After almost five years, singer Joan Osborne has finally returned with a new record, "Righteous Love," the long-awaited, much-delayed follow-up to her 1995 debut, "Relish."

Despite the multi-platinum sales success of "Relish," which spawned the hit single "One Of Us," Osborne told MTV News that the "Righteous Love" sessions were extremely trying, as she constantly squared off against her then-label, Mercury Records, over the material.

Over a two-year period, Osborne was in and out of various studios with the likes of David Lowery from Cracker and T-Bone Burnett, recording and rerecording songs in an attempt to placate her label as well as her own artistic vision.

Osborne finally broke from Mercury and landed on Interscope Records, which issued "Righteous Love," although the singer said the real turning point came when she enlisted the aid of producer Mitchell Froom, who has handled albums by Elvis Costello, American Music Club, and Cibo Matto, among others.

"['Righteous Love'] came together through a really lengthy process," Osborne related. "I went into the studio a few different times with different groups of collaborators over the past few years, each time hoping to come out with a finished record that I'd be happy with and that the record company would be happy with.

"Unfortunately, every time I did that, either the record company wasn't satisfied with it or I wasn't satisfied with it, so it was a frustrating thing where I had to go back to the drawing board a few different times.

she continued,

"I had about 25 songs," Osborne said, "then we narrowed it down to about 13 or 14. Some of those fell by the wayside [during] recording, and I wrote a new song, 'Poison Apples,' that got recorded for these sessions, so there was a lot of stuff to go through."[RealAudio]

Despite the arduous birth of "Righteous Love," Osborne noted to MTV News that she wasn't overly bitter about the label-related wranglings that kept her recording career on hiatus for so long. She said that it actually challenged her to keep focused on being creative rather than worry about the business side of things.

"That was [a] difficult situation," she said, "because when you work on something, there's always going to be a point where you're not satisfied and you go back in and you continue to work on it. That's just part of the creative process -- you never get things right the first time, and you're sort of used to that, as somebody who has been doing it for a while.

"But the thing that's really frustrating is having something that you really want to share with people," Osborne noted,

"It's not like you can sue them and force them to release it and force them to promote it or whatever," she said. "They pretty much do what they want to do, so your only recourse is to just keep creating and keep working and go back to the drawing board if that's what you're faced with and try not to get too disheartened by it." [RealAudio]

Osborne is currently out on the road and is scheduled to play shows in St. Louis and Chicago over the weekend (see "Joan Osborne Plans Tour With 'Righteous Love'").