Jewel "Pieces of You" (1995): Track by Track!

This week on the Surely You Can’t Be Serious podcast, Jason and Dee continue their 90s album trilogy by exploring the quiet, unconventional, and deeply heartfelt debut that turned a young Alaskan singer-songwriter into a global sensation—Jewel’s Pieces of You.

The guys dig into Jewel’s extraordinary backstory: her nomadic childhood in the Alaskan wilderness, the hardships that shaped her voice and worldview, and her determination to bring stripped-down, folk-driven storytelling to a pop landscape dominated by grunge and polished radio hits. Jason and Dee break down how Pieces of You was created—from the raw, minimalist production to the live-recorded tracks that captured the honesty of her coffeehouse performances.

They uncover the stories behind every song, from the emotional punch of “You Were Meant for Me,” to the aching vulnerability of “Foolish Games,” to the social commentary woven throughout the album’s lesser-known tracks. And they trace the album’s slow but unstoppable rise as it connected with listeners one heart at a time, ultimately becoming one of the defining singer-songwriter albums of the decade.

This is week two of a three-week showdown.  Jason and Dee kicked things off with Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill, and next week they’ll wrap up the trilogy with No Doubt’s Tragic Kingdom. Once all three albums are on the table, how will the guys rank these 90s icons in terms of songwriting, impact, longevity, and cultural footprint?

Tune in to find out—because the ultimate 90s showdown is heating up.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey, gif, Hey Brad, you know there's something we don't
speak about often.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
What's that?

Speaker 1 (00:09):
Jason and d if Surely you can't be serious. They
were meant for.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Us, that's right, and you ought to know that they
were meant for you. The listeners too, So.

Speaker 1 (00:20):
Listen to find out who comes out on top of
this titillating three way they've entered into.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
It's time for a jewel of an episode of Surely
you can't be serious?

Speaker 3 (00:31):
Okay, Jason, I know this, You know we've already done
what the heck happened? Episode? But just throwing it back,
can you name me one good thing that came out
of the movie Batman and Robin.

Speaker 4 (00:44):
Bat nipples?

Speaker 3 (00:46):
I said, good thing? Uh, don't say jiggly crotches. No,
one good thing that came out of No. I really
I can't know, Okay, So I'm a tell you there
was a song on the soundtrack that set the Guinness
Book of World Records for longest single in the charts

(01:09):
off the Batman and Robin soundtrack Guinness Book World. We
spent sixty five weeks in the top one hundred charts.

Speaker 4 (01:16):
That's a long crap time, man.

Speaker 3 (01:18):
Yeah, well it just so happened that it was on
this little album called Pieces of You by Jewel, and
it's a little song called Foolish Games and you were
meant for me because they were the A and B
side of an album, and so they out of the
soundtrack Foolish Games, Batman and Robin, we get a record
breaking single.

Speaker 4 (01:39):
That's fantastic. Man, I can't wait to talk about this one.

Speaker 3 (01:41):
So, guys, we are here today to talk part two
of our Menage TOOI of Alanis Morissett and Win Stefani,
and today we're talking about Jewel, a three way comparison, if.

Speaker 4 (01:53):
You will, Ladies of the nineties.

Speaker 3 (01:54):
I am so excited to talk about this album. Every
single one of these albums I owned in the nineties
and at some point was in love with the lead
singer or singer, you know, only singer in all of
these bands and artists.

Speaker 4 (02:07):
Yeah, to be a guy our age is to love
each of these women in their own special way.

Speaker 3 (02:13):
And this one, I gotta say this one, Jewel, I
was most in love with because I didn't go for
the cheerleader. I was for the girl who would write
in her journal and kind of you know, look sideways
at the cheerleader girls, and by golly, that's Jewel all
over the place. And she was also hot. I was
just like, can she get any better? Oh? Yes, she

(02:34):
can sing incredibly well. So she's hit me in all
three buttons. I mean, back in nineteen ninety six as
well as now. So Jewel, you know, if you're out there,
if you're watching, hey listen, slide into my DMS. Yeah
all right.

Speaker 4 (02:52):
One of the things that we have talked about before,
and I don't want to be a pig about this,
but one of the things we've talked about before, when
we talk about when we just us beautiful women, one
of the things that makes their beauty enhanced in our
eyes sometimes is their imperfections. Yeah, and she has one
sort of prominent imperfection, but still is.

Speaker 3 (03:13):
Just endearing to me. I love it. I love her smile.
I love it.

Speaker 4 (03:16):
She has a beautiful smile.

Speaker 3 (03:17):
Yeah. Okay, So Alanus mor Sat Canada yep, Jewel Alaska, Yep.
We got a we got a couple of girls north
of the borderline here, I know, right, speaking of people
north of the borderline. Thank you to our executive producer today,
mister Kyle Ashley just joined today. We literally saw the
email as we begin our recording today. So thank you

(03:38):
Kyle for joining up. Guys, if you want to join
our Patreon page like Kyle did, Kyle is from Canada.
I don't know what twenty nine dollars is Canadian, but
I'm guessing about twenty bucks, So thank you. That's top tier.
You'll be getting some presents from us soon, mister Ashley.

Speaker 4 (03:52):
We need your address, so yeah, send you stuff.

Speaker 3 (03:54):
If you guys want to be a Patreon member, go
to patreon dot com slash Surely Podcast. You get access
to all of our one Hit Wonder episodes, which are
some of our best, and you join the Shirley family.
I mean, we have so many discussions on our Patreon page. Holes.
It's fun every single day, so definitely join. You can

(04:14):
join for free. You can get access to the episodes
for as little as five bucks a month, and if
you do like Kyle Ashley did, We're going to be
sitting your presents. So thank you to our executive producer
Kyle Ashley and all of our other Patreon supporters. We
truly appreciate you. Thanks guys. Thanks guys. Well, let's dive
into it, man.

Speaker 4 (04:30):
This is pieces of You that was released February twenty
eighth of ninety five.

Speaker 3 (04:34):
Now that's an interesting subject before we dive into the
songs here. This album came out in February of ninety five,
and I don't think I remember listening to it until
at least ninety seven. I agree with you, I always
I think it was the beginning of ninety seven when
I started listening to it.

Speaker 4 (04:51):
So it's almost the exact opposite of Jagged Little Pill,
where you want to Know comes out. K Rock drops
it and everybody's like, who is this girl? We've got
to have this album?

Speaker 3 (05:00):
Nuclear bomb, yes, nuclear Bomb now, but but Pieces of
You it didn't sell two years to get go years
stops and restarts and redos.

Speaker 4 (05:10):
And she was already working on her second album when
this album started to take traction.

Speaker 3 (05:16):
Yes, and she has Bob Dylan probably to thank for that.
I know.

Speaker 4 (05:21):
That's a great story. Let's get into it, okay.

Speaker 3 (05:23):
So we're gonna jump in and thank you Jule for
putting one of the best songs on the album as
the first song on the album. And this is the first.

Speaker 4 (05:31):
Song she ever wrote sixteen years old.

Speaker 3 (05:36):
This is who will Save Your soul? Your soul when
it comes to the.

Speaker 5 (05:48):
Same Also, those lies soul.

Speaker 3 (06:00):
Okay, So I just got to say, you can chalk
some of this music up to coffeehouse girl. I can't
agree with you on any of these songs. Like, I
get that that's where she started, but these songs are
so well written, and you you know, you grab that
moment in a person's life when she's sixteen to eighteen

(06:21):
years old. You're feeling emotions stronger at that age than
you feel them any other time in your life. Sure
you haven't been jaded and calloused by how bad life
can be, but you've definitely been impacted by it. She
was freaking homeless as she's writing some of these songs,
playing guitars on the street, living out of her van,
and writing some stuff that just is mind blowingly complex.

(06:45):
I mean, I'm thinking she's two years older than my
youngest daughter and writing songs about how everyone wants to
be saved by something like everybody's looking for a savior
and they're all confused about who that savior should be.
I can pick out a line in almost every one
of these songs. I mean, all the lyrics are great,
but this one is so we pray to as many

(07:06):
different gods as there are flowers. But we call religion
our friend. We're so worried about saving our souls, afraid
that God will take his toll, that we forget to begin.
That's freaking awesome.

Speaker 4 (07:19):
Sixteen years old when she wrote that, Yeah, so.

Speaker 3 (07:22):
We prayed a flowers the religion of friend.

