''Sweet and Wild'' is the ninth studio album by American recording artist
Jewel. It was released on June 8, 2010, through
Valory Music Group
Ross Lamont Valory (born February 2, 1949) is an American musician who is best known as the original bass player for the rock band Journey (band), Journey from 1973 to 1985 and again from 1995 to 2020. Valory was inducted into the Rock and Roll H ...
as her second country album with the label. The song "
Stay Here Forever" was released as a single from the soundtrack of ''
Valentine's Day
Valentine's Day, also called Saint Valentine's Day or the Feast of Saint Valentine, is celebrated annually on February 14. It originated as a Christian feast day honoring one or two early Christian martyrs named Saint Valentine and, throu ...
'' and as the lead-off single to the album. It was a minor Top 30 hit on the U.S. ''Billboard'' Hot Country Songs chart. The album's second single, "
Satisfied", was released on May 17, 2010,
[Jewel's Satisfied radio date release](_blank)
All Access Retrieved 26-04-2010[Jewel's Satisfied release](_blank)
AOL Radio Blog Retrieved 03-05-2010 and debuted at #59 on the U.S. ''Billboard'' Hot Country Songs chart for the week of June 19, 2010. The album debuted at number eleven on the
''Billboard'' 200, with sales of 32,000 copies.
About the album
Jewel is maintaining her country roots as she returns to the format with her second follow-up album, ''Sweet and Wild''. The album, written and produced by Jewel, was released on June 8. The first single, "Stay Here Forever," has been embraced by critics and the video is a success on
CMT and
GAC
GAC or Gac may refer to:
Companies and organisations
* GAC Group, a Chinese automotive company based in Guangzhou, Guangdong
* GAC Ireland, an Irish bus manufacturer established with Bombardier (1980–1986)
* Games Administration Committee, a ...
.
"The theme of this album is finding what's true about you and your life, and defending it and valuing it above all else," said Jewel. "My newest country album will share so many of my personal feelings of love and happiness that I have written into the songs," said Jewel, who married her longtime boyfriend
Ty Murray
Ty Monroe Murray (born October 11, 1969), is an American nine-time World Champion professional rodeo cowboy. He was one of the top rodeo contestants in the world from the late 1980s to early 2000s. He is an inductee of the ProRodeo Hall of Fame ...
in the summer of 2008. Jewel will also embark on a tour sponsored by
Country Financial
Country Financial (capitalized trademark COUNTRY Financial) is a group of US insurance and financial services companies with customers in 19 states. The group of companies offers a range of insurance and financial products and services, includ ...
to support ''Sweet and Wild''.
Track listing
The official track listing was announced on
Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. ( ) is an American multinational technology company focusing on e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. It has been referred to as "one of the most influential economi ...
.
Deluxe edition
The album's deluxe edition is a 2 disc package that includes the standard album, and an album with the original live acoustic versions of the tracks.
Disc 1
#"No Good in Goodbye"
#"I Love You Forever"
#"Fading"
#"What You Are"
#"Bad as It Gets"
#"Summer Home in Your Arms"
#"Stay Here Forever"
#"No More Heartaches"
#"One True Thing"
#"Ten"
#"Satisfied"
Disc 2
#"No Good in Goodbye" (acoustic)
#"I Love You Forever" (acoustic)
#Fading" (acoustic)
#"What You Are" (acoustic)
#"Bad as It Gets" (acoustic)
#"Summer Home in Your Arms" (acoustic)
#"Stay Here Forever" (acoustic)
#"No More Heartaches" (acoustic)
#"One True Thing" (acoustic)
#"Ten" (acoustic)
#"Satisfied" (acoustic)
#"Angel Needs a Ride" (iTunes pre-order track)
Personnel
* Nick Buda –
drums
A drum kit (also called a drum set, trap set, or simply drums) is a collection of drums, cymbals, and other Percussion instrument, auxiliary percussion instruments set up to be played by one person. The player (drummer) typically holds a pair o ...
*
Nathan Chapman –
acoustic guitar
An acoustic guitar is a musical instrument in the string family. When a string is plucked its vibration is transmitted from the bridge, resonating throughout the top of the guitar. It is also transmitted to the side and back of the instrument, ...
,
classical guitar
The classical guitar (also known as the nylon-string guitar or Spanish guitar) is a member of the guitar family used in classical music and other styles. An acoustic wooden string instrument with strings made of gut or nylon, it is a precursor o ...
,
electric guitar
An electric guitar is a guitar that requires external amplification in order to be heard at typical performance volumes, unlike a standard acoustic guitar (however combinations of the two - a semi-acoustic guitar and an electric acoustic gui ...
