For the life of me, I still don’t understand why Jewel’s pop album destroyed her career

Love this song from that album. Also loved the cover

Jewel sucked.

Snaggle-tooth was never going to be an enduring artist to begin with. Like Norah Jones and Alanis Morrissette, she had a very narrow style and perspective. She was a funky, almost indie, singer who was good with an acoustic guitar and could do neat vocal tricks in her songs. She wrote her own material, which is good for a debut album. But once introduced to the public, she was expected to grow her brand in new directions. Madonna did that when she ditched the rubber bracelets, shaved her head, and started singing from the soul. Tina Turner did that when she ditched Ike and took up rock and roll. Jewel couldn't really do this, though. Or she tried with this glossy pop bullshit, and people tuned out.

It's like when your favorite burger joint switches to Chinese food, but keeps the same decor and kitchen staff. It just doesn't work out well. Or to keep it in musical terms, it's like what happened to Alanis when she grew into herself, married a nice guy, and found normal adult love. She found happiness, but she lost her tempest, which was what fueled her musical success. Once Jewel left the van and the acoustic guitar behind, fans were done listening.

R2 disagree. I loved “Foolish Games” and “Standing Still” and her Christmas music.

WHO?

R3 you don’t have a single clue what you’re speaking about.

You’re comparing a Country-Folk singer to Madonna. They’re nothing alike, and no, Country and Folk artists are not expected to go the fucking Madonna route. Get fucking real.

Her second album was her best selling album, by the way.

She's devoid of star quality and charisma.

R6 Musicians of ALL genres are expected to adapt if they hope to keep and eventually grow their audience. They're expected to try new things, but to make good choices while doing so. Some artists (not just Madonna, but also Reba, Joni Mitchell, Linda Ronstadt, Dolly Parton) are really good at this, and able to survive beyond their first wave. Anne Murray did a fucking Christmas CD, but it sold well. Reba did a Vegas residency, and it brought her renewed attention. Other artists (Jewel, Lauryn Hill, Norah Jones, Evanescence, Smash Mouth, etc.) couldn't catch the brass ring a second time. They're not untalented, and most are still working steadily, but their hit period is long behind them and that's okay.

Britney and co. ended Jewel's career. The 90s Lilith Fair crowd was over, unfortunately.

R9 Exactly. This album was Jewel's attempt to go after the Britney/Christina demographic, with their frosted lipstick and vocal fry. It wasn't the real Jewel, and even she knew it.

Disney teen pop changed the whole music scene. Jewel, Alanis, Fiona etc. couldn't get arrested when the changeover happened. It was awful.

Alanis???? Why are we lumping her in? Her album was 1995 dear.

Also, those girls weren’t signed with Disney r11.

r12/13 it means that Disney teen pop obliterated Alanis, Jewel, Fiona and that whole genre of singers. They could no longer get Top 40 radio play and MTV abandoned them.

0304 was my introduction to Jewel, so I actually knew her a pop star first. I think I would found it much more jarring if I'd been a fan of her folk/country music beforehand. As it was, I really liked 0304 for what it was. The only songs that never really clicked for me were "Intuition" (although presumably I was alone in that, given that it was the lead single) and "America".

Which alternative/folk/chick-rock style singers were big with Gen-X girls? Maybe:

Tori Amos

Lisa Loeb

Alanis

Natalie Merchant

Tracy Chapman

Aimee Mann

What ever happened to them? They didn't collapse with a bad career turn like Jewel, but they also aren't as big anymore.

I recently listened to the album again and it is better than I remembered. It's actually exactly on brand for her lyrically, and she did use the pop music style ironically throughout. In a way, I think it's her smartest album. But I don't think the sound suits her ideally.

And Jewel did do different things—folk, spiritual, country, Christmas, eventually even an album of lullabies for her kids. She was in an Ang Lee movie, hosted a couple of reality shows, wrote a poetry book. She was an artsy kid who went to a fine arts college and I think she has an interest in exploring different means of expression.

