Spoilers for the previously aired season of The Masked Singer
90s folk princess Jewel has been speaking out a lot lately about her experience as a young artist navigating the toxic music industry. In an Instagram post last month, Jewel talked about how she was called the “chubby Rene Zellweger” when she first hit the music scene. Jewel is also a staunch advocate for destigmatizing mental fitness. Jewel just won this season’s The Masked Singer and was unmasked as the Queen of Hearts. In a new interview with Yahoo Entertainment, Jewel discussed how being a part of The Masked Singer has helped her rediscover how technically good she is vocally. Jewel said that in her earlier career she only wrote songs that were easier for her sing vocally as she focused on the story. Jewel also recalled how unpleasant it was to deal with some of the shock jocks of the 90s who constantly talked about her body. Below are a few highlights from Yahoo!:
Jewel recalls the overwhelming attention she received for her looks, not her vocals or songcraft, when her debut album Pieces of You came out more than 25 years ago. “I was made fun of in the press — and you know, shock jocks were everywhere because of [the popularity of] Howard Stern. So, I’d go live on the radio and they’d go, ‘You may have heard me describe my next guest as a large-breasted woman from Alaska. Jewel, how are you?’” she says. “But I was raised in Alaska in bars, so I’d learned to stick up for myself. So, when the guy said that on radio, I went, ‘Oh, you must be that small-penis man I’ve heard so much about from South Carolina!’ And I got kicked off the radio, out of the station. You know, people would on radio would be like, ‘How do you give a BJ with those teeth?’ It was nasty, what was happening to girls in the ‘90s. Oh my God, it was rough.”
Jewel was “getting beat down” in the press all the time in those early days, but then touring with an iconic singer-songwriter helped her out of that dark place. “On a personal level, what gave me the courage to keep going was Bob Dylan,” she says. “I don’t think it made a big difference in the public or on radio, but he liked me. He mentored me. He listened to my shows. He brought me down to his dressing room after every show. And he’d go over my lyrics with me. And that blew my mind. I was tired, I was exhausted, and the record was going nowhere, but Dylan really believed in me. He was like, ‘Keep going. It doesn’t matter if you’re successful on radio. Keep going. You’re good.’ So, that gave me the strength.”
I have truly been enjoying the resurgence of my favorite 80 and 90s darlings. Seeing Jewel open up about her life has been a delight. In many ways I thought Jewel was a bit of an enigma in the 90s. I felt like I knew nothing about her, but back then there weren’t any fun gossip sites to get my news from (wink). I am also enjoying how Jewel is taking on the music industry and its toxicity particularly towards women and teenage girls. The more I hear about the music industry in the 90s the more I realize how bad it truly was. I can’t believe how disrespectful some of the DJs and radio hosts were. Like who thought it was a good idea to comment on a singer’s breasts in an introduction on a show? Hearing Jewel recount her experiences infuriates me to no end. The entertainment industry definitely needs to call out abuses like this because it is not looking great from here. I also thought it was amazing that Bob Dylan took Jewel under his wing and helped her navigate her creativity. I didn’t get to watch the last two seasons of the Masked Singer, so I’ll have to call my mom to see what she thought about Jewel as a contestant since The Masked Singer is one of her favorite shows. I hope Jewel continues to expose the music industry. I hope that in telling her story, Jewel will put people on notice while encouraging up and coming singers to defend themselves in the face of misogyny.