,
steel guitar
A steel guitar ( haw, kīkākila) is any guitar played while moving a steel bar or similar hard object against plucked strings. The bar itself is called a "steel" and is the source of the name "steel guitar". The instrument differs from a conve ...
,
keyboards
Keyboard may refer to:
Text input
* Keyboard, part of a typewriter
* Computer keyboard
** Keyboard layout, the software control of computer keyboards and their mapping
** Keyboard technology, computer keyboard hardware and firmware
Music
* Musi ...
,
percussion
A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Exc ...
, background vocals
*
Eric Darken
Eric A. Darken is an American percussionist, composer, and programmer.
Biography
Drawing inspiration from his grandfather, a band leader. Darken began playing drums at age 12, and played timpani and mallets in high school. Darken attended ...
– percussion
*
Stuart Duncan
Stuart Duncan (born April 14, 1964) is an American bluegrass musician who plays the fiddle, mandolin, guitar, and banjo.
Life
Duncan was born in Quantico, Virginia, and raised in Santa Paula, California, where he played in the school band. He ...
–
fiddle
A fiddle is a bowed string musical instrument, most often a violin. It is a colloquial term for the violin, used by players in all genres, including classical music. Although in many cases violins and fiddles are essentially synonymous, th ...
* Jason Freese –
glockenspiel
The glockenspiel ( or , : bells and : set) or bells is a percussion instrument consisting of pitched aluminum or steel bars arranged in a keyboard layout. This makes the glockenspiel a type of metallophone, similar to the vibraphone.
The glo ...
,
mellotron
The Mellotron is an electro-mechanical musical instrument developed in Birmingham, England, in 1963. It is played by pressing its keys, each of which pushes a length of magnetic tape against a capstan, which pulls it across a playback head. A ...
* Ken Halford – acoustic guitar,
piano
The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...
*
Jewel – acoustic guitar, lead vocals, background vocals
* Mike Johnson – steel guitar
* Tim Lauer –
accordion
Accordions (from 19th-century German ''Akkordeon'', from ''Akkord''—"musical chord, concord of sounds") are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone type (producing sound as air flows past a reed ...
,
flute
The flute is a family of classical music instrument in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, meaning they make sound by vibrating a column of air. However, unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is a reedless ...
,
Hammond B-3 organ
The Hammond organ is an electric organ invented by Laurens Hammond and John M. Hanert and first manufactured in 1935. Multiple models have been produced, most of which use sliding drawbars to vary sounds. Until 1975, Hammond organs generated s ...
, piano,
synthesizer
A synthesizer (also spelled synthesiser) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis and ...
* Tim Marks –
bass guitar
The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and ...
*
Jimmie Lee Sloas
Jimmie Lee Sloas is an American session musician, producer, and songwriter, who plays bass guitar.
History
Jimmie Lee Sloas, born in Ashland, Kentucky, grew up in Fairborn, Ohio and Isonville, Kentucky. His father, Dave, was a member of the p ...
– bass guitar
*
Ilya Toshinsky
Bering Strait was a Russian country music band, whose style was sometimes called "redgrass". In 2003, the band was nominated for a Grammy Award and appeared on the TV show ''60 Minutes''. The group disbanded in 2006. The lineup on their first alb ...
–
banjo
The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. The membrane is typically circular, and usually made of plastic, or occasionally animal skin. Early forms of the instrument were fashi ...
, acoustic guitar, keyboards,
mandolin
A mandolin ( it, mandolino ; literally "small mandola") is a stringed musical instrument in the lute family and is generally plucked with a pick. It most commonly has four courses of doubled strings tuned in unison, thus giving a total of 8 ...
, percussion, piano, programming, synthesizer
*
Jonathan Yudkin
Jonathan Yudkin is an American multi-instrumentalist who is a proficient player of banjo, violin, mandolin, and other stringed instruments. He is a Nashville-based session musician, record producer, arranger, and band leader.
Biography
Growin ...
– string arrangements,
strings
String or strings may refer to:
*String (structure), a long flexible structure made from threads twisted together, which is used to tie, bind, or hang other objects
Arts, entertainment, and media Films
* ''Strings'' (1991 film), a Canadian anim ...
Critical reception
Upon its release, ''Sweet and Wild'' received generally positive reviews from most music critics. At
Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...
, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received a better than average score of 62, based on 6 reviews, which indicates "generally favorable reviews".
