ability to do what few artists can do."
Crow, who turned 46 on Feb. 11, looks easily two decades younger than her age. She wears formfitting jeans and a clingy top, highlighting her petite, athletic shape. Her hair is a sun-kissed collection of loose curls.
A product of Kennett, Mo., she lived for years in Los Angeles as a backup singer and then star, and later in Texas, with Armstrong.
Now she's made a home in a 154-acre farm outside Nashville, Tenn.
The intense media interest in her life following the very public breakup with Armstrong and subsequent cancer diagnosis is not something she misses. Her current distance from the tabloids - and, of course, the new baby - have helped clear her head. Wyatt is 9 months old and almost walking.
"I'm really, really happy with where I am in my life," she says. "And certainly, after having gone through breast cancer, I feel like I have a clear overview. I feel that whole experience really brought me back to remembering who it is I've always wanted to be."
On the 14-song CD, Crow deals with cancer ("Make It Go Away"), heartache ("Now That You're Gone," "Detours"), cultural understanding ("Shine Over Babylon," "Peace Be Upon Us"), worldwide rioting over gas shortages by 2017 ("Gasoline") and flooded New Orleans ("Love Is Free").
"I grew up in middle America. I grew up with parents that raised me knowing the value of a dollar and with a lot of respect for my elders, a lot of respect for myself and the people around me," she says.
Fans looking for specific references to former beau Armstrong are out of luck, though the song "Diamond Ring" has the lyric: "Diamonds may be sweet/But to me they just bring on cold feet."
"I get to talk about it on my own terms, hopefully in a poetic way, in a way that's inspired from the spirit," she says. "The gory details aren't as interesting anyway."
The new CD sees Crow reconnecting with Bill Bottrell, who produced her 1993 debut album, "Tuesday Night Music Club."
Despite its success, the pair fell out over the proper apportioning of credit.
She called him up out of the blue last year, said a record was welling up inside her like a geyser and wanted to know if they still had a creative "juju."
"He said, 'I've been waiting for this call for years.' That made me feel like, 'OK, we're on the right course,"' she recalls.
"I think it's the most frank record, definitely. And the least crafted record perhaps."
Crow hopes the new album is a wake-up call for a nation that's been in a deep slumber during the Bush years. Her dislike of the administration is palpable.
"A lot of people in my age group I think are talking about the same thing - how in the last seven years, we as a nation have been taken on a grand tour away from what this nation was meant to be," she says. "I'm feeling awake with not only frustration but with a feeling of possibility and an urgency to try to incite people to owning our power."
Part of that urgency, she says, comes from worrying about Wyatt and what kind of future he'll have. He gets his own song on the new CD - "Lullaby for Wyatt." Crow says the idea of adoption evolved from her experiences over the past few years. She found in the darkness that she had a lot of love to give.
Whether or not her fans snap up the new CD in droves doesn't necessarily worry her. "Now I'm past the point of really caring," she says.
"My objective is that I just want to write about the things that really matter to me and that's how I wound up with a record like this. If it gets played, that's fantastic."
