Happy 20th: Jewel, Pieces of You
20 years ago, Jewel Kilcher – the “Kilcher” is silent – released her debut album, Pieces of You, to general indifference.
No, seriously.
Not that it didn’t eventually go platinum 12 times over, of course, but if you look back at Jewel’s chart history, you can see how the Pieces of You story unfolds, and it’s a considerably longer tale than you might’ve realized.
Although the album first landed on record store shelves on February 28, 1995, to say that it was something less than an overnight success is a significant understatement: the first single from the album, “Who Will Save Your Soul,” didn’t even see release until June of the following year. Once that happened, though, the buzz on Jewel began to build. After that song resulted in her first top-20 single (it topped out at #11 on the Billboard Hot 100), she scored an even bigger hit with the follow-up single, “You Were Meant for Me,” which went all the way to #2, and she matched its success with “Foolish Games.”
Of course, it’s pretty hard to match the success of an album that sells 12 million copies, so it likely won’t surprise you that nothing Jewel has released since Pieces of You has come anywhere close to shifting the same number of units, but she’s still got quite a loyal following: her next five albums all hit the top 10 of the Billboard Top 200…well, except for her 1999 Christmas album, Joy: A Holiday Collection, but that one hit #2 on the Holiday chart (yes, it’s really a thing), which is almost as good.
