Jewel

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Essential Albums

  • Pieces Of You (25th Anniversary Edition)
    Pieces Of You (25th Anniversary Edition)
    Pieces Of You (25th Anniversary Edition)

    At the time of its release in February 1995, Jewel’s debut LP was at odds with a pop-cultural landscape still dominated by alt-rock. “I was laughed out of every radio station,” she tells Apple Music. “Radio programmers hated me, journalists hated me. Culture was not thinking I should do well. But I could tell: When I sang, it worked.” Discovered while performing in San Diego—where, living in her car at one point, she’d amassed a fervent local following, at the Inner Change coffee house in Pacific Beach—the then-20-year-old folk singer had come of age onstage, singing covers with her father in hotels and bars in their native Alaska. She was well-equipped to face tough audiences. “Sometimes I'd have to kick people out or tell them to shut up, to try to get these crowds that had no interest in me to listen and pay attention,” she says of nights opening for the likes of Hole, Ramones, Belly and Peter Murphy, on her own with just an acoustic guitar. “If it was a tiny club, no matter what, I knew I was able to convert people—I was able to make them feel something.” And after nearly a year of persistent touring—some of it with Neil Young and Bob Dylan, both encouraging—Pieces of You finally did break through, starting with “Who Will Save Your Soul”, an unyielding look at celebrity worship that she’d written at 16 as she was busking her way through North America. Recorded at Young’s Broken Arrow Ranch in Northern California (with producer Ben Keith, who worked on 1972’s Harvest) and in front of an audience at Inner Change (where she was most comfortable), Pieces of You pulled directly from journals that Jewel had kept throughout her teen years, blending her love of poetry with an honesty and a hopefulness and a ferocity of spirit that eventually resonated with some of the same kids who’d gravitated towards Kurt Cobain, to whom she paid tribute on album closer “Amen”. That she was quicker to yodel than scream was not an issue. “It was a really funny thing for me to be perceived as naive, because I’d had a grittier life than I think any grunge musician going,” she says. “Abusive household, moved out at 15. Very on my own. I was in a lot of pain. But I didn't want to kill myself. And if you feel bad, at some point you have to say, ‘Now what?’ My music was about ‘now what?’.” Decades later, Pieces of You is both mid-’90s touchstone and home to some of her signature songs. This 25th-anniversary reissue compiles hours of original demos, outtakes and rarities, including the four-song entirety of her self-released 1994 cassette Shiva Diva Doo-Wop. Most illuminating is a full live set from the Inner Change that same year—a snapshot of Jewel at her most magnetic. “That’s a real, raw glimpse of me as an 18-year-old,” she says. Here, Jewel speaks on some of the album’s key tracks, as well as some of the rarities unearthed for the reissue. Who Will Save Your Soul “This is the first song I wrote. When I went away to school, I didn't realise that you also couldn't stay on campus for spring break and fall break. So I decided to take an adventure. My dad sent me one of his old beat-up guitars, and I learned A-minor, C, G and D, in that order. My dad had improvised a lot in bars: To keep me entertained, he'd make up lyrics about the people that weren't listening. So my big plan was, try and get enough dexterity to play these four chords over and over, and then make up lyrics about people as they walked by. I had enough money to get from Detroit to Chicago. I'd go into restaurants and I'd sing for burritos. Went to Cabo [San Lucas], hitchhiked back up to Tijuana, hopped trains back to school and made it back to school in time for class. I just kept adding lyrics. I started working on polishing it and getting it condensed to a shorter version, trying to figure out what the best verses were. It definitely made me fall in love. It was just a very addictive feeling—it married my love of writing with a life of singing.” Pieces of You “‘Pieces of You’ has been pissing people off for a good, solid 25 years. I wrote this song in San Diego. I had already gotten signed but hadn't made the record yet. There was a girl that was really mean to me. And I sat down to be really reactionary, and be mean back, and it suddenly struck me that hatred is often based on insecurity. And that song just came out exactly like it is; however long it takes to sing it is how long it took to write it. Every single thing in that song, I've heard people say. I wanted that song to escalate into what I've often seen it become, which is an unchecked, secretive hatred. And then shine a light on the fact that it's usually something about you.” Foolish Games “When I listen to that song, it's so intense. I'd never lived through that, had never been in love. I can definitely see my influences: I didn't listen to a lot of music, but I read a lot, and I'd written a lot of short stories, fiction and poetry. I got ahold of Leonard Cohen’s 'Famous Blue Raincoat' when I was in eighth grade. I would listen to that over and over and over, and was really struck by what a little movie it was, and how it created this real sense of angst and nostalgia and colour. ‘Foolish Games’ was, I guess, my attempt at ripping off Leonard Cohen.” I’m Sensitive “I felt like the best ‘fuck you’ was that I wanted to live a happier life, be more resilient, more loving, more kind, less broken. And looking at the idea of nature versus nurture: How do you withstand a lot of the negative forces in the world and still, somehow, be what you are, which, for me, was really sensitive. I wrote that song after our drummer took a potshot at me. He was having a bad day and said something really sharp and biting to me. And it really stung. I was waiting for a flight back down to California, taking a break on the record. Just wrote it in the waiting area as my stance in the world, this idea that the world wins—an abuser wins—if it makes you incapable of experiencing joy.” You Were Meant for Me “Steve Poltz and I had both gotten signed at the same time, and he talked me into going to Mexico to write songs. We got lost, ended up in this town where we broke into a little shelter overnight. We woke up the next day and there were no people. We were out of gas. We went down to the beach: pink sand, blue water. We saw four figures in black walking toward us, and I saw they had guns in their belts, and that their shirts said ‘Federale.’ So we asked them the obvious and pertinent question: ‘Do you know where we can get a boat to go whale-watching?’ And they took us whale-watching with them, and I asked what brought them out, and they said they were there on a drug bust. And I was like, ‘Right now? Is it dangerous?’ And he goes, ‘Yeah, that's why we evacuated the village.’ We ended up staying there for three days with the federales and we wrote several songs—one of them was ‘You Were Meant for Me’. We were both making a record at the time, and we both wanted to record it, but we couldn't really decide who should. So after we got done with a gig at 2 or 3 am back in San Diego, we went to a taco shop—and the only people at taco shops at 2 am are ladies of the evening and musicians. I came up with this idea that we would each sing our idea of the song for the prostitutes, and that we would let them pick whoever would get to record it, and we would live by it. And so they picked me to sing it. And that's how it ended up on my record.” Angel Standing By “Probably the second or third song I ever wrote. I started having panic attacks in boarding school, when I went away. And I was scared. I was paying rent, so I was working my way through high school. I had no safety net. And I didn't realise how much trauma my childhood had had. I tried to write myself a song of everything I wished somebody would tell me, and I would play it for myself as I fell asleep. That song will sometimes still make me cry because it takes me back to just how afraid I was. Having that much responsibility was great in a lot of ways, but also, obviously, really overwhelming.” Amen “After Kurt Cobain died, I went to this little hotel on a pier in San Diego and I just remember shutting myself in. The mood in the culture was so palpable that I actually get chills right now talking about it. What Kurt and Nirvana did for culture, I think was heroic. It was so honest—unflinchingly honest. And his loss was experienced in this very profound way. The amount of pain you could feel in the world, that I felt in the world, was so, so real. All I ever did was travel in barrooms and honky-tonk joints. And as I started seeing a little more of the world, people were in a lot of pain. I wrote it as an homage to him. I actually was just literally imagining what he looked like, what junkies look like high, staring up at the sky.” My Own Private God's Gift to Women “‘My Own Private God's Gift to Women' was my experience with a lot of creeps in my life, being raised in barrooms. I remember a guy would fold a dime in my hand and put my fingers over the dime and say, ‘Call me when you're 16, you're going to be great to fuck.’ I'd come out of bathrooms as a 14-year-old, and I remember a guy touching my esophagus, and then he would measure it, and he would go, ‘You been cheating on me?’ I had no idea what that meant. I just knew it was frightening. A lot of women have story after story after story. And learning to stick up for myself, it was great because I had so much training by the time I got in the music business.” Sov Gott “I wrote ‘Sov Gott’ when I was dating a Swede. I think I was 17, and I wanted to learn Swedish. It's just taking the elementary words I was using and trying to weave them together in a cohesive way. I lost most of my Swedish, sadly. I always loved this song, and the idea of doing a lullaby record started to form, probably during promoting my first record. I didn't get to do it for many, many, many years later.” Chime Bells (The Yodeling Song) [Live] “This is the first song I ever learned, when I was five. My dad was a yodeler and I wanted to learn to yodel, and he said I was too young to learn, which is the perfect thing to say to me because I went and learned in private how to do it, and I practised and practised. I was the little five-year-old that yodeled in the family shows. When I started my career, I played a lot of hard rooms. I remember playing the 9:30 Club in D.C., a rock club. A lot of times, I couldn't get people to listen until I yodeled. If everything else was a loss and a complete fail, yodelling, for some reason, would just ignite a passion. Maybe a circus passion, I’m not entirely sure. But it would really cause people to stop.”

