Since her 1993 debut, Tuesday Night Music Club , Sheryl Crow has been churning out unassailably appealing CDs in an unassailably appealing voice. Which means, according to the rules of the pop music cosmos, by album six it's about time for a misstep. Natural law, fortunately, will have to keep checking its watch. Wildflower moves Sheryl Crow one step closer to Hall of Fame status as she shunts the established rock star's impulse to get all experimental, but instead sprawls, rambling rose-like, across the substance-spiked pop landscape she helped pioneer. Three ingredients, glistening vocals, flawless production, and catchy songs rub up against one another in all the right places. These ingredients will cause you to hold your breath on the beautiful piano ballad "Always on Your Side." They pop up again on the George Harrison-esque "Where Has All the Love Gone" reminding you that Crow can reflect and reveal as convincingly as she can rock. If there is a ripple that runs through Wildflower, it's a pensive one. On the spacy "Chances Are," she sings of being "...lost inside a daydream." The measure of her talent, ripe and reappraisal-resistant, is her ability to consistently bring us inside the bubble with her. --Tammy La Gorce

Recommended Sheryl Crow Discography

Tuesday Night Music Club

Sheryl Crow

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