She had a huge rack. That kept her career go farther than it should have.

And that HANDS song with all the 9/11 recordings.

For the life of ME, I neither understand nor know Jewel.

R16 Tori Amos has had an exceptional career. She's my favorite artist. She was never as mainstream as even Jewel was even with her biggest albums, but she has been extremely productive. Her first seven albums are brilliant in their own ways, and later albums Night of Hunters (classical) and her newest, Native Invader, are brilliant but they take some effort to get into. She has also written two books and a musical for the National Theatre in London. She had some hit-or-miss work throughout the 2000s and 2010s but she has worked consistently and until recent years she averaged 200 nights on the road touring every year. For someone who not that many people are familiar with, it's also incredible that she has built an estimated $60 million net worth.

Alanis's newest album is very good.

I'm not sure but I think Lisa Loeb was basically a one-hit wonder.

Tori Amos and Alanis don’t belong in the same category as Jewel. A very different artist from a very different genre and fanbase.

When I heard Taylor Swift's most recent albums, I also suddenly thought that she is today's Jewel but with better producers.

But Taylor could only wish to have a voice like Jewel's. Listen to this performance. It's not perfect but it's impressive and interesting.

There were a lot of very talented singer-songwriter musicians in the 90s and now...some talented singers. I don't understand how there were so many young women who wrote their own interesting music and lyrics 100 percent and sung their own music, and today it's just...Taylor Swift.

It's ridiculous to suggest her boobs were greater than her talent.

And re Tori, here is a song from her 2016 album written when both her mother and my mother were dying.

It's painful for me to listen to but it's a beautiful song.

When the video for Intuition first came out I, as a child, was like "Who the hell is Jewel?" and my mum said "Ugh, some lame pop singer. She looks like a porn star 🤮"

I loved when Mad TV ridiculed her contrived transition into a wannabe pop star.

Another relatively recent Tori song I love that she unfortunately only released as a digital B-side. She's still a powerful artist and she never went away. She just isn't radio friendly.

I think the obvious reason it backfired was that she had made her fame and fortune (in a pretty short amount of time) making folk music. Most of her first record was recorded live at a coffee shop for God's sake. Despite a few silly lyrics here and there, there are some gorgeous, elegant compositions on her debut album. The closing track, "Amen", is lyrically (and melodically) devastating.

I believe she's claimed she made "0304" as a self-referential joke/comment on pop stardom, but I don't know if it was that, or that she was actually seeking to be a pop crossover. It's hard saying. I've seen interviews with her in recent years, and she seems to be very business-minded, which is not common among a lot of artists. "0304" is not a bad album, and there are good songs on it, but it was a 180 that people couldn't really follow—it alienated her fanbase.

I really do love Jewel, though—she is a truly underrated singer and guitar player. She has incredible range and vocal ability that she doesn't get much credit for. I saw her in concert with my parents when I was a kid (around 2001ish)—it was my first concert. I remember she closed the show by yodeling. I was around 11 at the time, so I can only recall sparse details of the show, but my dad (who is also a musician) always said that she blew him away with her live performance—I don't think he was sure of what she was capable of.

Here is a vocal coach analyzing her—you can tell Jewel wins her over quite quickly.

[quote] I believe she's claimed she made "0304" as a self-referential joke/comment on pop stardom, but I don't know if it was that, or that she was actually seeking to be a pop crossover. It's hard saying.

I agree totally. The lyrics and the video are both tongue in cheek, criticizing superficial material culture and commodification of everything—which is entirely in keeping with her music. So it's not as if she sold herself to a studio and sang other people's words and ideas.

However, I clearly remember an interview from that era in which she said that the music on 0304 is exactly how she wanted it to sound and how she always heard her earlier songs in her head but didn't have a budget to produce them that way. That really threw me.

[quote] I've seen interviews with her in recent years, and she seems to be very business-minded, which is not common among a lot of artists.

