Jewel

Jewel Kilcher (born May 23, 1974), mononymously known as Jewel, is an American singer-songwriter.

She has received four Grammy Award nominations and, as of 2021, has sold over 30 million albums worldwide.

Jewel was raised near Homer, Alaska, where she grew up singing and yodeling as a duo with her father, Atz Kilcher, a local musician.

At age fifteen, she received a partial scholarship at the Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan, where she studied operatic voice.

After graduating, she began writing and performing at clubs and coffeehouses in San Diego, California.

Jewel Kilcher was born May 23, 1974, in Payson, Utah, the second child of Atz Kilcher and Nedra Kilcher ( Carroll).

At the time of her birth, her parents had been living in Utah with her elder brother, Shane; her father was attending Brigham Young University.

She is a cousin of actress Q'orianka Kilcher.

Her father, originally from Alaska, was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, though the family stopped attending church after her parents' divorce when she was eight years old.

Her paternal grandfather, Yule Kilcher, was a delegate to the Alaska constitutional convention and a state senator who settled in Alaska after emigrating from Switzerland.

He was also the first recorded person to cross the Harding Icefield.

Shortly after Kilcher's birth, her family relocated to Anchorage, Alaska, settling on the Kilcher family's 770 acre homestead.

There, her younger brother Atz Jr. was born.

She also has a half-brother, Nikos, who was primarily raised in Oregon by his mother, with whom her father had a brief relationship; Jewel would later become close to him in adulthood.

After her parents' divorce in 1981, Kilcher lived with her father near Homer, Alaska.

The house she grew up in lacked indoor plumbing and had only a simple outhouse.

The Kilcher family is featured on the Discovery Channel show Alaska: The Last Frontier, which chronicles their day-to-day struggles living in the Alaskan wilderness.

Recalling her upbringing, she said: "'We lived far from town. We had to walk 2 mi just to get to the saddle barn I was raised in... No running water, no heat—we had a coal stove and an outhouse and we mainly lived off of what we could kill or can. We picked berries and made jam. We caught fish to freeze and had gardens and cattle to live on. I rode horses every day in the summer beneath the Alaskan midnight sun. I loved it there.'"

According to Kilcher, the first song she learned to sing was "Saint Louis Blues".

In her youth, Kilcher and her father sometimes earned a living by performing music in roadhouses and taverns as a father-daughter duo; they also often sang at hotels in Anchorage, including the Hotel Captain Cook and the Hilton Anchorage.

It was during this time that Kilcher learned to yodel from her father.

She would later credit the time she spent in bars as integral to her formative years: "I saw women who would compromise themselves for compliments, for flattery; or men who would run away from themselves by drinking until they ultimately killed themselves."

At age fifteen, while working at a dance studio in Anchorage, she was referred by the studio instructor to Interlochen Arts Academy in Interlochen, Michigan, where she applied and received a partial scholarship to study operatic voice.

Local businesses in her hometown of Homer donated items for auction to help allocate additional funds, and raised a total of $11,000 to pay the remainder of her first year's tuition.

She subsequently relocated to Michigan to attend Interlochen, where she received classical training, and also learned to play guitar.

She began writing songs on guitar at age sixteen.

While in school, she would often perform live in coffeehouses.

After graduating, she relocated to San Diego, California, where she worked in a coffee shop and as a phone operator at a computer warehouse.

For a time, Jewel lived in her car while traveling around the country doing street performances and small gigs, mainly in Southern California.

She gained recognition by singing at the Inner Change Cafe and Java Joe's in San Diego.

Her friend Steve Poltz's band, the Rugburns, played the same venues.

She later collaborated with Poltz on some of her songs, including "You Were Meant for Me".

Based on local media attention, she was offered a recording contract with Atlantic Records, which released her debut album, Pieces of You, in 1995; it went on to become one of the best-selling debut albums of all time, going 12-times platinum.

The debut single from the album, "Who Will Save Your Soul", peaked at number 11 on the Billboard Hot 100; two others, "You Were Meant for Me" and "Foolish Games", reached number two on the Hot 100, and were listed on Billboards 1997 year-end singles chart, as well as Billboards 1998 year-end singles chart.

Her subsequent album, Spirit, was released in 1998, followed by This Way (2001).

Jewel has also had endeavors in writing and acting; in 1998 she released a collection of poetry, and the following year appeared in a supporting role in Ang Lee's Western film Ride with the Devil (1999) which earned her critical acclaim.

In 2021, Jewel won the sixth season of The Masked Singer as the Queen of Hearts.

In 2003, she released 0304, which marked a departure from her previous folk-oriented records, featuring electronic arrangements and elements of dance-pop.

In 2008, she released Perfectly Clear, her first country album; it debuted atop Billboard's Top Country Albums chart and featured three singles, "Stronger Woman", "I Do", and "'Til It Feels Like Cheating".

Jewel released her first independent album, Lullaby, in 2009.