In a high-tech digital world
Jewel Kilcher (born May 23, 1974 in Payson, Utah), better known by just her first name, is an American singer-songwriter. She has been singing solo professionally since early 1995, when she released her debut album Pieces of You, which went 12× platinum and has since become one of the best-selling debut albums of all time. "Foolish Games", a single on this album, held the record for the longest chart run of a single (sixty-five weeks), and still holds the second-longest chart run.
She has since released twelve more albums; while her sound is often characterized by guitar and folky sounds as well as wordy lyrics and imperfect rhymes, several of her albums marked notable shifts in musical style, which led to varying degrees of success. It should be noted that the main offender of this, her 2003 pop album 0304, debuted at at number two on the Billboard 200 and quickly went gold. Her later albums have suffered the opposite, most notably the foray into Country Music with Perfectly Clear and Sweet and Wild.
Jewel has also released two books, a poetry book and an autobiography. She also starred in the movie Ride with the Devil, and has guest-starred on numerous TV shows. She served as a judge on The Sing-Off starting in Season 4, and won Season 6 of The Masked Singer as the Queen of Hearts. She's additionally a well-known philanthropist, donating a portion of her income Higher Ground for Humanity
, particularly The Clean Water Project, as well as being a spokeswoman for the group Stop Breast Cancer for Life.
She currently lives in Stephenville, Texas.
Albums:
- Pieces of You (1995)
- Spirit (1998)
- Joy (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)
- Greatest Hits (2013)
- Let It Snow (2013)
- Picking Up the Pieces (2015)
- Freewheelin' Woman (2022)
Books:
- A Night Without Armor
- Chasing Down the Dawn
Tropes found in Jewel's music:
- Audience Participation Song: In live shows, she encourages the audience to sing the final chorus to "You Were Meant For Me"
- Book Ends: On her album Pieces of You, several songs begin and end with the same line, usually as a Dark Reprise
- Canon Discontinuity: Typically the aforementioned 0304
- Clueless Aesop: She tried to make a political song with "America", but her label forced her to change some of the lyrics, which ended up muddling the message.We are getting tan in America
We love Spam in America
Polanski's banned from America - Cluster F-Bomb: "Pieces of You" for "faggot".
- Cover Version: She's gone on the record of only doing covers of Cole Porter
- Christmas Songs: 2 Xmas albums
- Genre Shift: Both a brief dance-pop detour in 0304, and an attempt to go into country. "Stronger Woman" was a minor hit, but the rest of her country career didn't pan out.
- Incredibly Long Note: "Last Dance Rodeo"
- Last Note Nightmare: More like "Last Lyric Nightmare." The song "This Little Bird" (a bonus track on Spirit) is a song about a bird happily flying about... only for its final line to mention the bird eventually dying.
- Letters 2 Numbers: 0304 has "Run 2 U", "2 Find U" and "2 Become 1".
- Lives in a Van: She lived in her car for about a year until she made it big.
- Murder Ballad: "Nicotine Love"
- New Sound Album: 0304, which shifted her folksy tunes to dance-pop with an ironic twist. It sticks out even compared to her country output.
- To describe the rest of her career: Pieces of You was folk rock, Spirit was a bit more poppier folk rock, This Way was modern pop rock, Goodbye Alice in Wonderland was a combination of Spirit and This Way, Perfectly Clear was Spirit with a country flavor, Lullaby was children's lullabies, Sweet and Wild was country and The Merry Goes 'Round was children's music.
- Older Than They Look: She's in her late-40s? What?!
- Paper-Thin Disguise: Once sang her own songs at a Karaoke bar while wearing a wig and a fake nose.
- Rearrange the Song: Most prominently "Who Will Save Your Soul" and "Fragile Heart"
- Stealth Parody: 0304 was intended as a parody of bubblegum pop music, but critics and most of her fanbase mistook it for a straight example.
Her career has never recovered. - Textless Album Cover: Spirit
- Through the Eyes of Madness: Fading, where a woman has a mental breakdown in a Wal-Mart bathroom before being 'taken away.'
- You Keep Using That Word: MTV's Kurt Loder once criticized her to her face for confusing "casualty" with "casualness" in one of her poems.
