YMMV / Jewel

• Americans Hate Tingle: Jewel was huge in her home country, but hardly made a dent in the United Kingdom, only scoring two Top 40 hits there, with "You Were Meant for Me" and "Down So Long"
• Anvilicious: "Pieces Of You" (the song) almost literally beats you over the head with its anti-prejudice message. Granted, it's a good message. But, dear Lord, does the song find a forcefully ugly way of preaching it.
• Broken Base: Some of her fans react in a horrified fashion when she breaks into a different genre of music, most notably 0304 and again when she switched to a more country sound.
• Critical Backlash: Particularly seen with 0304, despite its commercial success (though much lower than its predecessors).
• Critical Dissonance: Critics gave Pieces Of You mostly lukewarm reviews, but that didn't stop the album from selling more than 10 million copies in the US alone and granting Jewel a Grammy nomination for "Best New Artist." The album has, since, been somewhat Vindicated by History as described below.
• Fanon Discontinuity: A lot of her fans pretend her 2003 album 0304 never existed.
• Funny Moments:
  • "Race Car Driver" (the song plus the attached story)
  • Jewel in The Roast of Rob Lowe.
  • "Intuition", if not for the satire, then definitely to the complete WTF of a Genre Shift.
    • At one point, the music video parodies MTV's Total Request Live by putting a quote from a fictitious fan in the captions, in which they gush that "Jewel's music sounds much better now that she's dancing".
• Narm: The titular song for "Pieces of You" had some weird lines, "You say he's a Jew, as though being born were a sin. Oh Jew, oh Jew, do you hate him Cause he's pieces of you?" And it's preceded with "ugly girl" "pretty girl" and "faggot" pretty much the same way.
• Signature Song: "Who Will Save Your Soul", "You Were Meant for Me", "Foolish Games", and "Hands".
• Tear Jerker: "Adrian" is already a rather sad song about a young man left in a vegetative state after a boating accident, but one particularly devastating lyric perfectly captures what it's like to watch someone else go through a tragedy, feeling like you should say something but having no idea what.
  "Everyone in town has that 'I'm so sorry' face."
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Many times, but the biggest one would have to be 0304, which was mainstream electropop. Previously, she garnered success with folk music and her debut Pieces of You. It absolutely ALIENATED fans.
• Vindicated by History: "Pieces Of You", upon release, garnered mostly So Okay, It's Average reviews from critics and was largely ignored by the public. However, the album quickly shot to the top of the charts a whole two years later after "Who Will Save Your Soul?" became a radio staple. The album continued to sell like hotcakes, eventually reaching Diamond certification in the United States (a rare feat for any album, let alone a debut). Critics have also retrospectively given the album more favorable reviews, with SputnikMusic giving it a 5 Star "Classic" rating in a 2011 review and AllMusic Guide also retrospectively reviewing the album positively.

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