She seems to be, but I interviewed her and Sarah McLachlan within months of one another, and Sarah was so business minded as to put me off and make me think her songs were engineered to sell, and Jewel sounded to me as if she was motivated by saying something she thought was important in a new and different way. I had considered Sarah M a superior musician before then but came away thinking of Jewel as a more authentic artist.

For a folk singer, she became a huge mainstream hit and household name and sold millions of albums. Her sophomore album was a massive hit.

I always loved “Standing Still” from her 3rd album.

R28 that performance is soo hilariously bad, I make my friends watch it all the time when we're drinking etc. just to punish them

Her performance on Jools Holland in 1997 was fantastic The way she holds that note at the end is shocking.

KT Tunstall was a gimmicky Scottish Jewel who had one popular album and then fell off the planet.

God, she was so bad.

Kelly Clarkson thinks she's sexy!

I don’t think it killed her career. In fact, it briefly rejuvenated her fading status.

When Jewels music comes on my ears bleed.

R36 bullshit. Her previous album did well.

She is such a stiff dancer, which is only exacerbated by the background dancers.

Because she’s not actually a dancer

R35 Kelly Clarkson thinks all girls are sexy.

R35 Kelly Clarkson also thinks she's a movie star.

I watch a guy on Youtube who does analytical videos on albums that cratered an artist's career and 0304 was the first episode! The series is called Trainwreckords.

Pretty much all the reasons have been mentioned up thread; it was an indelicate transition to a pop style that didn't suit her well. Some of the songs were decent but the production was odd and the blend of her folk style with the glitches and pops of early 2000s dance music clashed.

I thought all of her music sucked but before the pop album she was kind of unique at that time. The pop album seemed like she was trying to follow trends.

Intuition was one of the most vomit inducing songs I've ever heard. So horribly aggressive.

It destroyed her career because she was trying to be Jessica Simpson or Britney. But we already had a Jessica and Britney and her fans wanted Jewel. Market saturation.

Taylor Swift reminded me a lot of Michelle Branch and Vanessa Carlton when she first came out. But actually, I think Michelle and Vanessa were better. Hotel Wallpaper was one of my favorite albums of all time!

She was already OVAH before she did this song

She was too old! It was like Ethel Merman’s Disco Album.

Rob Thomas of Matchbox Twenty tried to make his own version of Justin Timberlake’s “Justified”. He had a hit song but I think the album tanked.

I think because of the decline of music sales, labels were making desperate attempts to cash in on talent they had. I know Shirley Manson of Garbage said her record label tried to get her to record a crossover pop album and she fought it and they cancelled the solo album because of it.

R47 I agree, Taylor Swift is a fully envisioned Michelle Branch / Vanessa Carlton. She turned the image of those typical white one hit wonder “songwriters” into a full fledged artist.

And if you think of it, “Shake It Off” isn’t that far off from Jewel’s “Intuition” as far as reinvention / makeover. Taylor became officially “pop star” and shed her country “singer-songwriter” image.

Jewel walked so Taylor Swift could run and fly.

All this talk kinda makes me wish Natalie Merchant and Paula Cole had come out with a skanky Britney wannabe album too. Paula dancing in booty shorts with hairy legs in the video.

I do love her iconic hits. And she had a unique voice. (Alanis I could never get behind... I always had her earlier pop 80s persona in my head "Too Hot")

The material wasn't strong enough to overcome objections that she was being inauthentic.

Now, if she had hooked up with, say, Timbaland and gotten the undeniably good radio songs Nelly Furtado did when she transitioned from folkie to pop slut, it might have been a different story.

R54 exactly. At least promiscuous was catchy. Intuition sounded so unpleasant and borderline shrill. Mad TVs parody of Furtados promiscuous was hilarious though.

For shits and giggles I’m listening to the album.

It was released in 2003.

I mean I don’t have the best memory from 2003, I was 16, but I can say this music sounds pretty dated for 2003. I mean this was the year Beyonce released her first album and Britney did “In the Zone” and Jennifer Lopez had been dominating in 2002.