Speaker 4 (07:29):
This is her first song she ever writes. Yeah, and
it becomes this number eleven smash on the Hot one hundred.

Speaker 3 (07:36):
Yeah you.

Speaker 4 (07:45):
So, before we get into this, I'm a hot one
hundred guy. The Hot one hundred meant something to me.
This is where it starts to crumble, because there's some
funny things that happen on the charts, and we'll discuss it.
But here is your top ten.

Speaker 3 (07:57):
What year? What's the year?

Speaker 4 (08:00):
Oh it's ninety six.

Speaker 3 (08:01):
Ninety six, Okay, So the album comes out February of
ninety five. So you went through all of ninety five
and didn't hear it, right, and so win in ninety six?
Is this August third of ninety six. Almost all of
ninety six goes by, and not until you've how many
what is that? A year and a half?

Speaker 4 (08:18):
Year and a half.

Speaker 3 (08:19):
That is a year and a half has gone by
before this one peaks out.

Speaker 4 (08:22):
Now, I'll tell you I remember August third, nineteen ninety
six very well. Okay, because of the day I got married.
Oh well, okay, that was my that's my wedding anniversary.

Speaker 3 (08:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (08:32):
So but here's your top ten from August third of
ninety six. Okay, and this is another reason why I
started to lose interest in the nineties. Okay, So number
ten You've got because you loved Me Celine Dion.

Speaker 3 (08:45):
I actually liked that song.

Speaker 4 (08:46):
But I mean, Celen Dion's a very gifted singer.

Speaker 3 (08:48):
And we talked last We talked last week about this
was the time period for mom rock. Right, it's it's
mom rock.

Speaker 4 (08:54):
There's not a lot of rock in this chart here.

Speaker 3 (08:56):
Okay.

Speaker 4 (08:57):
Number nine is Lounging by El cool j. Okay, remember
that one, no, No. No. Number eight is The Crossroads by
Bone Thugs and Harmony.

Speaker 3 (09:06):
Okay.

Speaker 4 (09:06):
Number seven is You're All I Need to Get By
by Mary J. Blige.

Speaker 3 (09:10):
Okay.

Speaker 4 (09:11):
Number six is Give Me One Reason by Tracy Chapman. Okay,
that's a pretty good one. Number five is I Can't
Sleep Baby by R Kelly.

Speaker 3 (09:21):
It is what it is. It is.

Speaker 4 (09:22):
Number four is California Love by Tupac, probably his best
known song for mainstream people.

Speaker 3 (09:28):
Number three is Twisted.

Speaker 4 (09:29):
By Keith Sweat. Number two is You're Making Me High
by Tony Braxton, and number one is.

Speaker 3 (09:37):
The Macarine. That is not a good list.

Speaker 4 (09:43):
That is not a good list.

Speaker 3 (09:44):
No. I mean, if you like, if you like rap
of the nineties and R and B, it's R and B.

Speaker 4 (09:50):
But it's not there's no rock, there's no there's not
even any grunge.

Speaker 3 (09:54):
No. Yeah, that's kind of crazy, you know. Yeah, so
I guess we'd move past it at that point. Really, well,
don't we even have post grunge? In this she talks.

Speaker 4 (10:02):
About one of the reasons why she feels like she
succeeded is because she answered the question that grunge posed. Yeah,
grunge said I'm in pain, what am I going to do?
And her music was kind of an answer to grudge.

Speaker 3 (10:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (10:17):
So I have heard her talk about this song. Obviously
she's very grateful to this song. Yeah, it put her
on the map. It turned her into a superstar, she
said it. Also, when she listens to it, she says
she sounds like Kermit the Frog.

Speaker 3 (10:30):
That's her talking about it. I can, and I know
the part that yeah no, but I literally, as we
were listening to it, I was thinking to myself, what
she does with her voice in this song shows you
an incredible amount of vocal control and range. I mean,
she's singing like Kermit, yes a little bit, but she's

(10:51):
also talking a little bit. She's hitting the higher register,
the lower register. She's putting all of the emotion into
the words as well, and a storytelling kind of vibe
to what she's saying. I mean, it's just she's.

Speaker 4 (11:03):
Kind of sweet talking a little bit. It's is it rapping, It's.

Speaker 3 (11:08):
Not rapping, but it's it's got a cadence. Yeah, it's
got a kind of Aerosmith kind of cadence to it.
Of a quick paced song. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (11:15):
Okay, So here's the story on this song. Okay, so
and we'll talk about this. But she was raised in Alaska.
She's born in Utah, moved to Alaska with her family.
They homesteaded. They had no running water, no central heat.

Speaker 3 (11:27):
Her grandfather, whose name was Yule Kilcher, Yes, he came over.
I think he was born in nineteen thirteen, came over
in nineteen thirty six from Switzerland and he was on
the Constitutional Convention for Alaska. He was the guy who
was advocating for homesteading, created a documentary movie, went back

(11:49):
to Switzerland to try to get people to come out
in homestead in Alaska. But they had an entire, like
you said, homestead that grew from that first one hundred
and sixty acres that you were given back then to
six hundred and now her dad hosts a show about
the Alaskan Frontier.

Speaker 4 (12:07):
It's on the Discovery Channel. Oh, I know, it's incredible,
it's crazy. And she took her son there and was
kind of teaching him the ways of the land. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (12:13):
Yeah, like you said, she grew up without running water.
She worked the land, she worked the horses, She did
hard labor on really difficult to work conditions. And we're
talking about Alaska year. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (12:24):
And you know, you talked about how she was homeless
for a time, she lived out of her van, and
that's all true, but that wasn't particularly hard to somebody
who peed in an outhouse for the first fifteen years
of her life, you know. Yeah, So she's a tough
Alaska woman. Now, the story of this song is interesting.
I don't know if you know a lot about it.
So when she was young, she was in Alaska, she

(12:46):
kind of bussed around from Anchorage to Homer and Homer
to Anchorage, and her family life was a little rough.
Her dad was kind of tough to live with, kind
of a tough guy.

Speaker 3 (12:54):
Yeah, I mean her mom had abandoned her when she
was eight. Yes, she actually her aunt, whose name was
Massi Kilcher, kind of became her surrogate mom. But again
worked her like she was a hard working lady and
would had a little bed and breakfast and like Jewel
had to go make the beds and go clean up
after people had been in for the bed and breakfast.

(13:14):
But Massie actually had an album back in nineteen seventy seventies.

Speaker 4 (13:17):
Said that to me today anyway, it's if.

Speaker 3 (13:20):
You listen to it, I'm like I can see where
she was influenced by her aunt singing. It gained kind
of a cult following in the folk music scene. It's
not bad album. Like you can find it on Spotify.
Go check it out, Massi Kilcher.

Speaker 4 (13:32):
Massi Kilcher.

Speaker 3 (13:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (13:34):
So her mom and her dad had a little musical
traveling variety show and they did that while she was young.
Mom and dad broke up divorced in nineteen eighty one.
Mom split, Mom decided she would didn't want to be
a mom anymore, didn't want to do it anymore, and
so dad was kind of left in charge of these
three kids, including Jewel and her two other brothers. Mom
moved to San Diego, kind of was a hippie spiritualist,

(13:57):
joined a cult, was a little bit out there. So
Jule she saw like an advertisement for dance lessons and
she thought, well, I've always kind of wanted to dance,
and so she went to this dance lesson place in
Homer when it was a guy who was kind of
traveling around kind of looking for talent, and he said,
you're not really a good dancer, but I can hear

(14:18):
in your voice that you might be a good singer.
And she's like, oh, yeah, I love to sing. I
know had a yodel.

Speaker 3 (14:23):
Yeah. So when her mom left, you mentioned that they
had had a singing Her mother and father had had
a singing act together. When her mom left, she came
in and took her mom's place. At eight years old,
they weren't doing shows at the church, they were doing
shows at the bar. So she's like, I'm pretty sure
I'm the only fourth grader who would leave school and
go straight to the bar and sing my mom's parts

(14:43):
for this musical show. So she'd been singing since she
was eight in these shows to make money. Like they were.
This wasn't for fun, this was because they needed this
to survive. And she got her hours and hours of
experience that everybody needs. So by the time she was
fifteen when she hit the dance school and then she
gets a scholarship to this interlock In place.

Speaker 4 (15:06):
She got a half scholarship to interlock In. Yeah, and
her first year's tuition was eleven thousand dollars, And immediately
she thought, I don't I don't have two dollars. How
am I going to do this? And her mom, who
was there at that moment, was saying, well, let's lay
it out.