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About Jewel

Jewel’s delicate songwriting has always been her most powerful weapon. “I think the best rebellion is remaining sensitive,” she told Apple Music. That philosophy—germinating from a tough childhood—has stayed with the singer/songwriter throughout her career. Born in 1974, Jewel Kilcher began singing and yodeling as a young girl alongside her father in raucous barrooms across Alaska. By age 15, she moved out, studied operatic voice in Michigan, and relocated to Southern California, where she anxiously lived out of her car and performed acoustic sets at San Diego coffee shops. Atlantic Records eventually took notice and released her smash 1995 debut, Pieces Of You. Highlighted by reflective folk-pop hits "Who Will Save Your Soul," "You Were Meant for Me," and "Foolish Games," the album served as the ideal antidote to the angst-fueled grunge dominating the pop-culture landscape. As she’s redefined herself over the years—flexing her supple soprano through dance-pop beats (2003’s 0304), sweet country hooks (2008’s Perfectly Clear), and charming children’s classics (2009’s Lullaby)—Jewel has stuck to the promise she made herself as a homeless teen: to remain wholly authentic. “I’m really proud,” she says, looking back. “I always chose my humanity over my career, and I always chose my art over fame.”

FROM
Payson, UT, United States
BORN
May 23, 1974
GENRE
Pop

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