This music sounds more like 2001 than 2003 and there was a big difference because R&B and punky pop rock made huge impacts.

This album sounds like music Ricky and Enrique did in 2000 / 2001.

Loved her

[Quote] But actually, I think Michelle and Vanessa were better.

They are.

[Quote] Rob Thomas of Matchbox Twenty tried to make his own version of Justin Timberlake’s “Justified”. He had a hit song but I think the album tanked.

I liked This Is How A Heart Breaks and Ever The Same. But i was pretty shocked the first time I saw the music video for Lonely No More. Something tells me it would be even more cringey now.

I never realized how much she looks like Jennifer Lawrence.

Does anyone else remember Amanda Marshall?

All I listened to in the 2000s was the White Stripes

R61 I never understood their appeal

Neither did I. Jack White's voice was like nails on a chalkboard.

Her reflecting on the success of her debut album

I'm not sure it destroyed her career.

Her previous album didn't spawn any big hits, so the decline had already begun.

She tried to reverse the direction her career was heading, and it was perceived by many as a crass and desperate move, rather than an integrity-driven artistic choice.

I remember hearing "Intuition" and thinking it was OK, and not that radical a departure as it was made out to be.

But it was at odds with the mythos she'd created about herself, as the homeless chick playing guitar and singing in the coffee houses, so it was easy to criticize.

More proof Jewel is hilariously bad

R66 she isn’t the issue there.

I always found it so funny Jessica Simpson was more popular in Australia than she was here in the US. Her cover of “These Boots Are Made For Walking” charted for two years over there

Jessica was C List. B List at best.

Alanis is still an interesting artist. Jagged Little Pill was so insanely successful and overplayed it kind of fucked everything up for her in the long run.

This song is from her new album. The album is basically an exercise in personal therapy but it's done well, and this song unexpectedly builds into an electronic dance-style track midway through in a way that isn't embarrassing. It adds emotional heft and urgency instead of sounding gimmicky.

Jewel was on an Atlantic management-roster that mostly got ditched after Napster. Those jobs just evaporated — like record stores.

Her time came & went. End of.

Mainstream interest in Jewel faded but she didn't stop making music. There was such a diverse array of styles in the 90s that she found an audience. Since the early 2000s, mainstream music has been limited to mindless pop, hip hop and rap. There is no place for a pop singer and women over 30ish have a hard time continuing in the music industry at all for the most part. Jewel was celebrated early on in part because she was a talented teenager, same as Fiona Apple at the same time. Record companies promote nubile young women and then ignore adult women, no matter how talented. Tori Amos has spoken and written about that her entire career.

Jewel also had a really fucked up thing happen to her in that her mother was her business manager and stole millions of dollars from her and abandoned her.

Pieces of You (1995)

Spirit (1998)

Joy: A Holiday Collection (1999)

This Way (2001)

0304 (2003)

Goodbye Alice in Wonderland (2006)

Perfectly Clear (2008)

Lullaby (2009)

Sweet and Wild (2010)

The Merry Goes 'Round (2011)

Let It Snow: A Holiday Collection (2013)

Picking Up the Pieces (2015)

R23, thanks. She did the entire Wizard of Oz Broadway-like show -- starring Nathan Lane, Jackson Browne and The Who's Roger Daltry. Jewel's voice as Dorothy was impressive. I still love her dressing up for that Funny or Die karaoke stunt. Jewel was the ultimate KAREN!

Jewel? Didn't she turn into an embarrassing poetaster?

That's what ruined her career, also Ethan Hawke's. Poetasting is the kiss of death.

You have to give the woman credit. She made it on pure talent.