Speaker 3 (15:21):
You know, what do you need?

Speaker 4 (15:22):
You need eleven thousand dollars. Okay, what can you do
to earn eleven thousand dollars? So they came up with
this idea, We're going to put on a charity like
in town concert, you know, local talent. Girl Jewel needs
a money for a scholarship. So they raised about five
thousand bucks at this little concert in town, and a
local celebrity came through for her to cover the rest

(15:43):
of the money to send her to this school. Tom
Bodette from Motel six, Motel six, Oh my gosh, we'll
leave the lad on for you. Wow. He was the
guy who paid the second half, like five grand or
whatever six grand was to send her to Michigan.

Speaker 3 (16:01):
Were blowing my mind here, man Tombodette, I mean, I mean,
she said, Tombodette, and it took me a sad a
Motel six of their renovated rooms.

Speaker 1 (16:14):
Motel six is doing its first big special effects commercial ever.

Speaker 3 (16:18):
Here goes cool. I'm dom Bodette.

Speaker 1 (16:24):
We'll leave the light on for you.

Speaker 3 (16:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (16:27):
So he was a major contributor to the start of
her career.

Speaker 3 (16:32):
Without Tom Bodette, without Motel six, if you've ever stayed
in a Motel six, you contributed to the success of Jewel.

Speaker 4 (16:38):
That's exactly right.

Speaker 5 (16:39):
Wow.

Speaker 4 (16:40):
So anyway, so Jewel moves to Michigan and during her
first year, she's literally the only person there without you know,
she looks around as private school, you got to have
money to go here. People's parents are like involved and
like helping them and like they're buying you books and clothes,
and so it's a very different experience for her. Every
time there was a break, she had to find a
place to go, Like everybody's going home for Christmas, not me.

Speaker 3 (17:04):
I got nowhere to go. She was the Harry Potter
of the internet.

Speaker 4 (17:08):
Kind of true, right, So she managed I think she
she talked to a professor who was going to be
out of town and left a key for her that
was kind of against the rules, but allowed her to
stay in a safe place anyway. So spring break comes
around and she's like, what am I gonna do for
spring break? Can't stay here? Going to lock down the dorms.
So she decides to hitchhike and hop trains to San Diego.

(17:33):
Why where her mom's staying. And her mom, you know,
she breezes through, sees her mom continues on to Tijuana.

Speaker 3 (17:39):
Because that's what you're gonna I mean, you're in San Diego. Yeah,
you're seventeen years old.

Speaker 4 (17:43):
I mean you're a homeless girl, because why why not?
And then she proceeds to hitchhike around Mexico with her
guitar and a journal. And that's it.

Speaker 3 (17:53):
The fact that she survived. That is a miracle in
and of it.

Speaker 4 (17:55):
It's crazy. So she writes this song while hitchhiking and
busking across Mexico.

Speaker 3 (18:17):
There you go, by the way.

Speaker 4 (18:18):
The music video it was nominated for like Best Music
Video of ninety seven. I watched it. It's a nothing video.

Speaker 3 (18:24):
It's kind of every breath you take like, it's just
black and white artistic photography style of it. It's not flashy,
it's not you know, it's her and a guitar. It's
not Britney Spears.

Speaker 4 (18:34):
That's true.

Speaker 3 (18:35):
It's not Brittany. It's the antithsis of Britney Spears.

Speaker 4 (18:37):
Right, if you wanted to go to this location, you
need to go to the women's bathroom at the LA
City Hall, and that's where the video was shot.

Speaker 3 (18:46):
Why not you got to shoot it somewhere? Why not
the bathroom a city hall? That's right? Okay, So I
hate to cut this short because it's actually not sure.
We've been going on for a while. We got fourteen
songs in this album. We gotta move on. We got
to move on. This is a fantastic song. I'm glad
that we've hit it, but we've got to go on.
So song number two, Pieces of You.

Speaker 5 (19:23):
She's an ugly girl. Make you want to kill her?
She's an ugly girl. Do you want to kick in
her face? She's an ugly girl. She doesn't interpose a thread.

(19:52):
She's an ugly girl.

Speaker 3 (19:55):
So we've moved into a little intensity here. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (19:58):
When I first listened to song last week or whatever,
I'd heard it before, but the lyrics shocked me. I
wasn't prepared for that. Yeah, because of this song, she
was called homophobic, anti semitic.

Speaker 3 (20:11):
This is literally a song in defense of these people,
like this is this is calling out the people who
do these things.

Speaker 4 (20:18):
What she is using a couple of slurs, right, but
her point is you hate these people because you hate yourself. Yeah,
that's a carled young Yes.

Speaker 3 (20:31):
Yeah, yeah, that's nuts. I mean that's that's literally nuts
that you would write a song to condemn people who
think this way and then get accused of thinking that
way because of the lyrics that you've written.

Speaker 4 (20:42):
I saw her standing on stage talking about it.

Speaker 3 (20:44):
Oh my gosh, So that's crazy.

Speaker 4 (20:47):
Yeah, this song has a beauty to it, certainly.

Speaker 3 (20:49):
Yeah, it's beautiful song. And I you know, as we
were listening to it, some of these songs were recorded
in the studio, and some of these songs were recorded live.
And I'm listening to this and just the kind of
it may just be a reverb effect, but there's a
hallway sound to it that makes me think it might
be live. But you don't hear any audience in this.

(21:12):
But this is a song where the audience is going
to be absolutely hushed, that's right. I mean, you're not
going to be cheering at this song, right.

Speaker 4 (21:18):
I heard her talk about why she does that or
why she did that for her debut album. Yeah, she
felt like in studio she couldn't be as like emotional,
kind of out there, kind of on her game, and
so those live performances she felt like was a better
showing of her talent.

Speaker 3 (21:34):
Absolutely, And she said the difficulty with working in the
studio as you're staring at a wall, right. But on
this album, the parts that were done in the studio
were done in Neil Young's studio at his ranch, right.
And the band that would play with her was his band,
Stray Gators, And she said it was those guys that
kind of helped push her through this because I mean

(21:55):
it sounded, from what she said like basically she was
kind of performing for them, and then she was like,
I've never done this before, and so I'm like, did
that sound good? And she said they wouldn't say yes
it sound good or no it didn't sound good. They'd say,
what do you think? Did you like it? And kind
of pushed her to be a judge of her own
music and the quality of her own music. And if
she was like I don't know, then they're like, then
let's do it again. I did hear her say that.

(22:17):
One time when she first met Neil Young. She walked
into a room. It was Neil Young and his daughter.

Speaker 4 (22:22):
His daughter was like eight okay, young girl, okay, okay,
and she was just trying to kind of strike up
conversations like, hey, you know that song that you do
is that in c she said. He looked at her,
looked down, shok his head walked out. She's like, that's
really weird, Like he didn't even answer me, and the

(22:43):
daughter goes, oh, don't worry. He always does that when
he thinks the question is stupid.

Speaker 3 (22:49):
Oh I feel much better, Yeah, thank you, thank you.
Don't worry thinks you're stupid.

Speaker 4 (22:54):
Yes, okay, all right, next time on the album number three.
This song is called Little Sister, Your little Sister.

Speaker 5 (23:05):
I heard you into mister so and so knock knock,
knocking on.

Speaker 3 (23:10):
His dog again last night, said you needed in bed.
You know that, right? All the confusion of a nation
that starves for salvation. But clothing is the closest approximation
to God, and he only knows that drugs are all
we know of love. That's that's solid, that is solid.
So you love that poetry. And so she you know,

(23:32):
like I said, she's eight year old kid playing in
these bars, and so she sees these women that are
doing things to appeal to men that she is troubled by.
And then she sees these men who are using alcohol
and drugs to escape their lives, which is troubling to her.
And why she said, I've never done alcohol, never done drugs,

(23:53):
because I watched what happened with these people, and I
didn't want that to happen to me. That's what this
song is about. Like that crazy for a love that
seems to only come from this illicit substance.

Speaker 4 (24:05):
You know, I heard her talk about this song. She said,
So she's separated in Alaska, she wasn't exposed to much
pop culture up there at all. So the idea of her,
I mean, she's our age hearing bon Jovi in Alaska
just didn't happen, right, right, So that allowed her to
create her own sound and her own music. Dad had

(24:26):
exposed hers to some of the classics, you know, Joni Mitchell. Yeah,
but in high school she heard Neil Young's song Needle
Damage Done and imagined that character from that song, I
want to take this story further, like what is she like?

