Jewel's brand new key

Date: 01 Jun 2003 12:46:21 GMT
Newsgroups: alt.gossip.celebrities
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NY DAILY NEWS/By RAY ROGERS
She saunters over to the corner banquette at the Ritz Carlton on Central Park
South in a pair of strappy black heels laced up high around her ankles. A
midriff-baring pink-and-black striped shirt that falls off one shoulder
complements her trendy cropped black cargos. A hip-hop-style gold "J" hangs
from her necklace.
Where is the ".Lo" to go with that "J," you ask? No, it's not Jenny from the
block at the table today, but the formerly earnest Jewel.
"I don't usually come to interviews in full drag," the 28-year-old singer
drolly remarks, a little laugh escaping from her glossy lips. She explains that
she's just finished a taping of CBS "The Early Show," on which she performed
tracks from her fifth album, "0304," which comes out Tuesday.
But Jewel's quip couldn't be a more fitting comment on her sudden incarnation
as an '80s-inspired pop diva cum hip-hop moll. It's a look that matches her
musical makeover, a sound achieved with the help of Shakira's hitmaker, writer
and producer Lester Mendez. Anyone who's seen Jewel's new video for the clubby,
rhythmic single "Intuition" - currently in rotation on VH1 and MTV - wouldn't
be surprised by her "Early Show" getup.
To all but her most open-minded fans, the newly dolled-up Jewel represents such
a drastic departure from her sincere folkie persona that it clearly left her
feeling open to question. Hedging her bets, she preempted criticism with the
song's saucy teen-pop/hip-hop-style video, in which she toys with the idea of
herself as a sex symbol marketed to sell jeans and soda pop. Jewel here lets
her audience and any skeptics out there know that the style switch is a
conscious choice. She's playing with her image, and she's clearly in on the
joke.
Asked what led her down a new musical path, the hippie-dippy Jewel of yore
resurfaces. "I've always just let my muse take me wherever it does," she says.
"Every record I do has just been a really honest progression from what I'm into
and where my skill is in the studio."
She knows there is a risk. But if early airplay statistics are any indication,
it's one that's paying off. "Intuition" was the most-added track to CHR/Pop and
Adult Top 40/Modern AC radio formats across the country the week it debuted.
Despite the video's pointed and quite funny dissection of her new direction,
though, she's not exactly happy to engage in a discussion about commercialism.
Given the song's initial impetus, this is hard to take. Selling is what
"Intuition" is about at its very core: The song was specifically written for
Schick's advertising campaign for its new all-in-one shaver for women, also
named Intuition.
"It wasn't some marketing strategy," Jewel insists. "It's just what I was drawn
to, and that's always how I've gone about music. But when I told people I
wanted to try to make a dance-hip-hop-folk record, they were all like, 'Ugh,
Jewel. She's losing her mind.' "
Self-exploration and transformation are hallmarks of any successful long-term
pop and rock star, from the most artful practitioners (like David Bowie and
Madonna, who constantly refashion themselves) to the more subtle (like Joni
Mitchell and Neil Young, whose personas haven't changed that much, though their
musical styles have developed, often from one album to the next). Heck, even
Pink had a revelation that she wasn't meant to be a white soul crooner and
became a spunky pop-rock diva before she was in her mid 20s.
Jewel has certainly "followed her muse" into many different creative endeavors:
Her book of poetry, "A Night Without Armor," landed on the best seller list,
and her acting debut in Ang Lee's Civil War film "Ride With the Devil" earned
respectable reviews. But has a dance diva been lying dormant inside Jewel all
these years?
Truth be told, her new direction isn't entirely unexpected. It comes on the
heels of a successful remix of "Serve the Ego" (from her last album, 2001's
"This Way") that was reimagined as a disco track and ended up topping
Billboard's Hot Dance Music Club Play chart.
She's not the first Atlantic Records artist to change musical direction after a
remixed single won a new following: The sophisticated folky pop duo Everything
But the Girl went a similar route after a gussied-up version of its single
"Missing" became a huge hit. Now Jewel reports that EBTG's Ben Watt has already
done some remixes of her new material.
