Sheryl Crow's 'Wildflower'

Back in 1994, Sheryl Crow sang "All I Wanna Do Is Have Some Fun." Well, nine Grammy Awards later her wish has certainly come true.

She's enjoying her engagement to seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong, she's gearing up for a huge U.S. tour, and she's celebrating the release of "Wildflower," her first CD in three years.

"I don't think I've ever in my career felt as compelled to write as I do now," she told The Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith. "It's a great time to be an artist because there's so much to write about. I think the tradition of writing about what's going on culturally and socio-politically has kind of died, and it is fun to be in my 40s and just kind of embrace it."

Crow says "Wildflower" is a more mature record and asks the questions "a 40-year-old would ask." She says her last release, "The Very Best of Sheryl Crow," paved the way for this new CD.

"'The Very Best' was really the end of a chapter in my artistic life, and this is like my first record," she said.

"Wildflower" will add to Crow's tally of 25 million worldwide record sales from her hit albums "Tuesday Night Music Club" (1994), "Sheryl Crow" (1996), "The Globe Sessions" (1998), "Live From Central Park" (1999), "C'mon C'mon" (2002) and 2003's "Greatest Hits" collection, which reached triple-platinum status in the United States.

Prior to recording "Wildflower," Crow took time off and traveled to Spain. She says spending time in another country, "where I don't speak the language, being alone a lot, and observing the chaos of the world, shaped this album into what it now is."

Whenever Crow begins a new CD, she says she uses a handful of albums as a template to help define the project. Her choices for "Wildflower" were Neil Young's "Harvest," Elton John's "Tumbleweed Connection," and George Harrison's "All Things Must Pass."

Armstrong also influenced this record. According to Crow, "Lance was kind of my sounding board." And she dedicates it to him.

"It was really a nice kind of dialogue we had about songs," she said. "Just the fact that he could sit and listen to my songs and feel like he could be honest about what he thought, and he would ask questions, I've never had that experience, where I played something for someone I was involved with. It was kind of daunting."

"Wildflower" was completed in February of this year but Armstrong was preparing for his final Tour de France and Crow wanted to share that with him. She decided to release the CD after the race was over.

"Actually both of those years were kind of a gift that I gave myself," she said. "To just kind of step out of my career for a while and create the urge to want to write again, and also to just go out and collect stories. For me, it was being on his mission and being a support for him, but also it was very inspirational for me. Just even to watch that whole thing was inspiring, I think, for all people in the world."

That is not exactly how the French press portrayed Armstrong, but Crow said the reports did not rob him of the joy of his accomplishments.

"I think he's had this relationship with the French now since well before I knew him," she says. "And I think the way that it came about was so unfounded that it didn't even merit the attention that it got. I think after a while it just becomes like a gnat buzzing around your head. You get tired of it. He is a cancer survivor, which we all know. And the thought of him putting anything into his body that could possibly hurt him is not even worth debating. "

Though no wedding date has been set, the representative for the seven-time Tour de France winner said spring nuptials for the high-profile couple was likely.

"The more we talk about having a wedding, the more we say, 'let's run off,' " she says. "It's kind of like planning a tour. God, how are we going to get it done?"

In the Oct. 6 issue of Rolling Stone, Crow was asked if she to had to choose a wedding song, what would it be and who would she like to have sing it? She answered Stevie Nicks and "Landslide."

When Armstrong proposed, the boat they were in ran out of gas.

"I laugh at it now because I think it sort of sums up our relationship in that we are the consummate teammates to each other," she says. "I support him, he supports me. The fact that we ran out of gas before we really officially start our life together, and we pick up the ores and row back to shore. To me, I think that's going to be the way our life will be."

On The Early Show she sang her new song "Good Is Good For Us," as well as "The First Cut Is The Deepest," written by Cat Stevens from her "Very Best Of" CD, and her hit from 1996, "If It Makes You Happy."