Jewel Is ‘Picking up the Pieces’ With Personal New Album

Jewel is returning to her acoustic singer-songwriter roots with a new album that draws from the changes she's been through in her personal life over the last few years.

Picking up the Pieces is Jewel's first singer-songwriter album in five years, and it returns the artist to the stripped-down acoustic sound and powerful, personal lyrics that defined her career-making Pieces of You album.

The 41-year-old had plenty of experience to draw on for the record. In the last five years, she's given birth to a son, only to see her marriage dissolve. She decided to produce the new collection herself, keeping her late producer, Ben Keith, in mind as she approached the songs in the studio. She worked with a number of musicians associated with Neil Young to get the raw emotional feel that she was going for.

“This is just me. These are my thoughts. These are my feelings. This is my poetry,” she says in a press release. “It really felt like returning to a part of me that I didn’t mean to lose, but with time and relationships and life and surviving and dealing, you take on new things and not all of them are great.”

Picking up the Pieces chronicles those highs and lows with songs like “Love Used to Be” and “Mercy,” and Jewel also included unrecorded songs that are longtime live fan favorites like “Carnivore” and “Boy Needs a Bike.” The album also includes “My Father’s Daughter,” a powerfully autobiographical collaboration with Dolly Parton.

The result is an album that she hopes is not diluted. “I was trying to keep my mind quiet and honestly get back to something I feel like I’d lost touch with in my life," she states. "It was really an exercise in shutting out fear. I was giving myself permission to be exactly who and what I was.”

Picking up the Pieces is slated for release on Sept. 11 via Sugar Hill Records. It is currently available for pre-order online.

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