Three months before she turned 21, Jewel’s debut album on Atlantic Records, Pieces of You, arrived in stores. It was unusual in that a majority of the album was captured live at the Innerchange coffee house in San Diego, while five of the 14 tracks were recorded in Neil Young’s studio with producer Ben Keith. The year the album came out, 1995, saw young artists like Hootie and the Blowfish, Alanis Morissette, and Shania Twain all break big.
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Jewel would follow in their footsteps two years later; her breakthrough would take a little longer to build as she slogged it on the concert circuit. But she had a logistical advantage—she originally just needed to tour with her guitar—and despite the emotional exhaustion she faced, encouragement from Bob Dylan and Neil Young, whom she both toured with in 1996, boosted her spirits. The public gradually became aware of her.
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Pieces of You would go Gold a little over a year after its release in May 1996, achieve Platinum sales in August, hit 6 million sold domestically by the end of 1997, and double that tally by 2006. The follow-up album, Spirit, sold 4 million copies, and she has scored another Gold and two more Platinum albums. Her 2008 album Perfectly Clear went to No. 1 on the Billboard country charts, as well. Jewel remains active on the touring trail and still plays to large audiences.
The song that kicked it all off? “Who Will Save Your Soul.” While its follow-up, “You Were Meant for Me,” a more traditional love ballad, became the bigger hit, the former song and video were what drew people in, and its message resonated at a time when vapid American materialism and stock market obsession was swelling.
When Jewel appeared on the Howard Stern Show in February 2013, she explained the song was written while she was “hobo-ing” around the country at the age of 16 during a two-week spring break from her fine arts school. She didn’t realize she couldn’t stay in her dorm during that time, so she decided to go on a solo adventure with her guitar.
The Alaska native had grown up in a small town where community and connection were more important than wealth and power, and as she busked on the streets to pay her train fare to the next destination, she began to experience the urban experience in places like Chicago that she had not encountered before.
“I thought I’d hobo by train across the country to San Diego, and I’d hitchhike from Tijuana to Cabo and then take a ferry to the mainland side of Mexico,” Jewel recalled to Stern. “I got on a Greyhound from Traverse City to Detroit. I stepped into the night in the Detroit city bus station, so that’s a miracle in itself. Then got on a train and I made it to Chicago.
“That was my first stop, and my plan was to street-sing, except I didn’t know anybody’s music. I had just learned chords—A-minor, C, G, and D—and I just started making up lyrics. My dad had taught me to improvise as a kid and just improvise about what was happening. So I’d made up lyrics about people walking by. It’s my first time in a city, my first time seeing skyscrapers, my first time seeing pop culture … I come from a rural community that’s very grounded, very down to earth, and there wasn’t this worship of television and things and wanting to be other people.”
While busking her way across America, Jewel would take the change she earned to Amtrak and see how far down the line she could get. “It was about three days to San Diego and then I hitchhiked from Tijuana down to Cabo and then took a ferry to the mainland side,” she explained. “I took trains all through the Copper Canyons, and I just kept writing the song and it got longer and longer and longer. And that ended up becoming ‘Who Will Save Your Soul.’”
She later told Elle magazine that she whittled the lyrics down from 300 verses she had penned. It was the first song she ever wrote. The lyrics paint a clear picture:
Another day, another dollar
Another war, another tower
Went up where the homeless had their homes
So we pray to as many different gods
As there are flowers
The low-budget, predominately black-and-white video for the song was shot in a bathroom and featured Jewel performing as a variety of characters who emerged there. The clip connected with her traveling experiences.
“I would go in bathrooms and just chill out,” Jewel told Elle in 2016. “I was a very shy, introverted, yet determined young person, and I was sensitive. I was built to be a writer and not necessarily a road dog, so I found it really hard. I used to go in bathrooms and just kind of chill and meditate and gather myself, and so I decided to shoot the video in a bathroom because it makes for the best people-watching.”
Her spontaneous odyssey of discovery paid off. “Who Will Save Your Soul” made it to No. 11 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart and lasted 30 weeks, while Pieces of You peaked at No. 4 on the Billboard Top 200 albums chart, persevering there for 114 weeks and eventually selling 12 million copies domestically. The Diamond-certified album received a four-disc box set reissue from Craft Recordings in 2020.
Jewel still enjoys performing the first hit song that started it all, and says she’s found new meaning and relevance in it over time. Given how topsy-turvy our world has gotten with phenomena like widespread economic insecurity and social media whiplash, “Who Will Save Your Soul” serves as a refreshing reminder that spiritual emptiness and adherence to the rat race doesn’t have to rule the day.
Photo by Duane Prokop/Getty Images for Wellness Your Way Festival
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