"Fucking everyone! You gotta go with your instincts." Jewel is a modern American phenomenon and she knows it. Jewel's success is a combination of talent and hard work. She began to perform in little Innerchange Cafes where everybody wanted to be. Her live performances were very good and very rapidly she got her first album contract with Atlanta Records.

Jewel has dyslexia. I think when you realize this, her whole success is really made by herself. when Jewel wanted to learn how to play the guitar, she had to practice 20 times as hard to learn to play the damn guitar. Jewel parents divorced at age eight. For the most part Jewel lived with her father till age seventeen with the exception of a brief period at age twelve. During this period she lived with her aunt in Hawaii. Jewel went to Interlochen Arts Academy, in Michigan, for her last year or two of high school. She got some money by doing shows which was being organized by her mother. She owned a horse called Clearwater. She had to sell it because she needed the money. In the starting years of her career she sung a lot in bars and restaurants. Her mother had taught her about art, poetry and music. Jewel began writing poetry as an outlet after her parents divorce. Jewel said about writing : 'the real beauty of writing makes you more intimate with yourself'.

Jewel begged and got Interlochen Fine Arts Academy to change their policies and performed Spoon River Anthology as the lead, a dead woman who talks from the grave. During High school she spelled her name Juel and never painted nails of wear lipstick. She did a vocal scholarship. Later she moved to San Diego, California. She returned to this city after her graduation. After being a waitress, some dead-end jobs and scrounging around for money, she finally lived in her van and ate some carrots and Peanut butter. This was an interesting life for a teenager. Her mother had her own VW van as well. They traveled along California singing for pocket change. Living on a shoestring budget, she decided to live her dream by surfing, writing poetry, and hanging out at coffeeshops writing songs. All she owned was a backpack, a surfboard and a mattress.

Playing in Innerchange coffeehouse in her homestead, made her meeting many friends and eventually got discovered. In the first period when she did concerts in this Innerchange Coffeehouse she performed once a week an hour. Soon her shows were consistent sell-outs and local writers started stopping by. " The big day when the record exec's came to listen to Jewel, she figured she needed to wash her hair". She went to Denny's and washed it in the sink. "Her voice is many things, all of them beautiful", wrote San Diego's Slamm Magazine. " When she opens up, the sound is crystalline and pure".

Her first album 'Pieces of You' contain 14 terrific songs that possess a stark honesty and keen insight balanced by an ability to absorb life's realities and tell a story that somehow make sense of it all. The first released single in the US was Who will save your soul, of which the lyrics came from observing the people around her. A bigger success came from her second released single You were meant for me. This song brought her the first awards and really made my interest begin in Jewel. The latest single that was released of this record was Foolish games, the video of this song is beautiful. Jewel riding on horses and the dancers makes a special impression of the many talents Jewel has.

Jewel's music uses her vibrant imagination, which is fueled, by the vast Alaskan wilderness, the musical instincts of a lifelong performer, and the courage to cut her own path in life, Jewel embodies a singular poetic voice. But if you listen closely to Pieces of You, you may well discover a piece of yourself lying somewhere within the songs.

Jewel is so special, that everybody is hoping that her second album is as good as her first record. Jewel has also the capabilities to act in movies, in 1998 she begins the shooting of a movie which will be in the cinemas in the autumn of 1998.

Her cry of beauty and innocence is eternal and for every human meant. Her idea of beauty, is so strong it's sadly rare in our society of rush and always searching for big success. Her success is counting six million album sales and counting are proof her success to all the people who like her songs. A compelling cache of subtle, slow-burning, stark and sensitive songs attest to her talent.

Jewel is a remarkable person - especially for one so young - and an unusual, if not unlikely, star. She has unshakeable self-belief, gritty determination and the stubborn strength of character to do what she wants her way. "I'm not in this to try and be adored", she declares softly. "I'm in it because i want to live everyday doing something that I love".

Almost twenty-four years old, she is both precocious pop icon and post-new age earth babe. She intended to make Pieces of You a really uncommercial record, which has been true. 'When my album was to be released everything was still kind of grunge-orientated because i think the musical climate has changed in America, not only in the industry, but also with the fact 'You can only feel terrible for so long before you start saying : what can I do about it?"

What Jewel did before her true success came was touring four years, 500 shows a year. Sometimes i did visit 40 cities, every 30 days, driving myself in an rental car, do high-schools in the morning, radio and in stores, things like that during the day, open for a gothic band at night, and do a coffeeshops show of my own at midnight. Such intense dedication has paid off handsomely, and Jewel now has a growing collection of industry awards, a multi-platinum album, two top-ten singles (each for about 4 months in the Billboard charts) and songs on a number of soundtracks, including a recent one on 'Batman and Robin".

Displaying a maturity beyond her years, Jewel's story is being true. It's paradox that the success of 'Pieces of You' now threatens to complicate, and possibly ever hinder her progress and artistic development. I'm not in a normal situation, she acknowledges. Wishing he record business wasn't so precious. I wish i could put out an EP or a record every six months, because i would love to, but i'm on a big label and it just isn't practical or profitable. An almost unfeasibly prolific songwriter, most of Jewel's 300 songs are available on bootleg in America.

Jewel is also involved in setting up a charity organization called Higher Ground. Her mother Nedra, who now acts as her co-manager is helping her with this project. She said about this project : 'I'm very dedicated to using whatever influence I can to improve qualities of lives, because somebody took an interest in my life and nobody had to", she says. Fame will come and go, and know success will come and go. I just want to keep being able to live with myself...i want to live bravely before I die. If i'm full of shit, i want at least to feel like i didn't compromise.

Jewel is on the edge of signing a $ 2 million book publishing deal with Harper Collins for a volume of poetry and a scrapbook of her childhood. I think when this is being released every Jewel fan should have this copy of her story to success.