Jewel is quick to point out that, unlike the Britneys of the world, she writes
her own lyrics and melodies, and experimenting with a club sound came naturally
to her.
"[On] some of the songs, I started off using dance beats right away," she says.
"'Run to You' is a really urgent, longing song with a kind of folk melody, but
this really thunk, thunk, thunk dance beat driving it. To me, that beat suits a
certain kind of poetic lyric. To marry those kinds of things just seemed like a
very natural thing to me."
"0304's" producer, Mendez, agrees the album is "a natural progression" for
Jewel rather than a calculated about-face. "I think her fans will just accept
that she's trying new things. Artists are supposed to grow and experiment. It's
all her lyrics and her themes and ideas. Her last album was a little more rock.
This album is not totally electronic, it's just the next step from the last
one."
"0304" arrives at a crucial point for the Alaska-reared singer. Although her
first record, 1995's "Pieces of You," has sold 7 million copies to date, her
three subsequent albums (which include a Christmas collection) have sold
millions less and produced minor singles compared to her first massive hit,
"Who Will Save Your Soul." While "This Way" sold a respectable 1 million
copies, her career has clearly needed recharging. The pop landscape has changed
drastically since she started, and this new Jewel release finally reflects
that.
According to Michael Paoletta, Billboard's Dance/Electronic Music Editor,
diving onto the dance floor would be a smart move for Jewel as she approaches
her 30s. "She really can't compete head-on with these teenage" stars, he says.
"But - as with Madonna - the club scene tends not to put borders on age. It's
not as ageist as other genres of music."
Jewel's not the only artist in the midst of a makeover. Early in her career,
she opened for Liz Phair, who was all the rage in the mid-'90s. Phair recently
turned to Avril Lavigne's dream team, the Matrix, to help craft and spit-shine
her made-for-airplay new disc, due out this month.
Phair wears her cash-in m.o. like a badge of honor - "I was looking for help"
in creating a hit song, she recently told Entertainment Weekly. Jewel, though,
claims not to have known of Mendez's accomplishments - directing Shakira's U.S.
breakthrough and writing songs for Santana, among them - when the two first
holed up together in a San Diego studio to write tracks.
The writing went so smoothly that she ended up having him produce the album in
L.A. shortly afterward. Surprisingly, Jewel says America's then-imminent war
with Iraq influenced the upbeat tone of "0304."
"I felt that where the culture was headed with war ... I didn't want to be
pensive, introspective," she says. "I thought, we're going to want an escape
from what's going on in the world. We're going to want to feel young and sexy
and that somewhere things are okay."
And where better to lose oneself than in the flashing lights and thumping beats
of the dance floor?
"That why I've been drawn to dance music," she adds. "I just want to have fun.
Things are hard enough in life that you don't always want to be brought down
with everything on the news."
The record has its share of love-themed songs - many inspired by her
relationship with her rodeo champ boyfriend Ty Murray - and is littered with
the kind of social barbs one expects from Jewel. But this time out, the lyrics
take second stage to the beats and grooves. For example, the opening track,
"Stand" - which name-checks Marvin Gaye and Woodie Guthrie and features lyrics
like "On TV, D.C. is selling lies" and "There's children paying bills/There's
monks buying thrills" - is set to a hip-hop beat.
Given "0304's" groove-oriented songs, Jewel's description of the record as a
modern version of "big band music" warrants explanation.
"Big band music was at its zenith during the Second World War," she reflects,
"and I think it's because people wanted to crowd into a small room and feel
young and sexy, and escape, and press somebody up against them and just sweat
and move! That's what people want now. You can really see it by the way pop
culture's headed. I wanted to do that, but be smart at the same time.
"If you want to take it deeper and listen to the record 30 times, hopefully
you'll get something different out of the lyrics each time. If you just want to
have fun and dance, you can do that with this record."
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