There isn’t much to love about Jewel’s latest country album. Produced by Nathan Chapman [Taylor Swift], the generally innocuous eleven-song collection (titled Sweet and Wild) is riddled with the kind of heavy-handed lyrical clichés and soft-rock sound that’s come to characterize Jewel’s music since well before her country crossover.
As a songwriter, Jewel’s been struggling to find a voice that fits her ever since her ubiquitous folk-rock debut Pieces of You was released in 1996. That album was a raw affair, unbridled by any sense of craft or convention. She wasn’t writing songs so much as writing poetry, but she pounded out her passions with a few chords and a stirring warble of a voice. To this day, that record remains one of music’s best albums—a musical portrait of an angst-ridden young woman which could have come from no other voice and at no other time in history.
How do you follow up something like that? 1998’s Spirit was a more mature, comfortable effort that found Jewel trying to learn how to be a multi-platinum songwriter. Whereas before, she delivered the musical equivalent to free verse poetry, Spirit came with expectations—both artistic and commercial. The album wasn’t a disaster in either regard, but it wasn’t really the same artist. There may, in fact, be few greater examples of album-to-album contrast than the turmoil of Pieces of You and the relative tranquility of Spirit.
From there, she bounced between pop, light rock and even dance—the genre where she has found her most chart success (thanks to three successive dance #1s). And then there was country.
All along that path, she’s grown to have greater command of songwriting techniques, and she’s expanded her collaborative circle to include some of the most notable creative forces from all genres of music. Yet, she’s never really tapped in to the same well of insight that she drew from when she was younger.
Not until now, not until this one track from this otherwise unremarkable collection. “Ten” (co-written with Dave Berg) is glossy and fully aligned with country music’s mainstream. But it’s also one of the best songs she’s ever written—certainly the best song she’s written in a decade. “Ten” is not just a tight song, it’s a perfect song.
The track boasts a plucky banjo and the faint wail of a steel guitar, but Chapman smartly keeps most of the musical augmentation in a supporting role to Jewel’s incredible voice.
The real story here, however, is just how essential these lyrics are. “Ten” tells the story of a woman who, in the midst of fights with her lover, stops and counts to ten. As she counts through the chorus, we get to hear what goes on in her mind. “One, I still wanna hate you/Two, three I still wanna leave,” she sings.
This isn’t your cookie-cutter “we’ve all got problems” bickering, as typically portrayed on country radio. This is real. This is a drag it out, scream and shout kind of fight. This is the kind of fight that’s so frustrating, so infuriating, so demoralizing, that it just seems like the best thing you can do is pack up your bag and go.
Because anything has to be better than this.
A fight like that spirals out of control, and like a snowball rolling down a mountain, it builds upon itself. The words get meaner and the pain grows deeper.
Jewel reminds us that, in that moment, we have to hold on. And, that if we can just get to ten we might not even remember what we were fighting about in the first place.
“Ten” is smart, sensitive and powerful. Here’s hoping that Jewel—after all of these years—has finally voice that voice she’s been searching for.
I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to dissent with you on this one.
What I will agree with is Jewel’s vocal performance, particularly in the opening verse, which is just devastatingly haunting, and she also delivers the chorus flawlessly. But I also just don’t hear the “Drag it out, scream and shout kind of fight”. At the closing of the second verse, she says: “I have to cross to ten before I cross that line!”………but the second chorus doesn’t feel any more urgent than the first chorus, while the bridge actually eases in tension and the final chorus arguably sounds more subdued than the previous ones where she closes saying “I can see how blessed I’ve been, I’ll chose you all over again…”, in a more detached, resigning tone………..as though she hasn’t grown any stronger or has matured since the three previous episodes………..she’s simply back to square one.
