![]() So get out on the streets, girls, and bust your butts Those flings, those strings you’ve got to cut Say it’s been swell, sweetheart, but it was just one of those things, That you love them, take their money and run So you bargain with the devil, say you are ok for today, say There are addictions to feed, and there are mouths to pay Got social security, but it doesn’t pay your bills Some are walkin’, some are talkin’, some are stalkin’ their kill I still like the line about how “the cops want someone to bust down on Orleans Avenue.” And: “there are addictions to feed and there are mouths to pay,” which I remember thinking, at seven or whatever, was just the height of wit and okay, so maybe it’s not the absolute height, but it isn’t quite the pits and more important is what you miss by ripping the verses apart like this - that is, the way the whole thing fits together as neatly as - as neatly as what? As a house of cards: It’s clever in its rhymes, its tumble-down rhythms. Listen to me: there is no way to avoid knowing.Īnd as for Pieces of You, look, I will stand by this: “Who Will Save Your Soul” is not a bad song. Browne took issue with either Jewel’s confidence or her “ditsy” playfulness, and as for Christgau, where do I even start? His disgust with what he calls her “abiding love for her own voice” has its corollary in those morons who value, over everything, pretty girls who “don’t know” they’re pretty. Maybe the criticism would be easier to stomach if it didn’t arrive so blatantly steeped in misogyny. Which is not to give every pretty, little whitegirl a free pass to say any and every stupid thing that comes to mind, free of criticism, but merely to point out that the ridicule Jewel faced far exceeded anything actually “cringe inducing” in her work. Nothing inspires this kind of vitriol quite like a young woman describing - without irony, apology, or a very precisely calibrated sexuality - her own, you know, feelings.Īnd god forbid she has feelings about the things she sees around her. “This is my heart bleeding before you,” she howled on “Foolish Games”, and I was right there with her. ![]() Approximately half of Jewel’s appeal was due to the fact that she came from Alaska, where, I assumed, everyone raced dogs, or else why would they live there?Īnd then the other half of her appeal came from her moody, broody songs, which seemed to open up a cavernous space in my moody, little self. Somehow, I had decided that I wanted to be a dog-sled racer (I came from a mid-sized Midwestern college town: not a sled in sight). I had an imagination that was, let’s say, superabundant, and a somewhat tenuous grasp on reality. What I remember is sitting cross-legged on my bedroom floor, tugging stray nubs from the rug as I listened. It was the first album that was mine (next was the Spice Girls’ Spice and then, inexplicably, The Wallflowers’ Bringing Down the Horse after that, I lose track). I was seven or so when Jewel’s Pieces of You was released, which makes me unqualified to write or even think about it in an unbiased way. ![]()
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