While we were sleeping, Jewel, who first graced the cover of Rolling Stone in 1997, tweeted this to her 387K followers: "Just got turned down at karaoke. The gal in charge wouldn't let me sing cause someone else sang the song earlier. Is there a secret code?"
Just got turned down at karaoke. The gal in charge wouldn't let me sing cause someone else sang the song earlier. Is there a secret code?
— Jewel (@jeweljk) February 19, 2015Our response pretty much echoes @AmazedByTay13 who wrote, "Does she even know who you are???" Because we kind of know everything about the Alaskan-born Ms. Jewel Kilcher — including every single lyric to every single song on Pieces of You, her 1995 debut album that went 15 times platinum and won the singer-songwriter four Grammy noms. The angst-ridden music video for "Who Will Save Your Soul" made us briefly consider a hardscrabble career of playing guitars in dirty bathrooms — that's how much we loved Jewel, the sweetheart version of our other '90s idol, Kate Moss.
The truth is, on life's brutal list of shutdowns, getting snubbed at a karaoke bar sits low. But, for the 40-year-old legend (and delightful The Sing Off judge), it's got to sting. After all, this is the same woman who, in that same '97 Rolling Stone feature, was described as "a mighty, crystalline wonder. Each time [her voice] soars, the crowd goes apeshit; the majority are teenage girls, who scream and scream."
One can only hope that the disgrace happened at some nondescript L.A. karaoke bar in K-Town (the sort that leaves you smelling of fried chicken) and that the "gal in charge" didn't recognize Jewel — and that those, um, thoughtless words weren't breaking her heart.
Now, just one question: Can somebody else on Twitter ask Jewel which song she had requested to sing? Our own tweet remains unanswered.