Which gets us to the production of the track. I don’t doubt there’s some deep honesty and truth to this track, but, again, it’s certainly far from the scream and shout kind of fight description in my view. The production is pedestrian (reminds me of much of “Defying Gravity”-era Keith Urban)………..which may not necessarily be overblown but nonetheless tends to sandpaper the emotional drive of this track (that said, it’s hard not to imagine even the generally more emotionally cool crying hearing the opening verse in a stripped-down, acoustic form)
I understand how sentimental impressions and feelings of love can leave a wounded heart taking actions that are contradictory to the rawness of their words, and it is for that reason why I believe “Ten” is an honest song. However, I’m leaning Thumbs Sideways here, due to the lack of intimacy in the overproduction………..and because while I think it would obviously be forced to stamp a Hollywood ending to a song like this and suggest she finally summoned the courage to pack her bags and leave or, conversely, mention the remorse her husband feels and reconcile with her…………the ending simply feels unsatisfactory to me in that the protagonist really hasn’t grown any wiser, discerning or conscious of what SHE really wants.
The dissent is registered an appreciated! Appreciate your comment, as always. I think you’re misreading the song, and I really disagree with you about the production. I’m not sure how you can call this “over produced” by any metric other than one where no electric instruments are used. In comparison to everything else on country radio, this is pretty sparse.
I mean overproduced in that it lacks an intimacy to it and the gloss overwhelms the content, and if placed in an Adult Top 40 playlist with the likes of Train, Daughtry and Melissa Etheridge (who all have contemporary-country leanings in their sound) Jewel’s voice is the only thing that would make it stand out among the rest of the crop, which to me isn’t enough to save the song from slipping into a homogenous mass of middle-of-the-road country-tinged adult-leaning pop. It still sounds pleasant enough to me and it’s refreshing that it’s free of the loudness wars curse, but then again “pleasant” doesn’t exactly suit a song of this depth well.
I agree this song can be open to varying tints of interpretation from a lyrical perspective, for the following reason. Even though it is plain to see there is a sign of distress from the protagonist’s point of view regarding the state of the relationship………………..we also don’t know if it’s something more singular and commonplace as a verbal disagreement that incited perhaps an off-hand insulting remark or series of arguments that hurt the protagonist and motivated her to consider leaving on impulse before realizing misunderstandings and awkward, uncomfortable moments will happen in relationships and so stays……………..or if this is something more patterned and chronic, such as emotional abuse, and the circularity of an abusive relationship from her point of review is implied in the lyrics, yet remains attached to the abuser and struggles to find the courage to break the cycle, because she feels some degree of compassion for him beneath the surface as the closing couplet could suggest. I think either interpretation makes sense, frankly, and I can also surmise why those more inclined to believe the former scenario more are less likely to be critical of the composition than those who believe the latter (I’m leaning more toward the latter myself, for the reason being she, after all, counts during each chorus, which suggests the tension is more constant now and the fact she regularly has thoughts of leaving offers credence to the view that she is a victim of some kind of emotional abuse, at the very least something that routinely troubles her that’s more rooted than any singular heated argument).
That said, I can see why the purpose of having the counting-up chorus can be interpreted as simply reinforcing the point of the song to radio listeners………..that you “can lose what you’re not thankful for” and that you “should count your blessings”. It’s quite possible I’m reading too deeply here myself, I admit…………but I can’t help but be struck by the lyrics in the second verse of words being thrown like weapons and cutting so deep to the point someone wants to leave everything behind………..and believe there’s a darker undercurrent to this song.
Wow guys, pardon me for interrupting this meeting of “POEM” (ie Professional Organization of English Majors) which I normally only encounter on “A Prairie Home Companion”! I didn’t realize there was a Nashville Chapter…
All I have to say about Jewel’s new song is that I’ll give it a 7 out of 10 as I like the beat and it’s easy to dance to…
Ha, Rick! You actually made me laugh this time.
As a former English major, however, I enjoyed the exchange.:)
Is one every really a former English major? ;-)
I love this song. While not all of Jewel’s country material has been A-list material, I do think her voice sounds great paired with country instrumentation. I would love to hear more of her on country radio. This is one of her strongest country singles yet.
Good point. I just never really mastered it.:)
Isn’t this technically the THIRD single?
(1. Stay Here Forever – 2. Satisfied – 3. Ten)
“Stay Here Forever” is regarded as the lead single from the “Valentine’s Day” soundtrack primarily, though it might as well be regarded as the lead-off single from “Sweet & Wild”.
It’s really no different than regarding “Anything Like Me” as either the lead single from Paisley’s forthcoming “Hits Alive!” hits retrospective, or the fifth single from “American Saturday Night”.