You're listening to song exploder where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishikesh, your way.

One of the weird things about making a podcast is that I spend most of my time by myself in front of a computer

talking into a microphone with no one else in the room and having no idea who might be listening to it or where they are or what they're like.

But I thought I could ask you to maybe tell me a little bit about yourself and do it in the most personal way possible through an anonymous survey.

It would actually really be very helpful to get to know a little bit more about you and to get some of your feedback about the podcast.

So if you have two minutes to do that, please visit survey.prx.org slash song.

Again, that's survey.prx.org slash song.

Thank you so much.

This episode contains explicit language.

When I was in high school, my girlfriend made a mixtape for me.

The first song on it was You Were Ment for me from the debut album of a singer named Jewel.

I probably listened to that mixtape a hundred times over the next few months.

So I knew the song really well.

A little while later, I started hearing it on the radio, but it sounded different.

And then later I heard yet another version, and that was different too.

For years, I had no idea why the song kept changing.

But then I got the chance to do this episode and ask Jewel directly.

Jewel is a singer-songwriter from Homer, Alaska, who's received four Grammy nominations and sold over 30 million albums.

The 25th anniversary of that debut album of hers, Pieces of You, came out last month in November 2020.

It turns out it wasn't a runaway success, not at first.

So in this episode, Jewel traces the history of making You Were Ment for me, starting with the demo,

and moving through all the different versions that were made along the way to becoming a massive hit song.

...