Songoftheday 3/12/24 - I'm just a simple girl In a high tech digital world, really try to understand all the powers that rule this land...

 

 

"Intuition" - Jewel

from the album 0304 (2003)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #20 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 12

Today's song comes from singer/songwriter Jewel, who had went from her indie-folk roots on her multiplatinum debut to veer into the adult pop lame, reaching the top-40 on Billboard's Hot 100 in the beginning of 2002 with "Standing Still". But there was definitely foreboding that her musical path would go even more leftfield, as one of the follow-up singles, "Serve The Ego", was transformed into a club banger, and ended up hitting #1 on Billboard's Dance Club Play chart. 

In the spring of the following year, Jewel returned with her fifth studio release 0304, mostly produced by Lester Mendez, who would be more known for helming the likes of pop vixens Nelly Furtado and Shakira. The lead single from the record, "Intuition", was co-written and produced by Jewel and Mendez. The lyrics start off from inserting current pop trend buzzwords like J-Lo and Kate Moss, under the guise of the materialistic capitalist culture in the Bush era. However that's all flushed down the toilet when it's revealed the single was part of a marketing campaign for a shaving razor of the same name, which followed the equally blatant co-op of Celine Dion by auto maker Chrysler for her remake or Roy Orbison's "I Drove All Night". With "Intuition", though, at least it was an original co-written by Jewel, who fits in a younger bracket. And with incessant promotion, the song did have a measure of success; but in the long run sullied Jewel's standing in the folk and rock communities where she started to be cast as just another one of the "slut babes" her song railed against. The production starts oddly with an accordian before the wall of noise swirls around the singer. The music video had Jewel vamping it up in the city streets. It's definitely aiming to be a parody, but leans so heavily into the joke that it's just ending up looking bizarrely self-exploitative...

"Intuition" did manage to crack the pop chart, climbing into the top-20 on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 in July of 2003. On the radio, the song peaked at #7 on the Mainstream Top-40 chart and #5 on the older-skewing Adult Top-40 airplay list. There were also a myriad of dance remixes of the track, which helped Jewel spend a week at #1 on the Dance Club Play chart, as well as get to #9 on the Dance Airplay radio list. Internationally, the single reached the top ten in Australia (#4) and the Netherlands (#9), and made the top-40 in Romania (#15), Spain (#17), and New Zealand (#17), while stalling down at #52 in the United Kingdom. The 0304 album, released in June of that year, had Jewel reach her highest rank on the Billboard 200 sales tally in its first week at #2, but ended up selling just under a half million copies (her first set not to go platinum). 

The follow-up single from the record was "Stand", which failed to make the Hot 100, but did get to #37 on the Adult Top-40 radio chart. But again, it was Frankensteined into a club track, and landed a third #1 Dance Club Play hit for the singer/songwriter. It also climbed to #21 in Australia. That was followed by "2 Become 1", which pleased at #33 at the Adult Top-40 format. 

The reception to 0304 seemed to have shocked Jewel, who waited three years before re-emerging with a more organic and personal album Goodbye Alice In Wonderland in 2006. The record, her sixth and final on Atlantic Records, came in at #8 on the Billboard 200. The first single "Again And Again" popped on to the Hot 100 at #80, while becoming a minor hit on the older radio formats of Adult Top-40 (#16) and Adult Contemporary (#37). A second try, "Good Day", rose to #30 on the Adult Top-40 list. 

Leaving Atlantic, Jewel took hints from her older-skewing audience and steered her music into the country genre, signing on with the Valory label. She had dabbled in Nashville before, guesting on icon Merle Haggard's single "That's The Way Love Goes" in 1999, which went to #56 on Billboard's Country Songs airplay chart. She also was married to rodeo star Ty Murray, which gave her an "in" with the culture already. With the help of former Lonestar member (and future right-wing clown) John Rich, Jewel released Perfectly Clear in 2008, which peaked at #8 on the Billboard 200 and topped their Country Albums list for a week. Three of its tracks got enough airplay to place on the Country Songs radio chart, with lead single "Stronger Woman" cresting at #13. The following year, Jewel with the help of Fisher-Price independently released Lullaby, a collection of softly-produced songs aimed at the children's market, which got to #117 on the Billboard 200. 

In 2010, the singer put out a second country album on Valory, Sweet And Wild, which came in at #11 on the Billboard 200 and #3 on the Country Albums chart. The first single "Stay Here Forever" reached the Country Songs top-40 at #34. The follow-up, "Satisfied", went to #57 on country radio, and crossed over to the Adult Contemporary chart at #27. "Satisfied" was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Female Country Vocal Performance, losing to Miranda Lambert for "The House That Built Me". The third release from the set, "Ten", is her most recent Country Songs chart appearance at #51. 

Since then, Jewel has released a second children's album, another holiday album in Let It Snow, which hit #43 on the Billboard 200, and a studio album on the Sugar Hill label, Picking Up The Pieces, which made the Billboard 200 top-40 at #28 in 2015. A couple years prior, when her former label released a Greatest Hits collection, a previously unreleased song, "Two Hearts Breaking", climbed to a respectable #13 on the Adult Contemporary airplay chart.  She's dabbled in "reality/competition" TV, winning a season of The Masked Singer as well as being on the stunted American version of Eurovision in 2022. That same year, Jewel released her most recent studio album, Freewheelin' Woman, which took a week on Billboard's Current Album Sales chart at #89.

(4/10)

(Click below to see the rest of the post)

Here's Jewel performing "Intuition" on The Tonight Show to promote the album...

Next up, one of the club remixes from Todd Terry which helped the song top the dance chart...

And lastly, for the AOL Sessions web series...

Up tomorrow: This country crossover band doesn't want to hush.