Sheryl Crow says the original tapes of albums including Tuesday Night Music Club and The Globe Sessions went up in flames in a fire at Universal Studios.
The singer told the BBC “all her masters” were destroyed when an archive in Los Angeles burnt down in 2008.
She only discovered the loss this month, after her name was mentioned in a New York Times report that uncovered the extent of the damage.
“It absolutely grieves me,” said Crow. “It feels a little apocalyptic.
“I can’t understand, first and foremost, how you could store anything in a vault that didn’t have sprinklers.
“And secondly, I can’t understand how you could make safeties [back-up copies] and have them in the same vault. I mean, what’s the point? “And thirdly, I can’t understand how it’s been 11 years,” she added. “I mean, I don’t understand the cover-up.”
Crow, who had seven US top 10 albums between 1995 and 2008, is the first artist to confirm the loss of their recordings since the New York Times’ investigation was published two weeks ago.
It detailed how the fire, which was started by overnight maintenance work, had destroyed thousands of master tapes – the original recordings from which albums and singles are made – by some of the most famous names in music history, from Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin and Chuck Berry to Janet Jackson, Nirvana and Eminem.
Although the fire was widely reported at the time, Universal Music downplayed the damage to its archives, saying many of the affected tapes had duplicates in separate storage facilities.
The company also disputed the New York Times’ investigation, citing unspecified “factual inaccuracies” reports, BBC .