Stephen Thomas Erlewine
Stephen Thomas Erlewine (; born June 18, 1973) is an American music critic and senior editor for the online music database AllMusic. He is the author of many artist biographies and record reviews for AllMusic, as well as a freelance writer, occ ...
from
AllMusic
AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databas ...
gave the album 4 out of 5 stars, saying that "She’s saved here--on both the produced main album and its bare-bones acoustic cousin on the deluxe version, which isn’t as different as it might initially appear--by her essential sweetness, which shines through in her melody and mellow moods that aren’t sullied by a hint of wildness". The ''
Slant Magazine
''Slant Magazine'' is an American online publication that features reviews of movies, music, TV, DVDs, theater, and video games, as well as interviews with actors, directors, and musicians. The site covers various film festivals like the New York ...
'' review says that "While "''
Perfectly Clear
''Perfectly Clear'' is the seventh studio album recorded by American singer Jewel. Her first album of country music, it was released on Valory Records (an imprint of Big Machine Records) on June 3, 2008 (see 2008 in country music).
Album descri ...
''" suggested that she has the potential to make a great country album, but the uneven ''Sweet and Wild'' certainly isn't it". The ''
Boston Globe
''The Boston Globe'' is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes, and has a total circulation of close to 300,000 print and digital subscribers. ''The Boston Glob ...
'' review noted that "Jewel offers basic country tropes both musical (twanging Telecasters, whining fiddles, banjoes bubbling underneath the surface, train-track rhythms) and lyrical (with references to both
Wal-Mart
Walmart Inc. (; formerly Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.) is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets (also called supercenters), discount department stores, and grocery stores from the United States, headquarter ...
and a dying soldier imparting wisdom) in the hopes of rousing the market base she first courted on 2008’s ''Perfectly Clear''".
Greg Kot
Greg Kot (born March 3, 1957) is an American music journalist and author. From 1990 until 2020, Kot was the rock music critic at the ''Chicago Tribune'', where he covered popular music and reported on music-related social, political and busines ...
from ''
Entertainment Weekly
''Entertainment Weekly'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''EW'') is an American digital-only entertainment magazine based in New York City, published by Dotdash Meredith, that covers film, television, music, Broadway theatre, books, and popular cul ...
'' gave a B- evaluation, saying that "The pedal steel and fiddle sound like add-ons designed to get her played on country radio, and a few of the melodies could've been hijacked from a Nashville jingles factory. But there's some moving midlife melancholy beneath the surface, especially on the startling 'Fading'".
Singles
The song "
Stay Here Forever" was released as a single from the soundtrack of ''
Valentine's Day
Valentine's Day, also called Saint Valentine's Day or the Feast of Saint Valentine, is celebrated annually on February 14. It originated as a Christian feast day honoring one or two early Christian martyrs named Saint Valentine and, throu ...
'' and as the lead-off single to the album. It was a minor Top 40 hit on the U.S. ''Billboard'' Hot Country Songs chart, reaching a peak of #34 on the chart. The album's second single, "
Satisfied", was released on May 17, 2010,
and debuted at #59 on the U.S. ''Billboard'' Hot Country Songs chart for the week of June 19, 2010. "
Ten
Ten, TEN or 10 may refer to:
* 10, an even natural number following 9 and preceding 11
* one of the years 10 BC, AD 10, 1910 and 2010
* October, the tenth month of the year
Places
* Mount Ten, in Vietnam
* Tongren Fenghuang Airport (IATA code ...
" was released as the album's third single on September 13, 2010, and debuted at #55 for the week of October 16, 2010.
Notes
Jewel previously recorded a duet with
Jason Michael Carroll
Jason Michael Carroll (born June 13, 1978) is an American country music artist. After being discovered at a local talent competition in 2004, Carroll was signed to the Arista Nashville label in 2006, releasing his debut album ''Waitin' in the C ...
on his first album ''
Waitin' in the Country
''Waitin' in the Country'' is the debut studio album by American country music artist Jason Michael Carroll. It was released on February 6, 2007 by Arista Nashville. The album has produced three singles on the '' Billboard'' Hot Country Songs cha ...
'' called "No Good in Goodbye". It is a completely different song from the one featured on this album.
The album's fourth track "What You Are" was chosen to be part of the runway-soundtrack for the 2010
Victoria's Secret Fashion Show
The Victoria's Secret Fashion Show was an annual promotional event sponsored by and featuring Victoria's Secret, a brand of lingerie. From 1995 to 2018, Victoria's Secret used the show to market its goods in high-profile settings. Models under ...
.
Chart performance
Due to digital pre-orders of the album, it debuted one week before official release at #64 on the ''Billboard'' Top Country Albums chart. On the
''Billboard'' 200, the album debuted at #11 as well as #3 on the ''Billboard'' Top Country Albums chart, with sales of 32,000 copies in its first week. As of November 2010, the album has sold 76,907 copies in the U.S.
Year-end charts
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sweet And Wild
2010 albums
Jewel (singer) albums
Big Machine Records albums
Albums produced by Nathan Chapman (record producer)