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Multiple-Grammy-award-winning singer Sheryl Crow has opened up about the “long bout of sexual harassment” she faced from Michael Jackson’s late manager.

The 59-year-old singer told The Independent about her experience with sexual harassment in the music industry and recalled being sexually harassed by Michael Jackson’s late manager, Frank DiLeo, during the Bad world tour back in 1987.

Frank DiLeo managed Michael Jackson in the late 80s, and also in 2009 prior to the singer’s death.

“Naiveté is such a beautiful thing,” Sheryl Crow told The Independent, referencing getting her big break when she auditioned to be a backing singer for Michael Jackson’s Bad world tour.

“It was incredible in every way, shape and form for a young person from a really small town to see the world and to work with arguably the greatest pop star.

“But I also got a crash course in the music industry.”

Michael Jackson fans may remember the press going wild about him allegedly falling in love with his “sexy backing singer”, i.e. Sheryl Crow – however, she later clarified that it was in fact Frank DiLeo who was attracted to her…

She even went as far as to mention in her Words + Music audiobook, which was out last year, that she believed the stories may have been leaked to the press by DiLeo himself, “to make Mike look like he was interested in women.”

According to Sheryl Crow, she faced countless bouts of sexual harassment from Frank DiLeo, adding that he threatened to end her career if she ever told anyone about his actions…

“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,” she continued.

“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.”

Sheryl Crow also revealed that she suffered from depression once the world tour had ended after a lawyer allegedly told her that she shouldn’t have rejected DiLeo’s advances, for the sake of her career…

“It was disillusioning,” she added.

“I think when your dream bubble is burst you either go: ‘Okay, well, I’m going to forget that dream,’ or you do what I did, which was wallow in it for about a year, and then you pull your bootstraps up and you get back to work.”

And although she didn’t talk about sexual harassment in such great detail at the time, she did make some references to it in her music…

The song What I Can Do for You, from her 1993 debut album Tuesday Night Music Club, was written from the perspective of an abuser, while The Na-Na Song features the lyrics, “Frank DiLeo’s dong / Maybe if I’d have let him I’d have had a hit song.”

Frank DiLeo died in August 2011 aged 63, following complications from heart surgery.