Spirit - Jewel (CD 1998)

She's a platinum snowqueen who seems to think her stint spent living in her van makes her qualified to spin advice on how we can save our souls.

When will they learn?

Jewel has been called a neo-Joni Mitchell, but what separates Mitchell from Jewel is Mitchell is actually a good poet, not just a famous one.

Jewel spends most of Spirit wasting our time, calling us to acknowledge that even though we're "fragile flames", we're still "all OK." Well, of course Jewel's okay. If my last album had sold over 14 million copies, I'd be a whole lot closer to OK, and not just P.O.'ed.

I do not have a problem with positive thinking....well, okay, a little...but if it's presented in a truly poetic means, I'll happily take it. Jewel's lyrics read like a 9th grader's, with trite metaphors and cliched adjectives. No wonder she's inspired legions of fans to pick up their pens and scribble out the contents of their brittle little hearts, no matter how many mediocre thoughts entertain it.

Jewel tries to be witty. She interrogates the infatuated in "Do You" by putting an ironic lilt to her comforting vox, but it has the sharpness of cheddar and that's it. Whereas Sheryl Crow can lyrically point to a picture portrayed in her songs and elicit a "yeah, that really is stupid. How funny." response, Jewel seems only able to scream for your approval of her disdain.

You would think she would make up for her lyrics by providing us with good music to accompany them. But no. No, every song is a rehashed version of "Folkie's Delight", and you have to wonder what makes her think she can keep remaking "You were meant for me" and get away with it.

Then there's the prerequisite show-the-world-how-to-sympathize song, and in this case it is "Fat Boy", which does more to insult the protagonist than help him. She's got that gift, I guess. "Pieces of You", the title track of her last album was a precursor to this travesty of a song. If I'm ever down on my luck, remind me never to let Jewel do a song about me. I couldn't take the blow to my self-esteem.

Jewel is an amazing singer live (I saw Hard Rock Live and got suckered into buying this record.) So, tape the live stuff. Her studio work is full of pompous pontification, and I, for one, am sick of singers telling me they've found a reason to live.