Speaker 3 (24:40):
Now?

Speaker 4 (24:40):
Who is this girl? And expanded and wrote this song
from that perspective.

Speaker 3 (24:44):
Yeah, and it's beautiful and haunting. I mean you mentioned
it's got that sound like it's you feel like you're
in a room, right, you feel like you're in a
coffee house room with her. Yes, So I feel like
this definitely could be one of those ones that's not
a studio take. This is one of the live recordings. Okay,
I don't know, but that's what that's that's the vibe.

Speaker 4 (25:03):
I I'm not sure. Yeah, next song on the album
Heavy Hitter.

Speaker 3 (25:07):
This song is called Foolish Gapes. He took.

Speaker 1 (25:26):
It Stodn't.

Speaker 3 (25:30):
You're always crazy? Like Cloud? Okay, let's talk Batman and
Robin Where does this song even come in the movie?

Speaker 4 (25:41):
How does it fit on that soundtrack?

Speaker 3 (25:44):
Where in that movie is it appropriate for us to
get this emotionally deep like heartbreaking?

Speaker 4 (25:50):
So we just watched that movie.

Speaker 3 (25:52):
We just watched it. Did you hear it?

Speaker 5 (25:54):
No?

Speaker 3 (25:55):
I didn't either. I need to know where it is. Yeah,
I mean maybe they played it in the credits, and
I wasn't watching anymore. I don't.

Speaker 4 (26:00):
Maybe I just took me three running starts of that movie.

Speaker 3 (26:04):
Anyway. So here's the thing.

Speaker 4 (26:06):
So this is where the hot one hundred gets weird.

Speaker 3 (26:09):
It does get a little weird. Okay, so this you know,
we're we're going to talk about another song in here
in a minute. And this was the B side to
that single.

Speaker 4 (26:16):
That's right.

Speaker 3 (26:17):
Basically that single went up, peaked was starting to come
back down, but the DJs wanted to They're like, hey,
B side's good too. They start playing the B side
and then it starts to come back up again. But
with some weird way that the Billboard chart rankings work,
they had to somehow go, well, now that's the A side,
each other's the B side. But by doing that, that's

(26:39):
how this foolish games you were meant for me. You
Were Meant for Me spent so many weeks on the
hot one hundred without ever falling out. We talked to you.
You mentioned when we did air supply, we saw the
quickest drop out of the top forty I think is
what it was like, from five to six to forty two. Yes, right,
And with this one, you just it never got out,

(27:00):
just kind of kept hovering in there for over a year.
It's crazy.

Speaker 4 (27:04):
So You Were Meant for Me, which is a song
we're going to talk about here in just a little bit.
It reached number two with Foolish Games as the B side,
as you said, and then as it started to fall,
they flipped those and Foolish Games went back up. It
only made it to number seven, but it gets credit
for hitting number two because it was the B side
on the single for you You Were Meant for Me.

(27:24):
So technically Foolish Games only hits number seven, but it
gets credit for.

Speaker 3 (27:27):
Hitting number two. It's really weird.

Speaker 4 (27:28):
Yeah, by the way, the song that blocked these two
songs from hitting number one, Yeah, Can't Nobody Hold Me
Down by P Didty Puff Daddy or whatever it was,
got R Kelly and P Didty in the same episode. Yes, yeah,
a change in music was happening at this point. Now
I was not familiar with that song, but the number
three song was The Spice Girls. If you want to

(27:49):
be my.

Speaker 3 (27:50):
Lover, that's great. Yeah, okay I got two lines from
this one, all right, okay. You were always the mysterious
one with dark eyes and careless hair, fashionably sensitive but
too cool to care. And I hid my soiled hands
behind my back. Somewhere along the way, I must have
gone off track. You've heard these first two or three songs,

(28:13):
and then all of a sudden, it's like, is this
the same singer? This sounds like a mature adult singing
this song, like a woman who's had a genuine life experience.
And it's wonderful because this is kind of the her
you ought to know, right this is you were wonderful.
I was madly in love with you, and now you
just seem to be this worthless piece of craft.

Speaker 4 (28:35):
Well excuse me, because some mistaken you for somebody.

Speaker 3 (28:41):
Can somebody something more like myself less care but it's
still heartbreaking. You've got the piano instead of the guitar,

(29:04):
and it's just it's a twist on what we've heard
up until this moment in the album, and I can
tell you in nineteen ninety seven, I was like, hold
the phones, what is this? This is awesome.

Speaker 4 (29:16):
This is the second biggest single of ninety seven. Once again.
This album was released in what February of ninety five.
Beautiful song and the music video on this has kind
of a everything that's blue. It's kind of got that
blue filter on it. But this was the first time
I went remember that cute girl from the video in
the women's bathroom. This girl is very beautiful. She dulled

(29:39):
herself up and cut a lot of attention from the
guys in my college classes.

Speaker 3 (29:44):
So yeah, all right, next song on the album, This
song is called near You Always. He's don't see those
she loves too deeply? They nick my coat.

Speaker 5 (30:00):
Look, don't think you realize the effect you hair? He
pull me.

Speaker 3 (30:05):
Please, don't up with me like that. You've ever been
so in love that it actually hurts? Here it is
in a song. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (30:14):
One of the things I like to do more than
anything in the world is go snow skiing. Okay, And
every time I go snow skiing, you end up at
these little Colorado small towns and there's always somebody with
a guitar in a corner singing while you're eating dinner
or whatever. And this song just kind of makes me
think of those moments.

Speaker 3 (30:31):
Yeah, sure, sure, for me, this is this was totally
those moments in high school when you know you're in
your first serious relationship and your love for her is
so strong that you feel like your heart's gonna burst
out of your chest every time you even see her.
And so yeah, here's the here's the lyric quote for

(30:53):
me on this one. Please don't kiss me so sweet
it makes me crave a thousand kisses to follow. And
these don't touch me like that makes every other embrace
seem pale and shallow. Yep, liquid joy.

Speaker 4 (31:08):
Right now. Okay, I got to tell you the story
about how she was discovered. Okay, after she goes on
her hitchhiking trip, she goes back to the Art Institute
in Michigan. She graduates from there, and after that she decides,
Mom's in San Diego seems like a good place. I'm
gonna meander down there and see what's happening. She's like, well,
I've got a van. I'll just live in my van
and I'll go around to these coffee houses and I'll

(31:30):
play music from the old days and I'll earn a
living that way. So she went to a coffee house.
When she first got her start in a particular coffee house,
she had her tip jar and then at the end
she went up to the owner and said, well, how
much of the entry fee do I get? And the
owner said, well, you don't get any of that money.
You get the tip jar. I get the entry fee.
And she's like, well that's that's not fair. You know,

(31:51):
I'm the reason why these people are in here. She
got upset and told that owner that she was taking
advantage of musicians and that's not right and kind of
a naive dance, but you know, honest. So she found
a coffee house. There's a beautiful little place off the
beaten track. There's nobody there, and she went and talked
to the owner and said, hey, I'd like to play here.
I can sing, but I want a percentage of whatever

(32:13):
I bring into the business. And the owner, with really
nothing to lose, said okay, let's do it. So she
started to play at this little coffee house and she
it was like the old school day. She would go
down the beach and find surfers and pass out little flyers.

Speaker 3 (32:28):
Name of the coffee house was the Interchange.

Speaker 4 (32:29):
The Interchange. But she would pass out these flyers, and
she got these surfer guys who were probably sweet on her,
you know, and she was a surfer too, like she
was surfing, that's right. And she said, come see me play,
and they're like, okay, we'll be there, right, I would
have come. Well, next thing, you know, there's a line
around the block to see her. And when she was playing,
she wanted to be the center of attention. You know,

(32:51):
She's not going to be in the corner while everybody's
talking and eating and socializing.

Speaker 3 (32:54):
She wanted this to be like a show. You're here
to see me, that's right.

Speaker 4 (32:57):
And so she would tell people, you know, sit down,
be quiet. If you've got to go to the bathroom,
you go between songs, and you don't talk.

Speaker 3 (33:02):
While I'm singing Hotly Cow.

Speaker 4 (33:04):
And so she's girls living in her van, yes, homeless,
twenty one crazy and makes these pronouncements. Well, people kind
of became like hardcore fans of Jewel through this nice
and pretty soon record executive was starting to take notice.

