Country music star Sheryl Crow recently performed at the 2023 Sea.Hear.Now Music Festival in New Jersey and, during the performance, spoke to her audience about the difficult times everyone in America faces and commiserated with them over those hard times.
Particularly, Crow spoke to the young people in the crowd who are having to navigate life at a time when everything seems uncertain and the bad news seems to grow by the day and America stares in the face of steep and painful decline.
Beginning, she noted that the world is getting harder and harder to navigate, saying, “I know how hard it is for especially young people – and I don’t know if anybody was pained by struggles like I did when I was young – but these are some tricky waters to navigate now.”
Continuing, she turned to how ditching the dystopian, sprawling, concrete-encased city of Los Angeles for a life in nature in the vicinity of Nashville, Tennessee, saved her from disaster. “I’ll just tell you that, for me, getting out in nature really saved my life,” she said.
She then explained to where she moved and how the change in location helped her talk to God and get right with the world, saying, “So, I moved to Nashville and I bought a farm. I sat in the trees and just asked God to give me some answers – and I wound up writing this song.”
Crow ditched Los Angeles in 2003, telling Rolling Stone at the time, “I completely relate to Nashville because I have a lot of friends there who are also in the music business… But not only that, I just relate to the people. I relate to the friendliness and down-homeness. I feel a relaxation that comes over my body that I usually don’t feel when I’m in New York or L.A.”
Further, she noted that the Tennessee home was the perfect place for her two adopted sons, Wyatt, adopted in 2007, and Levi, adopted in 2010. She said, “It’s great to have my kids grow up with the mentality that they live in a community, they owe their good fortune to helping other people, there are no paparazzi there.“
Mark Wahlberg made a similar point about moving from California to Nevada. Describing the change his family was able to make to a better, more outdoors and happy lifestyle after the move, he said, “My daughter’s an equestrian. My son’s a golfer. My oldest daughter, now she’s off to college. My son’s a junior.”
He also noted that the change in circumstances is even better for the middle class people with whom he works, saying, “When I moved here, I brought probably like 15 or 20 people that work with me also moving here. They went from three-bedroom houses that they were really struggling to pay rent for. And now they have a six-bedroom house. And it’s, you know, half the cost.” He added, “And, you know, they walk their dogs. They’re in a gated community. They’ve got the school right there two blocks down the road. It’s just a much better lifestyle here and more affordable.”
Featured image credit: By I, Truejustice, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2483089
Sources: THE AMERICAN TRIBUNE
