Sheryl Crow's sons may not pursue music like their mom — but they certainly have talent!
The "Soak Up the Sun" musician, 60, opened up to PEOPLE at the MusiCares 2023 Persons of the Year Gala on Friday about her kids' musical aspirations and the chances of them following in her footsteps.
"I don't know that either one of them really wants to do that, but they're both musical, and I'm one of those obnoxious parents who's like, 'You have to take piano. Do not argue with me about it,'" Crow says.
"But my 15-year-old, he's got a great ear and can play really well," she says. "I think he will always tinker, but he wants to be a marine biologist, so I don't know how to compete with that because it's such an— I don't even know what they do. So I'm happy for him to go save the reefs. That's what he wants to do."
Crow has two boys — Wyatt, 15, and Levi, 12 — and is teaching them what she can about the classics she grew up on. At the MusiCares event, which honored the likes of Smokey Robinson and Berry Gordy with the help of stars such as Stevie Wonder and Lionel Richie, Crow shared a performance of the Jackson 5's "I Want You Back." As she explained to PEOPLE, she's even her kids onto the Motown classics, too.
"Oh, ad nauseam," she said when asked if she plays the music for Wyatt and Levi. "They're just like, 'Mom, what is this old music?' But they go around humming it and singing it. My 15-year-old is always like, 'I got sunshine…' So, I feel like I'm doing the right thing. I grew up with it and my 15-year-old is a great bass player, and he's learning James Jamerson just like I did."
Earlier this month, Crow scored a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nomination and admitted to PEOPLE that she was "still a little bit in shock" after seeing her name mentioned. She was nominated alongside the likes of George Michael, The White Stripes, Missy Elliott, Cyndi Lauper, Iron Maiden, Willie Nelson, Rage Against the Machine, A Tribe Called Quest, and more.
"It feels like I've been nominated for an Oscar for a 30-year movie. So it's really cool. I'm really honored," she said.
Seeing their mom potentially inducted into the HOF should be a big deal for her kids, who Crow said she's "honored" to be the mother of during a 2021 appearance on the podcast Making Space with Hoda Kotb. The musician said at the time that she had the "gift of getting a lot of things out of my system before I had my kids, or before I got my kids," adding that it was a "life raft" of support from her mother who showed her she didn't have to be married to start a family.
During the podcast, Crow recalled her mother being supportive of adoption, telling her, "You have a family around you who will stand at the altar with you at baptism and say, 'We are his community, or her community.' "
"The story I was telling myself limited what I thought I could have until somebody stepped in and said, 'Wait a minute, your story doesn't have to look like your mom and dad's story,'" she said. "Families look like all different things."
Crow's family even appeared in her music video for "Forever" last year. In the clip, she poses alongside her kids as they spend some quality family time together. "What a blessing to get to experience the world through my children's eyes," she wrote on Instagram at the time. "Every moment reminds me that life goes fast and being in the moment is so important, so I wrote a song about it called 'Forever.'"
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