Sheryl Crow recalls sexual harassment experience from Michael Jackson's manager

Sheryl Crow talked about her experience with sexual harassment while she toured as a backup singer in Michael Jackson's "Bad" tour in 1987.

The singer recalled how at the age of 25, "naiveté is such a beautiful thing." She remembered feeling happy to be able to tour the world with the King of Pop. She said it was "incredible in every way, shape, and form" for someone like her "from a really small town to see the world and to work with arguably the greatest pop star."

Crow sang on stage to thousands of screaming fans, belting out "I Just Can't Stop Loving You" and "Man in the Mirror" with Jackson. She toured with him for 16 months across the globe to 123 countries.

But the opportunity did not come without its challenges, especially in the form of sexual advances coming from Jackson's manager Frank DiLeo. Crow likened her experience to a "crash course in the music industry."

"It's really interesting to go back and revisit some of this old stuff and the experiences that went along with it, and then to compare it with where we are now," the singer, now 59, mused during a video interview with The Independent from her home in Nashville.

DiLeo, who died in 2011, sexually harassed her throughout the tour. He also, as Crow revealed in her audiobook memoir, "Words + Music," threatened to end her career if she refused his advances, which she did.

After the tour ended in 1989, she fell into a long period of depression as she retreated to her L.A. apartment. She had hired an attorney then, but was told that she could have just put up with DiLeo's advances in exchange for stardom.

Crow did not really go into detail about the harassment but her 1993 tracks, "What I Can Do For You" and "The Na-Na Song," are said to refer to the experience. The tracks contained the lyrics: "Frank DiLeo's dong / Maybe if I'd have let him I'd have had a hit song."

"To be able to play that stuff about the long bout of sexual harassment I endured during the Michael Jackson tour and to talk about it in the midst of the MeToo movement... it feels like we've come a long way, but it doesn't feel like we're quite there yet," she added.

Crow admitted that it "felt really uncomfortable" when she shared her sexual harassment experience for the first time in her memoir, which was released last September. Albeit, for her it was "so much more empowering to be able to talk about it and then play the music that was inspired by it."