Speaker 3 (33:18):
Yeah, there's a guy named John Hogan who was the
lead singer of a band called Rust, and Rust had
a manager whose name was Inga Weinstein, and Inga Weinstein
was also at Paramount. Anyway, John Hogan says, there's a
surfer girl playing at this coffeehouse and you need to
come see her. And when she came, and obviously the
place was full, the place was totally locked in because

(33:39):
she had said this is a show. This I'm not
the side act, right, this is a show, and you're
hear to meeting and established these rules. Well, if you're
a potential manager walking in, you're like, dang, everybody is
locked in at this point. And so she had the
Inga Einstein had the chops at that point to go
not I'm only going to manage you. I'm going to

(34:00):
have Atlantic hey for your demo, because she couldn't afford
to pay for a demo, right, and then with the
demo didn't even give Atlantic the first shot, just said okay,
who wants her right and created a bidding war, And
there was literally a bidding war for her, to the
point that she was like, you know, I got offered
you know, so many whatever dollars, million dollars signing bo

(34:21):
but she said, I had read enough at that point
that I knew that that bonus.

Speaker 4 (34:25):
Was something I had to pay back, that was an advancement.

Speaker 3 (34:28):
Yeah yeah, And so she was like, I didn't take it.
I wanted to make my own music. And Atlantic was
the one that seemed to me to be the most
sincere about we will let you do what you want
to do. We will let you be you and do
your thing. And so that's why she ended up signing with.

Speaker 4 (34:43):
So she was wise enough and savvy enough, street wise
enough to say, nope, I'll take it. On the back end,
she said she had a good lawyer and one of
the things in her contract was for every million albums
she sold, she earned another point.

Speaker 3 (34:58):
Well, she sold twelve million albums. Yeah, I was gonna say,
I think it's up to fifteen now, but yes.

Speaker 4 (35:03):
Yeah, so every million she gets more. But at the
time it's kind of a no lose for the record company.
They're like, well, go ahead and sell twelve billion copies
if you can, yea. But she was cheap and so
she knew they wouldn't give up on her. So you know,
she's out there in a van touring around, playing and
they don't care. They're not going to cut her off because.

Speaker 3 (35:22):
She's not like her cheap. They're not putting on arena
concerts like it's Van Halen for her. That's right, She's
doing her own gigs. She had a guitar. She was
pulling herself up by her own bootstraps, is what she
was doing.

Speaker 4 (35:32):
So one of the things she credits to her success,
she said she played all the time, yeah, everywhere.

Speaker 3 (35:39):
And it was not successful like she played. She said
something like six or seven hundred shows and still wasn't
selling albums. And it wasn't until Bob Dylan was like,
I believe in you come open for me, and then
you've got a bought in audience, right like if you
if you're if you're a guy or a girl who
likes Bob Dylan, and then you hear this beautiful young
girl singing songs that are very well written in the

(36:01):
same folky style, you're like, oh, I love this girl.
I want to get this album. This is great.

Speaker 4 (36:07):
Yeah, it's genius. She does something really stupid here in
just a few minutes, we'll talk about okay. She said
she was playing all these shows to kind of get
the album off the ground. And again she's playing cheap places,
ten o'clock in the morning type of stuff. So she
played high schools, right, and she went to a high
school and she was preparing to play for this, you know,
auditorium of high school kids who don't know who she is.

(36:29):
Could care less. They're out of math class or whatever.

Speaker 3 (36:32):
Listening to Sound Garden, right, they don't care. So here's
the deal.

Speaker 4 (36:35):
She's in the bathroom stall and she hears a bunch
of girls who are putting on the stick at the
mirror whatever and say, oh, man, I love Jewel. Well,
Jewel was a rapper at the time. She's like, scrap,
I am dead meat. She's went out, you know, to
a bunch of people expecting Jewel the rapper. Huh, and
you know, here's you know, yodeler. So she also said

(36:59):
one time she played a high school and she started
to play Pieces of You and when you start singing
about ugly girls and geez yep. Yeah, she said that
the whole they just got up and left, like everybody
just took off.

Speaker 3 (37:12):
So next time in the album, get ready for an
emotional breakdown. This is painters caleft him times long ago.

Speaker 5 (37:28):
She was kind of cares we painted his portrait of
pass Just Okay.

Speaker 3 (37:37):
So I'm in my car earlier this week driving north
on I thirty five, crying like a baby. It's just
so heartbreaking. I mean, you just have this beautiful story.
I mean, it's like the beginning of up right. This
is well before the movie comes out, you know, this

(37:59):
is the beginning of up where you've just got this
this beautiful, happy couple and they've they're in so much
love and their artists and they're painting together, and he's
doing these beautiful things for and all of a sudden
gone yeah. And she's holding him as he goes, saying,
don't believe me.

Speaker 4 (38:19):
And I'm just like, what's going on.

Speaker 3 (38:24):
I'm gonna have red eyes when I get what are
you doing?

Speaker 4 (38:29):
I just listened to Jewel. So here's a quote from
this song from her. Jewel's grandfather, Yule Kilcher, told her
when she was a young kid, painters only paint to
give away, and she said that really stuck with her,
the beauty of giving yourself.

Speaker 3 (38:47):
A couple of lines from the song Okay, ready, they
thought blueprints were too sad, so they made them yellow.
That's good. But as he's dying love, I leave, but
only a little. This world holds me still. My body
may die now, but these paintings are real.

Speaker 2 (39:08):
There you go.

Speaker 3 (39:09):
The art that we create outlasts us. Yeah, and that's
what this song is about it And I just, uh,
we too sad they painted them sounds. This is the

(39:35):
This is the undiscovered gem on this album. As far
as I am concerned, I think this is I didn't
mention it. Foolish Games is my favorite song on the album,
spiked the football best song on the album. Heartbreaking as well,
but in a different kind of way. But this one
is the This is the underrated song of the whole
album for sure. Next song on the album, and just
when you need it, this is morning song.

Speaker 5 (40:00):
Let the phone me, Let's go back to sleep. The
world's been outside our there the only one that I
want to see. Tell you boss, you're sick, get back in,
getting cold, get over here and more my hands A

(40:25):
boy's you They love.

Speaker 3 (40:29):
It's a little country sounding Jim That again brings you
to a moment that I hope we've all had where
it's just like, why do we have to go do
adulting things? Why can't we just snuggle and stay here
in bed together?

Speaker 4 (40:42):
Man, Get back in bed, boy, I mean you you
hear Jewels say that.

Speaker 3 (40:48):
Man, I'm taking my shoes back off. That's back in bed.
That's right. And then I did the line, I mean,
just still the genius and you can be Henry Miller
and I'll be a nice snin. Except this time it'll
be even better. We'll stay together in the end. Come on, darling,
let's go back to bed. So I bought a Henry

(41:09):
Miller book because of this song. Really yeah, and I've
read it multiple times. One of my favorite books now.
But I tried to read a Nice nin but man,
she's got some weird stuff. I couldn't. I couldn't get
into a nice nin but Henry Miller I could. Definitely. Yeah,
it's good stuff. That's good.

Speaker 4 (41:24):
I did read that she wrote this in a sleeping
bag at three o'clock in the morning, Okay, at a
friend's house after a long night at the coffee shop.

Speaker 3 (41:32):
Okay.

Speaker 4 (41:32):
So number one, we've got Tombodett to thank for this album.
All right, right, you mentioned Bob Dylan. I want to
talk more about him and here in a second. Okay,
but there's another person that is famous that really deserves
some credit for her success. Okay, it was kind of
a secret love affair, but she dated for a while
Sean Penn.

Speaker 3 (41:51):
Shawn Penn, Yeah, before Robin Wright, after Madonna, kind.

Speaker 4 (41:55):
Of in between Robin Wright's okay, you know.

Speaker 3 (42:00):
Okay, so but yeah, so your pick fiance is too late,
right exactly?

Speaker 4 (42:10):
She was, you know, the record producers got her a
guest shot on Conan O'Brien. Okay, And the Cone and
O'Brien show was kind of known for showing early artists
before they were famous.

Speaker 3 (42:22):
First time you saw Radiohead was on O'Brien.

Speaker 4 (42:26):
So she was on Conan O'Brien and she was back
in Alaska a couple of days later at her dad's
house and her dad said, hey, I don't know if
you know this or not, but you've got a prank
call here not too long ago. She's like, what's that meaning?
He said, well, some guy called here and was pretending
to be Sean Pan, but I hung up on him,
and so luckily Sean Penn, the Sean Pan actually persisted

(42:47):
and kept calling asked to speak with her, and she's like,
you know, hello, He's like, hi, this is Sean Pan.
I saw you on Conan O'Brien. I've got a movie
coming up called The Crossing Guard. I like your style,
and I want you to write a song for my movie.

