Jewel’s Journey to Now (Part 3 of 4)

Continued from Part Two…

Did the success – even belated success – of your first album put pressure on you when making Spirit?

By the time my second album came around, I did feel that pressure, the famous sophomore slump and all this stuff that they psych you out with.

But I just did the math and realized what kind of contract I made for myself. I was so wealthy, I never had to have a hit again. And so I just said, “You get to take this one of two ways, Kilcher. You get to either feel pressure that you have to do this for the rest of your life, or you can say you just won the lottery and you never have to do it again. You get to do whatever the F you want. You have a free pass.”

And so I took it that way. Why feel the pressure to have the perfect follow up? I just dedicated myself to curiosity. And I took all that pressure off of myself. “Hands” is such a different song than anything from the first album, but it was so authentic to who I was at that time. I don’t know what you would call that type of song; it almost became a hymn.

Some artists are dilettantes. They dabble in this, they dabble in that. Your forays into sort of different styles – folk, pop, Americana, country – have felt more authentic. Do you have an omnivorous approach to music?

After Spirit and its success, I just quit. I couldn’t handle it. I didn’t like how famous I got. And it felt weird to give myself permission to say I got so much more famous than I thought someone like me could get. I hated having bodyguards. I hated all the death threats, hated all the stalkers, people saying they’d shoot me during a concert, not being able to grocery shop, not being able to go to the bathroom without people following you in. Oh, boy, it just didn’t work.

There was a lot of good, you know. I was making money. I was authentic to myself and the world. So many positives. But psychologically, that level of fame was very difficult for me. And I had made myself a promise when I was 18, before I signed my contract, that my number one job was to learn how to be happy. Nothing else mattered. Number two was to be a musician. And so I had to keep that promise to myself and admit that level of fame didn’t work for me. So I quit for two years.

That’s a very difficult thing to do in the public eye. The press and the articles at the time were like, “She can’t make it. She’s a has-been.” But I knew it was an act of power. It was life-affirming what I was doing. And I gave myself permission to quit the industry indefinitely. And what I realized in that time were two things. One, I got un-famous fast; it didn’t take long. That was pretty cool. Within a year, I was able to go to the grocery store. I was able to get on a flight and not be mobbed. Number two was, I love music. I don’t love it to be famous. I don’t really love it for the money. I love it because it’s an expression of my human growth and development.

I am a very curious person. And if I’m not growing, I’m dying. That’s just how I am. And in the ‘90s, everybody was so obsessed with selling out. I saw so many people try to be credible. They were trying so hard to be credible that they were absolute sellouts in the process. But it’s a fine line. Who’s to say who’s a sellout? Only you know in your heart what you’re built to do.

Now, there are people and artists that are iterative. They have one thing and one style, and they hone it their whole lives. And it is so authentic to them. That just isn’t what I am in my life in any way, shape, or form. I am very adventurous, and I’m always wanting to learn and grow and change. Now, that’s hard on a career, financially. The smartest thing is not to switch genres. The smartest thing is to make “You Are Meant for Me” [over and over].

But I’d literally rather shove a pencil in my eye. That’s not what I want to do with my life. And if you’re given the gift, the opportunity to be an artist, why wouldn’t you be one? So I realized that I wanted to move into other genres. I knew that was going to happen; I knew it was authentic to me. I knew I would pay a price; maybe nobody would like it. And I knew that it would take years between albums, and I would kill my momentum every time.

I grew up listening to country music. I grew up listening to Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton. I get chill bumps saying those two women’s names; two heroic women. Those are two women to model a life after. And Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard were such a part of my ethos that I knew I wanted to make those [kinds of] albums. And I find it frustrating that the business is built in such a way that my label couldn’t help me promote a country album, that I even had to declare that it was country. That’s just dumb.

Our industry grew in a very segmented way. That’s not my fault; that’s just how the industry is. So I had to switch labels. I had to build relationships in a whole other radio category. It shouldn’t be that painful. You would have thought I was murdering children because I made pop music or because I made a country album! But it’s gotten easier now. I watched Taylor [Swift] go from country to pop, and I was like, “Good!”

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