[quote] Jewel was raised near Homer, Alaska, where she grew up singing and yodeling as a duo with her father, a local musician. At age fifteen, she received a partial scholarship at the Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan, where she studied operatic voice. After graduating, she began writing and performing at clubs and coffeehouses in San Diego, California. Based on local media attention, she was offered a recording contract with Atlantic Records, which released her debut album, Pieces of You, in 1995; it went on to become one of the best-selling debut albums of all time, going 12-times platinum.

I was always impressed by her ability to incorporate the word fa**ot into her song “Pieces Of You”.

Love the song actually

I always loved the song “Foolish Games”

Singers come and go, they're a quickly used up commodity. Long-term careers are not the norm.

I always hated that damn Intuition song because the Schick razor commercial was played ad nauseam during prime time television here in Australia

It was so funny to watch Jewel pathetically jumping from genre to genre desperate to sell another record

Nobody was asking for a pop album from Jewel.

The guy in this video was so hot. Lucky bitch.

Jewel was just very artistic and creative

There was always something off with every one of her songs. Some silly pretentious or sanctimonious lyric or dirge like sound that got annoying after awhile. She seems stuck up too.

She's talented but she would have been better off collaborating on lyrics and production. I think she was too worried about being "authentic" to herself and couldn't really produce a great song as a result.

“Foolish Games” is a great song.

I absolutely love her renditions of Christmas songs. To this day, I still listen to that first Christmas album she did every year as the holidays approach. I find it odd that so many people here think she is untalented. I think part of her ability was probably inborn as she comes from a family of musicians, but she also had the benefit of getting a classical education in music and studying opera. There aren't many musicians (especially today) who have that kind of background. Even if you discount her artistry (lyrics, music) for whatever reasons, she is still a technically astute performer.

Cute kid.

Sweet caption...Klimpt 😂

R88 lol I've noticed other misspellings like this before in her Instagram posts. She seems like an autodidact for the most part, so I dont really hold it against her.

R58 I just watched it and the Rob Thomas video is pretty bad.

I feel like the issue with that adult AC white pop crossover was that the songwriters and producers were all ancient oldies from the 80’s and 90’s and trying to copy The Neptunes and Timbaland and contemporary R&B and even pop punk like Avril.

Jewel’s “Intuition” and Rob Thomas’ “Lonely No More” sound like they were written by Dianne Warren and Desmond Child trying to be hip and compete with Timbaland lol.

Good point r90. Jewel and Rob Thomas were also a generation older than Timberlake, Britney etc.

R80 yes I always associate “Intuition” with female razor commercials.

Speaking of that, I originally thought Pussycat Dolls “Don’t Cha” was the same thing when I saw the video. I thought it was a jingle selling tampons or deodorant or razors. The group didn’t look like singers, they look like women in a women’s ad. I didn’t realize it was a real song until I realized Busta Rhymes was on the song.

Or a more modern version, that “Meet Me In The Middle” Target commercial song. Imagine my surprise when it was an actual song on the radio!

[Quote] I thought it was a jingle selling tampons or deodorant or razors. The group didn’t look like singers, they look like women in a women’s ad.

Lmao

Jewel did okay in the Comedy Central Roast of Rob Lowe. She was able to laugh at herself much better than that cunt Ann Coulter.

She does look a lot like pre-surgery Renée Zellweger x Jennifer Lawrence from the front. Zellweger is Sami/Scandinavian and Jewel is Swiss. I wonder what Lawrence's ancestry is.

Look, consider that this woman grew up singing for her supper in dive bars all around Alaska with her drunk father and the mother who'd eventually imbezzle a fortune from her and then run off. We should be grateful she turned out a gracious spirit instead of a gun-toting Sarah Palin type. I'm sure her talent saved her from popping out a litter of little wolf-killing Trigs and Tuckers.

A lot of the songs on 0304 are in Jewels style. Her albums got more and more pop folk as she went on. “Standing Still” was a lot of poppy than “Save Your Souls” for example.

The problem is that Intuition was too jarringly different. I think its a fun song and was a good choice for a single but not as the lead single. It should have been “Stand” which was a better merger to styles, and then follow up with Intuition.

