Jewel Refines Her Musical 'Spirit'

BY CHUCK TAYLOR; October 9, 1998 Billboard

NEW YORK -- When Jewel's "Pieces Of You" was quietly released by Atlantic Records four years ago, both the label and the artist regarded it as a "little" project to support her endless stream of promotional touring.

That was 10 million albums ago. And for Jewel, a seeming lifetime past.

With the Nov. 17 release of her sophomore set "Spirit," the 24-year-old singer/songwriter at last has the chance to show it off the way she wants, after a string of achievements that at times made it seem like "Pieces" might just go on forever. The album spawned three tenacious hits, "Who Will Save Your Soul," "You Were Meant For Me," and "Foolish Games." By the time the latter two singles were released, Jewel was so displeased with the girlish vocals she'd first recorded that she insisted -- tearfully, it's been suggested -- on re-singing them for the radio versions.

It was like that for nearly two years, as if Jewel felt she had to cover her tracks to prove that she'd grown as a musician and singer who had walked far down the road since recording "Pieces" when she was just 19.

" 'Pieces Of You' I wrote accidentally. I didn't think it was anything," she says. "I wasn't comfortable with myself as a writer or as a musician. Now, after I've been out for four or five years, I've sort of mellowed out. I'm not as scared as I used to be."

With her second effort, the singer/songwriter teamed with Madonna production maestro Patrick Leonard, the only one of 15 proposed producers whom Jewel green-lighted. His mission was to protect her folk/rock roots while incorporating the right blend of instrumentation to make her music more melodically ample and better suited to the demands of playing large live venues.

The 13-track result is a divine marriage of smart, enterprising sounds that cradle Jewel's impressionable emotional base while broadening her modern-tinged pop savvy. Lyrically, the album demonstrates the difference between a girl and a woman. There's a unity not found on "Pieces," and while the artist remains fraught with vulnerability and sometimes dissatisfaction, this time she's not content to wallow in it. "I knew exactly what I wanted to do with this record and what I wanted it to do to people," says the artist, who is managed by Nedra Carroll (her mother). "I've felt tremendously lonely and afraid and all the things we feel, rational or irrational. There's no use for it. I wanted to write a record that was an antidote to all the things that made me worry in the world, so that it's comforting somehow."

The first single, "Hands," demonstrates a will to empathize. The midtempo, piano-driven track offers a call for hope in seemingly desperate times: "If I could tell the world just one thing/It would be that we're all OK/And not to worry 'cause worry is wasteful/And useless in times like these/I won't be made useless/I won't be idle with despair/I will gather myself around my faith/For light does the darkness most fear."

A video, directed by Nick Brandt, is being shot for the song Oct. 11-12 in Los Angeles. The song arrives at radio Oct. 16. There are no current plans for a commercial single.

Aside from the track, Atlantic is already pointing toward several other potential singles, including "Jupiter," an organic tome to steadfast love ("You make me so crazy, baby/Could swallow the moon"); "Innocence Maintained," on protecting purity in a harsh world; and "What's Simple Is True," a beautiful back-porch yarn of true love.

To up the ante, the label is blanketing the nation with Jewel, including cover stories in Rolling Stone and Vogue and appearances on "Saturday Night Live" Nov. 14, "The Rosie O'Donnell Show" Nov. 16, "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno" Nov. 19, and "Late Show With David Letterman" by early December. She'll also perform at the lighting of the Christmas tree at New York's Rockefeller Center, which NBC airs live across the country Dec. 2.

In addition, her schedule includes European promotion in January, Australia and New Zealand in February, then a short U.S. tour that leads up to the release of her first film role, in the Ang Lee-directed "Absence Of Fear." Jewel plays an 18-year-old Civil War hero, very much of the earth, she says. The otherwise all-male cast includes Tobey Maguire and Skeet Ulrich.

Jewel had already sidestepped music with "A Night Without Armor," a book of poetry published this past summer by HarperCollins, which rocketed to the top 10 of The New York Times nonfiction best seller list after she appeared on "The Oprah Winfrey Show." In its 15th printing, it has shipped nearly 311,000 units.

"With the album, I felt that what people perceived of me was very limited," she says. "With the book, I got to talk about where I grew up and how my mind perceives things and people. " And as for living the risks of leaving the cocoon of music, she adds, "I figure if I'm not on the edge of failure, I'm not being sufficiently challenged."

Transcription by Mike Connell

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