Songoftheday 7/23/21 - If I could tell the world just one thing it would be that we're all OK...

 

 

"Hands" - Jewel

from the album Spirit (1998)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #6 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 15

 

Today's song comes from Alaskan folk-rock muse Jewel, whose debut album Pieces Of You spun off three big hits with "Who Will Save Your Soul" and the two-fer single "You Were Meant For Me" and "Foolish Games".  After putting out a book of poetry in 1998, Jewel returned to music later that year with her sophomore effort Spirit. The lead single from the set, "Hands", matched the folkish instrumentation and light spirituality with her debut hit. The music video was way heavy-handed, with Jewel helping to save people in a collapsed apartment building, but it was still early in her career and her wide-eyed optimism was given a pass. The backdrop of the song is quite beautiful, and distracts from the sometimes-Hallmark lyrics...

"Hands" returned Jewel to the pop top ten for what would be the most recent time so far in January of 1999. The single spent five weeks at #2 on Billboard magazine's Adult Top-40 format chart, and rose to #7 on the Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") radio list. Internationally, the single went to #1 in Canada, and reached the Top-40 in New Zealand (#19), Australia (#25), and the Netherlands (#35), while just missing the mark in the UK (#41). The Spirit album, released in November of 1998, peaked at #6 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, going on to sell over four million copies.

Despite the good reception to "Hands", Jewel's follow-up single, "Down So Long", stalled down at #59 on Billboard's Hot 100 pop chart in America, though it rose to #10 on the Adult Top-40 radio list. That was followed by "Jupiter (Swallow The Moon)", which was redone with Madonna producer Patrick Leonard for the single release. It popped on to the Adult Top-40 chart for a week at #39. Jewel will be back to this series.

(7/10)

(Click below to see the rest of the post)

Here's Jewel performing "Hands" for the Tonight Show in 1998...

Next up, live at Woodstock 99...

When Jewel released her Christmas album in 1999, she tweaked "Hands" for her seasonal TV spot...

A week after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, Jewel appeared on Letterman to promote her new album but ended up singing "Hands" instead...

Fast forward to a concert from 2008...

And lastly, from here quarantine 25th anniversary of Pieces Of You in 2020...

 Up tomorrow: Punkers gone pop are getting viscous.