At first glance, it might seem like a stretch to compare Jewel to Patti Smith. Jewel Kilcher, after all, is a blonde-haired Alaskan in her 40s, best known by many people for ballads like “Who Will Save Your Soul,” “You Were Meant for Me” and “Hands.” Smith, by contrast, is a septuagenarian who grew up mainly in New Jersey and who is a rocker at heart. Where Jewel’s work can sometimes verge on Hallmark-style sentiments, Smith is not averse to using “fuck” or even the N-word in her lyrics.
BUST: This is your first album in seven years which, for you, is a long time. Tell me a little about why now and a little about making it.When I got discovered, I made a promise to myself that my number one job would be to learn how to be happy. ‘Cause I knew I wasn’t. And I had so much emotional baggage that if you make somebody like me famous, it could end up [damaging]. I almost didn’t sign my record deal because of that fear.
Then COVID hit and that was another two years. And here we are! That’s my larger context! How was that? B: I guess she [Rickie Lee Jones] was in her mid-20s when the first album came out. At the time, she was young and she was a great writer but she was also sexy and she was on the cover of Rolling Stone. She’s in her 60s now and she said she walks into grocery stores sometimes and people ignore her because she’s a middle-aged woman. And she said she feels invisible — which I thought was also really interesting.
So a song like “Intuition,” that was a pop song — [that] was about following your heart. It was not about a relationship. Writing a pop song that isn’t about a relationship is really hard! And so to me, that singer-songwriter lens has been what remains consistent in my work. Whether it has an accordion on it or a banjo on it or a cello on it or — I don’t know, an electric guitar.
Sarah Vaughn had a gravitas. Her breath control is very [underrated] in my opinion. To me, singing is about the regulation of breath. How many tones and colors you can fit into one breath. How many times you can carry over the phrase into the next phrase, changing your tone. You know — full lower register, all in a single breath, marks greatness in my opinion. And Sarah Vaughn is that. I would listen to her live version of “I’ll Be Seeing You” and it’s just — I get chills just talking about it.
B: What women influenced you? They can be musical influences but they don’t have to be. Just women that you saw as mentors either growing up or even later.