Jewel is an undeniable icon of the ‘90s. But long before her rise to fame, she faced significant hardships, including homelessness, while honing her craft in bars as a teenager. Her experience shaped her poetic singer/songwriter style of writing, and her sound set her apart from the grunge era of the time that was ultimately fading away.
Though her debut single, “Who Will Save Your Soul,” was her first song serviced to radio, upon release, the track didn’t gain traction right away. In fact, it was initially deemed a radio flop.
“The gatekeepers weren’t into sensitive folk singing… They wanted the grunge and all of the angst. So nobody liked me in the establishment,” Jewel acknowledged during an interview on theConsequence of Sound Story Behind the Song podcast, adding that early on, she was embraced by college radio, her label, and the performance venues she played at.
Eventually, Jewel found success in her music following a spot on Bob Dylan’s tour. Her relentless touring and Dylan’s push paid off as her song was added to radio stations across the country, eventually peaking at No. 11 on the Billboard all-genre Hot 100 chart in 1996.
“....I failed for a long time. ‘You Were Meant For Me’ failed, ‘Who Will Save Your Soul’ failed, ‘You Were Meant For Me’ failed again….” Jewel explained. “I'm going to start making a second album, and Bob Dylan asked me to come out. He says, ‘Keep going. F the establishment. You’re a folk singer.’ I was like, ‘Yes, sir!’ And then the album started working, and once it started working, I started selling a million albums every single month for over a year. It was crazy.”
Appearing on her debut album, 1995’s Pieces of You, which ended up becoming a “sleeper” hit and one of the best-selling debut albums of all time, “Who Will Save Your Soul” was written by Jewel during a solo spring break trip when she hitchhiked across America.
“I didn’t have enough money to go home to Alaska. I had to leave,” she remembered how she wasn’t able to stay on campus or return home during her break.
“So I had this genius idea that I would hitchhike and hobo across the country and hitchhike through New Mexico,” she shared, telling the story of how she came up with the idea for “Who Will Save Your Soul," which ended up earning a Grammy nomination for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance in 1997. “I learned four chords, A minor, C, G, and D, in that order…my plan was to start street singing and make up lyrics about people.”
She added, “I improvised… I had made it from Detroit to Chicago, went down to Michigan Avenue, opened up my guitar case and saw this big city, all this pop culture, thinking of my own life and [asking] was I responsible for my own happiness and who was gonna save me?... That just caused me to start riffing, it was a very stream of consciousness, spoken word lyrics… it was just about seeing these people and watching them in office buildings, and what I was seeing around me.”
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