Speaker 3 (43:02):
And so this is his pickup line. This is his
pickup exact storyline. Okay, so this guy is so smooth.

Speaker 4 (43:09):
Keep in mind, she is baroke, she didn't have any money. Yeah,
she's nobody.

Speaker 3 (43:14):
Yeah, the album isn't successful yet, right, right.

Speaker 4 (43:16):
But he starts pursuing her, like courting her. And you
know when she's she's six months older than me. Maybe
she's not that old, No, she's a year older.

Speaker 3 (43:27):
She's yeah, she's about a year a year younger than me. Yeah, so,
but she's fifty one now, right, and what is Sean
Penn like in his late sixties?

Speaker 4 (43:37):
I think Sean Penn is probably mid sixties, but still,
like that's a decade or more older, decade or more
for sure.

Speaker 3 (43:44):
When she was twenty one, yes, okay, yeap, just as
long we've got all those math things out there.

Speaker 4 (43:51):
She's twenty one, yeah, he's thirty five whatever, all right,
you'd already been with the donna, he'd been through the
crazy yeah, okay, yeah, So anyway, so he's he starts
courting her and he starts like following her. He's like
her guitar tech and stuff like that. As he's courting her.

Speaker 3 (44:05):
He directed one of her videos, right.

Speaker 4 (44:07):
He did, which we'll talk about that here in a second, Okay, okay.

Speaker 2 (44:10):
But so.

Speaker 4 (44:13):
He's like introducing her to all his famous friends, right
and making her feel like a princess. And he's doing
a great job of coording her.

Speaker 3 (44:22):
Okay.

Speaker 4 (44:23):
So one time, this just blows my mind. He goes
to lunch his friend Warren Batty, who you know's they
shared Madonna, you know, late eighties, early nineties. Ok yeah,
I mean they passed her around a little bit, yep.
But he says, will you play some of your songs
for Warren Bady? And so she says okay, and she

(44:45):
plays him a few songs and Warren Baty is like,
where did you find this girl? I can't blame him, right,
And so her head is spinning where all these famous
people are noticing her.

Speaker 3 (44:55):
Of course he was in his late sixties back then,
that's right.

Speaker 4 (44:58):
Right, So he takes her to lunch one time and
there's Jack Nicholson and four other ladies including you know,
jewel and like champagne, like drops her off like I've
got some stuff I gotta do. Hang out with Jack
and these girls, right, And she said she was polite
and he was, you know, a movie star, and he
was Jack and he said, at the end of lunch,

(45:21):
he goes, well, ladies, who wants to go with Lingerie's shopping?

Speaker 3 (45:29):
I wish I was Jack Nicholson.

Speaker 4 (45:31):
I know, right, she said, she politely passed, but the
other four were like, let's go, let's go. Must be nice.

Speaker 3 (45:41):
It's good to be the king. That's right, all right.

Speaker 4 (45:44):
Next song on the album, song called Adrian.

Speaker 5 (45:47):
Yeah, came.

Speaker 3 (45:54):
Again last. So this song, it's great, it's a great song.
It does have the Nightmare on Elm Street, Freddy thing
going on one two, very little like that. Yes, but
she again, we've this amazing story where she's just given

(46:17):
you little drops of the story as it's going through
about a kid who's in a canoe accident and becomes
comatos basically, and little Mary Epperson liked him, and so
she vowed to take care of him. And it's been
every day with him, and he never changed, and shears
went by and she became a very lovely woman and

(46:39):
she still visits him on Sundays.

Speaker 4 (46:41):
It's a great story. It's totally false.

Speaker 3 (46:44):
It's not real. Yeah, it's just a made up story.

Speaker 4 (46:46):
There's a lot of urban legends about this song, about
who is this person? Is this a real story? People
are out there, They got their own little fan fiction
ideas about this. She's like, I just made the story up.

Speaker 3 (46:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (46:56):
By the way, I just want to drop this story
right here, okay. As her excess is multiplying from pieces
of you, she starts to get noticed by Hollywood.

Speaker 3 (47:04):
So she gets a call from ang Lee Gretching Tiger
hitting Dragon, Broke Back Mountain. Didn't see that one, the Hulk, Yeah,
Life of Pie.

Speaker 4 (47:12):
There you go, ye famous Hollywood director. He says, I
want you to come in to audition for a part
I've got that I'm thinking of you for what's the
name of this movie? Ride with the Devil's the name
of it?

Speaker 3 (47:22):
Okay, susperiod piece. It's like Colonial Days, right, civil war?

Speaker 4 (47:26):
Civil War? You know you got skeet Ulric in it.
You've got Jim Cavizl's in it. McGuire, Toby McGuire's in it.
Civil war piece. Anyway, So she comes in and he says,
I want you to walk for me. So she's like,
h I wonder what he's looking for. Okay, So she
tries to walk sexy. Yeah, he's like, no, much heavier, walk, determined,
walk like you're going somewhere.

Speaker 3 (47:46):
She said.

Speaker 4 (47:46):
Then he handed her a watch and said, act like
this is something you've never seen. You don't understand it,
you don't know what it is. She's like, weird, okay,
you know, and does all this you know acting. He's like, great,
you're hired. She's like, I don't know what I'm doing.
I've never She's like, I was in a theater class
in high school. She's one of the leads in this movie, right,
and so she's she's fretting about it. She's excited, and finally,

(48:09):
after like two days before shooting, she's finally like, why
did you charge me? He goes, you have period teeth?

Speaker 3 (48:18):
So thank you.

Speaker 4 (48:21):
I mean, but here's the the honest truth is that
every other actress of her era.

Speaker 3 (48:28):
It's beautiful, have beautiful teeth. So she's got this first cousin,
once removed, named Corianka Kilcher, who played Pocahontas in the
New World or something like that. Yes, that's it. The
New World yes, has Colin Farrell and she's bailing it right,
So she plays Pocahontas. She has perfect teeth. It's not right,
like her teeth are beautiful. Oh man, Okay, but and

(48:50):
she's she was in Yellowstone. It's kind of weird that
that's Jules Cousin. Feels nothing alike. Wow, she's like a
native like her ancestry is Native. For they look nothing alike,
nothing like. Both very beautiful, but look nothing alive. That's right. Yeah,
but she did not have period teeth. They still put
her in that movie. That's crazy. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (49:09):
Next song on the album is a song called I'm Sensitive.

Speaker 3 (49:14):
It doesn't take a talent to be mean.

Speaker 5 (49:19):
Words can crush things that a un scenes, so please
be careful with me.

Speaker 3 (49:28):
Sensit so compared to Jagged Little Pill, this is her
right through You song. Okay, that's a little more hurt
like Alanis's Angry Jewel is like, why are you going
to be so mean? I'm a nice person and I
would like to stay a nice person. Could you please

(49:49):
not be a dick?

Speaker 4 (49:51):
This song was written at age seventeen in nineteen ninety one.
I believe Okay, now I've got a great story for
you on this one. Okay, So the final vocal this
song was recorded at the Inner Change coffee house. That's
her coffee house and the women's bathroom. Oh okay, while
she was sitting on the sink barefoot.

Speaker 3 (50:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (50:09):
Now, then that wasn't a great story. Here's my great story. Okay, Okay,
my great story is I believe she was at the
nineteen ninety seven MTV Music Awards. Okay, she's walking around.
There's all these famous people. Of course, there's people she
was not exposed to pop culture, so a lot of them.
She's like, okay, that person's famous.

Speaker 3 (50:25):
Who is that?

Speaker 4 (50:25):
I don't really know. Well, somebody kind of sneaks up
behind her and taps her on the shoulder. She turns around.
It's Marilyn Manson. She turns around. She's like, here's this
guy with white contact lenses, looking scary, all goffed out
and he leans down. He said, I just want you
to know I really love the song. I'm sensitive because
I think it's a beautiful song.

Speaker 3 (50:43):
Great job.

Speaker 4 (50:44):
Wow, Marilyn Manson's favorite song.

Speaker 3 (50:48):
Wow. I know, okay, that's great. How about that It
doesn't take a talent to be mean? Your words can
crush things that are unseen. Don't beat dick.

