The second came last year, when Crow re-emerged with her second, self-titled "Sheryl Crow" album. This time, there was a decidedly harder snap to the proceedings, with many of the neo-hippie leanings of her first outing morphing into a far more jagged '70s rock stance. With the piercing if flawed "If It Makes You Happy," Crow wailed over the raw clank and punch of electric guitars. "If it makes you happy/then why the hell are you so sad," she sang. It was a hard, complex shout compared to the loose, boozy strains of "All I wanna do/is have some fun."

Even Crow's look changed. Hippie wear was replaced by high-fashion designer clothes, and her curly locks were straightened and streaked.

Once again, the music -- and ultimately her success -- was obscured by controversy. Before the release of her sophomore album, Kevin Gilbert, the TMC keyboardist and Crow's ex-boyfriend, was found dead, clad in a leather skirt with a strap around his neck, the victim of autoerotic asphyxiation. The news linked back to Crow, and in a story in the San Francisco Chronicle, it appeared that Gilbert never fully recovered from the TMC backlash.

Then came a November 1996 Rolling Stone cover story, with Crow looking her most coquettish clad in hot pants and leather boots. In the commercial rock world, it doesn't get much bigger than the cover of Rolling Stone.

But the story behind the cover wasn't the type of attention that any artist would crave.

"I heard all they wanted to talk about was the Tuesday Night Music Club scandal and all that stuff," she says, claiming that she did not actually read the article but heard about it from friends.

Still another blow came when Crow's second release was banned from the shelves of all Wal-Mart stores. The giant retailer took exception to her song "Love Is A Good Thing," which contained the lyrics "Watch out sister, watch out brother/Watch our children while they kill each other/With a gun they bought at Wal-Mart discount stores."

Despite those setbacks, Crow's second CD has kept her on the radio and before the public. In March this year, she took home two more Grammys for her sophomore release, victories for best rock album and best female rock vocal performance.

A few nights after the Grammy show, she played Boston's Orpheum Theater, to an audience that consisted mostly of thirty- and fortysomethings. The petite Crow, clad in black leather pants and sleeveless shirt, her hair streaked blond, took the stage to rousing cheers. Backed by a five-man band on guitars, bass, drums and keyboards, she launched into the hit "If It Makes You Happy."

Not a showy performer, Crow stayed mostly at the mike and strummed the acoustic guitar slung around her neck. She rarely interacted with her band, and failed to introduce any members.

But her voice, which has yet to be accurately captured on disc and frequently sounds breathy on record, was far more powerful in a live setting, reaching easily into a tough, grainy register.

In between songs, she looked out at the packed house. "Have you had a good week?" she asked. "So have we."

She smiled wide at the cheers. The audience was responding to Crow's Grammy coup.

The Road Ahead

Sheryl Crow, who recently relocated from Los Angeles to New York, is a lot more savvy than when she first ventured out to the West Coast, and a lot more circumspect. She also is at a crossroads, trying to weigh her professional interests with those that are deeply personal.

She believes the things that caused all her relationships to mutiny is the fact that she hasn't been very present in them.

"I've buried myself in my art, and that's been a refuge and also an escape for me a lot," she says. "It's just not an easy thing for [a man] to cope with, having a relationship with a woman who's not conventional in any way."

On one hand, Crow mentions seeing herself having children and raising them in a small town someday, a town just like Kennett. On the other hand, she speaks of adoption, something she's currently looking into. But mostly, it seems that Crow grapples with that peculiarly female dilemma -- being a working woman who wonders if a family is even in the cards.

"I've gotten to the point now where I'm looking at my life and trying to accept that I may never have kids," she says. "I may never get married. I've had some wonderful relationships, and I've had the luxury of being in love a lot. So I can't say that I've led an extremely lonely life. It's just the choices I've made, it's sort of eliminated my having a normal life. But it's been an even trade-off."

And that trade-off is the rock stardom that has kept her at the center of the public eye for the last several years.

"Now it's about success, and the size of your success," Crow says, and in many respects, she is right. The pressure in today's music business is enormous. There was a time when selling a million records was considered a stratospheric achievement in the recording industry. And musicians -- buoyed by A&R (artist and repertoire) folks who signed artists with career longevity in mind -- were allowed to develop their music over a series of albums.

In today's music biz, disposability rules, and the scenarios have grown outlandish. Bands today are signed promiscuously and at break-neck speed. Artists are expected to hit quickly, and hit big. If they do not, the descent is hard, fast and uncompromising.

Crow refers to these extremes as "the nature of the beast." In many ways, she has come to the fore at a time when the music industry is, in every respect, at an all-time low.

"The thing that's discouraging is the way the music industry has gone now, since I've been in it. There's no developing of young artists, there's no having five or six albums to define who you are," she says. "You have your one opportunity, or maybe two, before your record label drops you."

As Crow talks about that past, her voice takes on the awe of the Kennett kid, a rock star remembering a simpler time when she was simply a rock fan. A lot has changed in the rock world since the days when Kennett kids did their own thing by making music: the loss of a nurturing community, the lack of artist development, the accelerated nature of a business which voraciously exploits trends, then just as quickly disposes of them for the next flavor of the month.

"There's so much pressure and so much weight on chart positions and on sales," she says. "It's created a really competitive environment amongst musicians."

For Crow, who has scaled the heights into contemporary celebrity, there are few peers now in life who know exactly what it is that she is going through.

It's little wonder, then, that she speaks so affectionately about the town from which she came. It's easy to understand what she misses about it, what it continues to offer her no matter where she goes. In a big world of raw, ultimate exposure, it is in Kennett, a small dot at the edge of the state, a town tucked into the heel of the boot, where Crow finds that which eludes her so often now on the bruising stage of fame: unconditional love, ramrod loyalty, genuine respect.