I reject the notion she was trying to be a Britney Spears type. Intuition is clearly a parody video. Similar to Pink’s Stupid Girls.

Some Jewel songs sound country-adjacent, but she never really sounded like country music to me, neither traditional country western not contemporary country pop.

Here's one song I like that I think is hard to classify. Some might call it country but it doesn't really feel like it to me. It's not really folk. It's kiiiind of bluesy-soul but not exactly those, either. It might have been called rock many decades ago. I like that she just did her own thing in her own way. But diverging from specific genres makes it much harder to market.

And another.

OP = Homer, Alaska Chamber of Commerce and Visitor Center

R100 I just looked up the weather in Homer and all week it's going to be high 55/low 45. Honestly...that's my kind of weather, especially after yet another exhausting DC summer! But I definitely would not want to be there in the middle of winter.

R43, I watch his videos too, his one on Madonna's American Life was brilliant. I also found he hit all the exact same thoughts I'd had about that album, and I'd never heard anyone else say these points. I particularly liked his comments about the argument that the album was meant to be listened to more like Imogen Heap, or whatever rubbish people were saying.

[quote]and Sarah was so business minded as to put me off and make me think her songs were engineered to sell.

That's so interesting, because Tori Amos, I think in her book Piece by Piece, mentions Sarah as an example of a musician who is famously bad with handling money. So it sounds like she really is very serious about selling, but not very good at handling the money she makes from selling.

R102 Sarah officially made Lilith Fair as a platform for women musicians to be heard, against music industry common wisdom that no one wanted to hear a woman singer more than once per hour on the radio. (Both Sarah and Tori have said all their careers that in the 90s, radio stations told them, 'We don't have room. We're already playing one woman.') Insane.

Sarah was right. People flocked to her concert tour.

But then Sarah became more of a tour operator than a musician during that period, and she ran it as a business with an emphasis on selling and merchandising as much as possible. She made a ton of money, but she also never made another great album after that became her focus. After the tour wore out its welcome, she got into business again with her music school philanthropy. She seems to be more businesswoman than artist, and more technical musician than artist.

Tori declined to participate in Lilith Fair and was outspoken about that although she was also outspoken about respecting the women who did participate. Love her or hate her, she is undeniably a musical genius in a way that can be gauged objectively through her prodigial status as the youngest person ever accepted into the Peabody Conservatory preparatory, able to play classical compositions at age five. She knows she is a genius and she does have pride and an ego. She wouldn't be part of Sarah McLachlan's road show as one of Sarah's girls, and while Tori was branded a 'man hater' by grunge fanboys in the 90s, she's the opposite and she said she respects musicians for their abilities and not their sexes, and she toured at the same time as Lilith fair with three male band members—who, importantly, backed her. They played music as she composed, wrote and arranged it. Tori has been the boss of her entire career following her first solo album, and the failure of her original band album, she says, taught her that following money and industry standards and rejecting the muses is a surefire way to die as an artist. She has never wavered from that and she's still going strong as 60 approaches, with a new album and tour on the horizon.

She just shared this--apparently Ang Lee told her the reason he cast her in Ride with the Devil was because she had "period teeth" (LOL)

I honestly thought she was pretty good in this movie, especially for someone who had never acted before. If I remember right, Roger Ebert also had good things to say about her, which you wouldn't necessarily expect.

R104 That video makes me kind of sad. I wonder how many times Jeffrey Wright had to take roles like "a former slave." I looked up his IMDB and his next role after Ride with the Devil was a gravedigger in Hamlet.

R105 there is an interview with Wright on the Criterion Blu-ray and he doesn't seem to have that perspective on this movie—rather, the opposite. I haven't watched it in a while, but I remember him saying that this was a big deal for him because of the dynamics the part offered. His character, though a slave for much of the movie, is as much a part of the action as the other white characters—he doesn't get relegated in Lee's vision just because his character is enslaved. This was not a throw-away role for him.