Speaker 4 (50:59):
Good advice before we get to this next song. When
Bob Dylan hired her to open for him on his tour.
So when she showed up to this tour, his manager,
whoever it is, his handlers, whatever they say to her,
Bob will not meet you. He will not talk to you.
He doesn't know who you are. He doesn't care. And
she's like, oh, well, okay, thank you. Anyway, I'm glad

(51:19):
to be here. I'll keep to myself whatever you I
won't be a problem, she said. Day three, he invited
her to his dressing room and was like, I watch
you every night. I think you're great. I think your
songs are great. I think your talent is great. So
it's like somebody's trying to throw a blocker for him.

Speaker 3 (51:35):
Yeah, okay, So who was it that we talked about
recently that like, spent the day with Bob. It went
out on the boat, they drank beers, they had all
kinds of fun, and the next time he saw he's
thinking he's going to see his best friend Bob, and
Bob was like, h yeah, Christopher Cross, Yeah, okay. It's
like the antithesis of that story he doesn't know you

(52:00):
love you, You're so good and then yeah, wow, all right.

Speaker 4 (52:04):
One of the biggest hitters on the album Let's Go
to It. The song is called you Were Meant for Me.

Speaker 3 (52:08):
I hear the success a few sparse.

Speaker 5 (52:17):
I got my eggs and my pancakes too, You've got
my able.

Speaker 3 (52:21):
Soon everything with you? Okay. So there are two different
versions of this song.

Speaker 4 (52:28):
I think there's three different versions.

Speaker 3 (52:29):
Yeah, there's multiple versions.

Speaker 4 (52:31):
So you've got the album version, then you've got the
radio version, the condensed version of the album version, and
then you've got this kind of popped up one o.
They kind of rocked it up a little.

Speaker 3 (52:43):
Bit, das so in after she Love Me and answer.

Speaker 4 (53:09):
In the radio version of you Were Meant for Me,
she met a friend at a like a spiritual like
a meditation retreat that.

Speaker 3 (53:19):
Her mom was involved in.

Speaker 4 (53:20):
Turns out it it was kind of a pretty heavy cult.
But uh, anyway, decided that he was going to play
on this updated version of the song you Were Meant
for Me.

Speaker 3 (53:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (53:31):
He also happened to play on the song You Ought
to Know Flee Flee Flea plays bass on the radio
edit for this song. Also back Last School, so.

Speaker 3 (53:53):
Arguably the two biggest songs on both these albums, and
fleas involved with Wow Wow, Okay, I gotta I gotta
throw a lyric out here again, Like this whole song
is gold on the lyrics, It's beautiful. But my favorite
is I called my mama. She was out for a
walk console the cup of coffee, but it didn't want
to talk.

Speaker 4 (54:14):
I love that, So we might as well dive in
just a little bit right here. Yeah, she talks about
her mom a lot in her lyrics, and obviously as
a young child her mom split. For many years now,
she would stay in contact, they would call and they
would visit, you know, but there was that gaping hole
in her heart about why doesn't my mom love me

(54:34):
enough to live with me?

Speaker 5 (54:36):
Right?

Speaker 4 (54:37):
So when she moved down to San Diego, they kind
of rekindled some stuff. Plus you know, success, and here
it comes mom.

Speaker 3 (54:44):
Okay.

Speaker 4 (54:45):
So her manager was Inga Varstein Mainstein, Finstein Einstein. So
Inga was her manager. She got fifteen percent of her cut. Well,
Jule's mom wanted to also manage, like co manage, and
so Jewel's mom said, well, let's do this. She gets
fifteen and I get fifteen, and Jewel's like, ah, that's

(55:07):
kind of expensive. I don't really know about that. So
she said, well, how about we do this. She gets
ten and you get ten and you eat five. You
eat five, and I'll eat five. So she's got two managers. Well,
when it's your mother who has a lot of power
to manipulate you, you can see this coming. But she
eventually forces Inga out okay, and assumes all financial control

(55:32):
of Jewel's money from a girl.

Speaker 3 (55:34):
Who was just a mistake that we were talking about,
the mistake.

Speaker 4 (55:37):
Yeah, she was homeless living in her van. All she
needed was enough food for I mean, Jewel would shoplift
as a young person to eat and to clothe herself.
So I've got enough food on the table, I've got clothes,
I've got I'm successful.

Speaker 3 (55:53):
I'm good, mom.

Speaker 4 (55:54):
You handle the finances.

Speaker 3 (55:56):
Well.

Speaker 4 (55:57):
After a few years, like three or four or five years,
Inga sues her. The lawyer actually brings Inga and Jewel
in the room together and says, look, the lawyers can
get all this money, or we can work this thing out.
So Jewel and Inga, as former friends, work it out.
So she agrees to pay her X amount of dollars
for back payment. Well, Jewel's mom comes in the room
and says she doesn't have it, and She's like, what

(56:18):
are you talking about. I'm selling millions of albums. I
have this wonderful contract where I get an additional point
for every million albums I sell.

Speaker 3 (56:27):
You don't have it.

Speaker 4 (56:28):
So she found out she was dead broke after settling
with a suit with a former friend that her mom
had helped force out, no money and millions of dollars
in debt, and even still Jewel kept her on for
a time. No apologies, no I'm sorry.

Speaker 3 (56:44):
We know what happened to the money. Whoosh gone, whoosh.

Speaker 4 (56:47):
Yeah, here's the interesting thing. So her mom had bought
these other real estate properties, and of course Jewel's out
there busting her button. Her mom's pocketing all this money.
But that's true, butts yeah. So one of the things
that Jewel asked her mom to do, this is post mistake,
this is post problem, says you have to sell all

(57:10):
these houses. I need this money. I'm broke, yeah, and
you took it all.

Speaker 5 (57:15):
Ah.

Speaker 4 (57:15):
So her mom looked her, stood up, screamed fine, and
I'll sell these effing houses. And Jewel said her mom
never yelled at her, but on that day, she was like,
I knew once she raised her voice to me, I
would never see that money and I would never see
my mom again. And that's exactly what happened. Oh my gosh,
split never heard from her again.

Speaker 3 (57:34):
Gone.

Speaker 4 (57:35):
She's like, I really wanted the love of a mother
and I would have settled for a hug and I
got neither.

Speaker 3 (57:41):
So how's her relationship with her dad?

Speaker 4 (57:43):
Her dad has improved?

Speaker 3 (57:45):
Well, what's our next song?

Speaker 4 (57:48):
Hang on before we get to that song. Okay, I've
got something to light in the mood.

Speaker 3 (57:53):
Okay.

Speaker 4 (57:53):
In this song, she mentions a breakfast with a smiley face.

Speaker 3 (57:58):
Yeah, yeah, break the yolks make a smiley face.

Speaker 4 (58:02):
You remember the last time we saw a breakfast with
a smiley face?

Speaker 3 (58:07):
He was big Adventure. Oh that's canst t zereal. Oh
my gosh, that's great. All right.

Speaker 4 (58:16):
Next song on the album is a song called Don't.

Speaker 3 (58:22):
Dude Hook to Close dum.

Speaker 1 (58:30):
So Soft.

Speaker 3 (58:37):
Here's a heartbreaking song about having your heart broken.

Speaker 4 (58:40):
Oh my gosh, Yes, this song's beautiful. I could definitely
see this at a little coffee shop at the bottom
of the ski resort.

Speaker 3 (58:47):
Yeah, but still it's an emotion that we've all felt.
It captures that emotion. Oh, I mean, these are the
first lyrics, but it's the whole. It's the whole song.
Don't walk too close, don't breathe so soft, don't talk
so sweet, don't sing, don't lay oh so near? Please
don't let me fall in love with you again?

Speaker 4 (59:09):
Ouch?

Speaker 3 (59:10):
Yeah, like just seeing you. We're not together anymore, and
I just see you and I just hear you, and
I just I'm like, I can't let myself fall into
this all over again.

Speaker 4 (59:22):
Bring me down?

Speaker 3 (59:23):
Man. Yeah, well that's what the I mean. She's she's
really like, she's taking you all over the emotional gambit
right here. Man, that's true. That's why I love this album.
It's a good one. How is her relationship with her
mom's not so good? How about her dad? This song
is called daddy?

Speaker 5 (59:42):
What's that sing?

Speaker 2 (59:51):
You know?

