For Sheryl Crow, Wildflower, out September 13th, isn't just her fifth studio album -- it's also the beginning of a second chapter. "I feel like my last album, C'mon, C'mon, was really about just trying to get a record finished," Crow says. "Wildflower has been like a rebirth for me and my desire to want to make music again."

A lot has happened for Crow recently: Her 2003 hits package, The Very Best of Sheryl Crow, went triple platinum, and she began a relationship with cycling legend Lance Armstrong -- whom she met in 2003. "Being with someone who has three small children, my life really shifted," Crow says. "I remember talking to Don Henley while I was doing dishes. I was like, 'Wow, I'm learning to cook and washing a lot of bike shorts -- who am I?' And Don said, 'It's in the smallest domestic exercises you can find your greatest inspiration.'"

Crow listened to a lot of Neil Young, Elton John and George Harrison while working on the CD: "I really wanted to feel like the listener was sitting directly across from the artist -- the way I feel when I listen to Harvest." The sessions -- with longtime collaborator Jeff Trott and recent Grammy-winning producer John Shanks behind the mixing board -- yielded enough material for a follow-up disc, due out next summer. "We recorded thirty-six songs," Crow says. "The next record is straight-up country rock."

Crow's original choice for the first single was the delicate title track, which recalls early Cat Stevens -- but her label, Interscope, pushed for "Good Is Good," a midtempo rocker deemed more radio-friendly. "'Wildflower' would have been a real anti-single single," says Crow. "It speaks about the content of this album. That in the midst of all the chaos going on in the world, that wildflower growing between the cracks represents the purity within us."

Crow says she didn't work on the disc during Armstrong's seventh victorious Tour de France bid in July. "But my being there was pretty key to how the record turned out," she says. "When you're in a new relationship, your heart is open and you're facing things about yourself. You throw into the mix being overseas, and I wanted to be writing all the time."