Train

Train won another GRAMMY award in 2011 for their global hit “Hey, Soul Sister” from their multi-platinum album Save Me, San Francisco. “Hey, Soul Sister” was the No.1 best-selling smash and most downloaded single of 2010 and achieved RIAA Diamond status. Train has sold more than 10 million albums and 30 million tracks worldwide, with multiple platinum/gold citations, including three GRAMMY Awards, two Billboard Music Awards and dozens of other honors. They’ve had 12 albums on the Billboard 200 albums chart with their 2014 Bulletproof Picasso reaching No. 4 in 2012 and 2017’s a girl a bottle a boat debuting at No. 8. “Play That Song,” the lead single from a girl a bottle a boat, went platinum in four countries including the U.S., hit Top 5 on the US iTunes chart, Top 10 at Hot AC radio, and charted at Adult Top 40. Train frontman, Pat Monahan, partakes in other ventures outside of music, including his award-winning wine portfolio, Save Me, San Francisco Wine Co, which was created in 2011 and has sold over 10 million bottles and won over 100 medals. Proceeds from his wine business support Family House, a San Francisco charity that supports families of children with cancer and other life-threatening illnesses. 

On her new album Freewheelin’ Woman, Jewel presents her boldest and most unbridled body of work to date, revealing entirely new dimensions of her breathtaking voice. In giving life to such a powerful selection of songs, the four-time Grammy Award-nominated artist immersed herself in a process she refers to as a spiritual rewilding—a reawakening of the raw creative energy that first set her on her path as an ever-evolving singer/songwriter.

“It can be such a fight to cut through learned structure, older versions of yourself, ideas about what a hit song should or shouldn’t be,” says Jewel. “Even if we try to avoid becoming overly tamed, at some point we start to know too much. So the trick is to suspend all of that and create something you love, something that excites you. It took a lot of writing and digging and self-reflection, but I was finally able to do that with this album.”

The follow-up to Jewel’s self-produced and critically praised 2015 album Picking Up the Pieces, Freewheelin’ Woman finds the Alaska native working with producer Butch Walker (Taylor Swift, Gavin DeGraw, Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness), dreaming up a soulful and groove-heavy sound partly inspired by the classic R&B records made at Muscle Shoals. “I cut my teeth on singers like Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan and got into those Muscle Shoals records a little later on, and for some reason that’s where my voice and my writing wanted to go on this album,” says Jewel, who recorded Freewheelin’ Woman live with a full band. Along with lending the album a gritty vitality, that approach helped to capture the unfettered vocal work she’s increasingly brought to her live show in recent years. “It’s a bit like riding lightning to push your voice to the edge of control,” she says. “I’ve always been a much better singer live, but I think I’ve gotten further along in cracking the code of bringing that emotionality to the studio. Part of that has to do with writing more intentionally for my voice and trying to push myself vocally this time, in a way I never really had before.”

At turns triumphant, fragile, and gloriously fierce, Jewel’s voice is a perfect conduit for the personal catharsis documented on Freewheelin’ Woman. “A lot of these songs have to do with overcoming something difficult and then celebrating that, or taking the long way around to get to the place that feels right to you,” she says. On “Dance Sing Laugh Love”—the album’s uplifting and luminous centerpiece—Jewel’s vocals hit a particularly thrilling intensity as she shares her insight on living in resistance to cynicism. “When I wrote ‘Dance Sing Laugh Love,’ it was with the goal of writing a smart, inspiring pop song that isn’t about a relationship,” she says. “To me being a singer/songwriter means that at least half of your songs have to be love songs to humanity, about where we are as a culture. I believe that pop songs can bring comfort and inspiration and create connection, and that’s what’s always driven me to write.” 

The first piece Jewel penned for Freewheelin’ Woman, “No More Tears” feat. Darius Rucker set the standard for the album’s illuminating quality. In its soul-stirring homage to those who’ve endured hardship of all kinds, the song unfolds in warm gospel harmonies and smoldering piano melodies, taking on an exquisite power as Jewel and Rucker’s vocals merge at the bridge. “The melody and hook for that one came to me at around 2 a.m., and I got up and sleepily scratched it out and finished it the next day,” recalls Jewel. “It’s a song that both tells a story and challenges me vocally, and it took me a few years to find the songs that I felt lived up to it.”

One of the most pensive moments on Freewheelin’ Woman, “Half Life” brings Jewel’s finely detailed storytelling to a portrait of a married couple painfully disconnected from their own desires (“Half a glass of wine and half a cigarette/Half the truth and see how far you get”). Another heavy-hearted track, “Almost” arrives as a stripped-back meditation on memory and longing, with Jewel’s voice channeling a tremendous sorrow. “It’s a song about the loss of love, and it kills me every time—I can’t get through it without crying,” she says.

Elsewhere on Freewheelin’ Woman, Jewel embodies an irresistibly elated mood. A wildly catchy pop confection, “Alibis” revels in the radiant clarity that comes from conquering heartache, her voice telegraphing a carefree self-possession at the track’s sing-along-ready chorus. “That song reminds me of the pop and R&B records I grew up on—I wrote it as a very tongue-in-cheek way of saying goodbye to someone who’s lying,” she notes. And on “Living With Your Memory,” Jewel speaks to a phenomenon she describes as “somebody’s memory being a better lover than the reality of any man,” evoking a spirited sensuality in the song’s combustible rhythms, swaggering horns, and fiery vocal work.

Closing out with the anthemic “Nothing But Love,” Freewheelin’ Woman arrives as the latest unpredictable turn in a career defined by constant evolution. Upon making her debut with 1995’s 12-times-platinum Pieces of You—one of the best-selling debuts of all-time—Jewel experienced a meteoric rise that brought her to global stardom while earning the admiration of such legendary musicians as Bob Dylan and Neil Young (both of whom invited Jewel out on tour). Hailed by the New York Times as “one of the best singer-songwriters since Joni Mitchell,” she’s since made a point of exploring new possibilities in her songwriting and sound while staying resolutely focused on self-preservation. “There’s a reason I’ve taken years between albums: it’s to grow, read, have a life, develop as a person,” she says. “All of that lends itself to the next body of work, but it’s also so important to give yourself that time to psychologically adjust, instead of staying on that hamster wheel. We watch so many of our artists struggle, especially female artists; it’s such a drug-addled, suicide-ridden business. And my goal was to avoid that, to not become a statistic.” A passionate mental-health advocate who struggled through a period of homelessness as a teenager, Jewel has worked with the Inspiring Children Foundation for nearly two decades to provide mentorship and mental-health resources for at-risk youth. During the pandemic, Jewel expanded her outreach to help those in need build community and connection and, in turn, protect against the silent symptoms of COVID-19: anxiety, depression, and isolation.

Looking back on the making of Freewheelin’ Woman, Jewel regards the album as the most recent milestone in her lifelong devotion to following her truth. “When I first got signed, I was homeless and trying to figure whether this was a career that could actually work for me,” Jewel says. “I knew that I wanted to be an artist, and that meant I had to be willing to grow, adapt, change, and go wherever I felt my heart needed to go—which often isn’t where managers or labels or even fans might say you should go. And I’m proud that now, at 46, I can look back and know that I’ve never done anything contrived for the sake of trying to be successful. Everything I’ve done, I did it because it was fun for me—and this record was really fun.”