Speaker 3 (59:51):
Sometimes, as she passed, now, I drink lots of black
coffee and I smoke black chilly. Yes, I left the
refrigerator a half open. So after her mom left her dad,

(01:00:17):
it became an alcoholic and was abusive.

Speaker 4 (01:00:23):
She talked in particular about an instance where she and
her brother were having an argument like on a Saturday morning,
like over the remote control.

Speaker 3 (01:00:31):
Which cartoon are we going to write?

Speaker 4 (01:00:33):
But they knew that if they woke Dad that there'd
be hell to pay, right, and so it was one
of those silent fistfights you know, you know that type
of stuff. Well, something happened and they bumped into something
and it caused a clatter, and Dad called him up
and they both got smacked around. So it was physical,

(01:00:57):
but he has since apologies were made and bridges built
in that deck.

Speaker 3 (01:01:02):
I think he got over the alcohol problem and and
hosting a show on the Discovery Channel.

Speaker 4 (01:01:07):
I know that's really cool.

Speaker 3 (01:01:08):
So line from the song you know sometimes I want
to bash in your teeth, Daddy. I'm gonna use your
tongue as a stamp. I'm gonna rip your heart out
the way you did mine, Daddy, Go ahead and psychoanalyze that.

Speaker 4 (01:01:24):
I do have one funny story about her dad. Yeah,
aad so being a single dad in Homesteady, Alaska. They
made a decision, And tell me this isn't the ultimate
guy decision.

Speaker 3 (01:01:37):
I know what we're gonna do with people.

Speaker 4 (01:01:39):
We're gonna simplify our alive by buying one type of
soap for everything, so she said, So he made the decision,
we're no longer going to buy shampoo, laundry detergent and
body soap and dish soap and dish soap. So they
just bought Irish spring. That's what she washed her.

Speaker 3 (01:01:56):
Hair with, Irish Irish spring.

Speaker 4 (01:01:58):
He they like made like shards, like scraped off shards
of it to wash their clothes with.

Speaker 3 (01:02:03):
What they did in the commercial is woodlin a bar soap,
iron spring and next whistle.

Speaker 4 (01:02:12):
That's that's pretty strong potent smelling too, all right.

Speaker 3 (01:02:16):
Her dad's name, by the way, we haven't mentioned is Attila, right,
it's it's a Tila. Now he goes by atsts. Yeah,
she calls him os. Yeah. But they have made amends.
She's been on his show with her son going through
you know, kind of a ceremonial. You're turning seven, you're
now you're a man, but you're moving from childhood to

(01:02:39):
towards man.

Speaker 4 (01:02:40):
That's right, all right. Next song on the album song
called Angels standing by. This one sounds like a church hymn.

Speaker 3 (01:03:13):
Yeah, it sounds like angels. It sounds like a choir
of angels. It's just too it's two voices but beautiful,
and that she's playing the harmonics on the guitar, which
is what gives it that kind of bright, shiny sound.
And it's it's interesting because it's not available on the
whole guitar. It's just unique spots. And so she's made
a song with those notes. It's impressive. It's impressive, beautiful. Yeah,

(01:03:36):
like you said, it's like a choir.

Speaker 5 (01:03:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:03:38):
You know what they call Jewel fans like devotees.

Speaker 3 (01:03:42):
Uh, everyday angel every day Angels. Yeah, I think somebody started.
I think they have like a it's called a fan
club or a coalition of some kind called Everyday Angels, Yeah,
which she's not actually a member of, but she's done
concerts for him. Did something called Jewelfest Forum or jeel Fest. Yeah.
You know.

Speaker 4 (01:04:01):
She married Ty Murray, who was like the Michael Jordan
of bull Riding Cowboy. I thought this was really interesting.
When she met him. She was in Denver passing through
had a concert.

Speaker 3 (01:04:14):
It was like, I like rodeos, I'll go to the rodeo.

Speaker 4 (01:04:17):
She got in touch with him. They were going to
share some sort of charity event or something like that,
and when she met him, she knew her dad would
be mega impressed that she knew the Michael Jordan of
bull riding right, and then ultimately they started to date.
They fell in love, got married, had a kid, and
we're married from twenty eight to twenty fourteen.

Speaker 3 (01:04:37):
I think so you're saying she's single, she's single, Juli.
If you're out there, slide into my i DS came up.

Speaker 4 (01:04:48):
Oh, yes, that would be fun. She have to do
an intro for us.

Speaker 3 (01:04:55):
Yeah, we'll see if all right. Best song on the
album this, I mean, we think we've heard some vocal
range before. Get a load of me.

Speaker 5 (01:05:07):
Now.

Speaker 3 (01:05:07):
Last song on the album, this one's called.

Speaker 5 (01:05:13):
And Some Can't Tell the de from City More.

Speaker 3 (01:05:57):
I think I just found my favorite part. Sang yeah.
So we just to be clear, I don't make that clear.
Jump to the end, jump to where she's singing I'm
in and hallelujah, and I might have failed to mention this.
She went to interlock In Academy. She studied op opera
and this is where you hear it, and it's like

(01:06:18):
you can hear, you can hear. At the beginning of
the song, when she's singing the regular lyrics, she comes
down into her lower register by the end, she is
singing that soprano. Oh my goodness, it sounds like Ave Maria.
I mean, it's just it'll make the hair on your
arms stand up. It's so beautiful. And this is interesting
to me because I mentioned, you know, she her aunt

(01:06:39):
kind of adopted her when her mom left, but taught
her things. And last video and I sent you a
video that I don't think is that old. Her aunt's
still live eighty years old and still turning along, working
like a horse. And so I thought, well, you know,
her aunt had an album in seventy seven, and she
probably learned things from her aunt. She didn't start playing

(01:06:59):
guitar until she was at inter Locking. She was sixteen
before she started playing guitar. She's written these incredible songs.
I mean, some of them are very simple chord progressions,
but some of them are not. And if you listen,
you don't hear a lot of drums. But the benefit
of that is she's able to do things that classical
music does, which is speed up and slow down as

(01:07:22):
the emotion takes her to that spot. And she said
this was also the wonderful thing about working with the
Stray Gators is that they could do that with her,
they were such talented musicians that they could pace themselves
at her pace, right, But the beauty of the singing
and this song is just amazing.

Speaker 4 (01:07:41):
So just to kind of put a bow on this, Yeah,
she puts out this incredible folk album. Obviously she's capable
of doing opera, she does pop. She has a song
called Intuition that is a top ten hit in two
thousand and three, I think where it's dance pop.

Speaker 3 (01:07:56):
Yeah, it was a little weird for me to see
her doing that. I wasn't upset at the time because
she's looking good. She's getting sprayed with a fire hose.
You know, she's looking good. But it's not what it's
not the music that I wanted to get from Jewel.
I watched the video, but I didn't. I did not
buy that album.

Speaker 4 (01:08:12):
Well, after that, she shifts into country.

Speaker 3 (01:08:15):
Yeah, which I mean we talked about some of these
songs have got the very country appear they do.

Speaker 4 (01:08:19):
And then she puts out a very successful, super successful
like Lullaby, like a children's album.

Speaker 3 (01:08:24):
Has done a Christmas album. Yeah, I mean she's and
has acted since that Angle thing, just you know, she
broke through with her teeth, but she she's played June
Carter Cash and she's played like a murder mystery in
some Hallmark yhows. I mean she's doing a lot of

(01:08:45):
She's she's a very intelligent, very talented, very beautiful. I
mean she's got to go gifted, she's got it going all.

Speaker 4 (01:08:56):
And I just saw a video she posted a couple
of days ago on Instagram where I think she's in
Tell your Ride, she's hiking. She's like here I am,
I'm on the track. You know she's dirty, dusty.

Speaker 3 (01:09:06):
Yeah, she doesn't have to be beautiful in the I
mean she's posting videos with no makeup and her hair
is all scraggly and a beanie ball cap and yeah,
she doesn't care. I love it.

Speaker 4 (01:09:15):
I know, right, super cool.

Speaker 3 (01:09:17):
Yeah, all right, that's it. So that's number two of
our Menagetois of the nineties Ladies. Next week we are
coming back with No Doubt Tragic Kingdom Hold Onto Your Butts.

Speaker 4 (01:09:28):
Fifteen tracks on that album, I think all good.

Speaker 3 (01:09:32):
Like so far, two albums. Not a single skipper, I know,
not a single skipper.

Speaker 4 (01:09:38):
Great songs in the nineties. Yeah, come back next week,
see you guys. Then, thanks guys,