And while it was often reported that this was because of her scrappy determination to make it in the music business, the singer has now cleared up those associations and the “misrepresentation” of how her music career actually started out.
In fact, now aged 47 and releasing new music, Jewel Kilcher has revealed that her stint living in a car and eventual homelessness was a result of her trying to avoid the advances of a boss who pursued her sexually.
“My whole career, the slant that the media gave it was through a really, I dare say, patriarchal lens,” Jewel said of the situation in an interview with Stereo Gum last week.
“You think of my origin story, right? The whole world knows I lived in my car. They think because I was fighting for my dream of music. That is an absolute misrepresentation of what happened,” she explained.
“I was living in my car because I wouldn’t have sex with my boss.”
Jewel did not name the person or give any clues to his identity.
She explained that she “refused to be leveraged” which meant that her boss wouldn’t pay her so she was unable to pay her rent.
“I refused to be leveraged and he wouldn’t give me my paycheck and I couldn’t pay my rent and I started living in my car and then my car got stolen and I was homeless because of that, because I wouldn’t bang a boss,” she said.
Despite the hardship at the time, Jewel said she is “proud” of that decision to this day and celebrates her younger self’s courage and defiance in the face of such a power imbalance.
“I said that at the time, I said that in every interview, but it was almost like people didn’t even have the ears to hear it. They would just write the story, ‘Jewel lived in her car to pursue her music career.’ That’s not why I lived in my car. I was not even thinking I would be a musician,” she said.
“I was trying to figure out how to stand up for myself, how to refuse to be leveraged for anything or anyone. It was an active defiance, it was an act of courage. It cost me a lot, but it won me myself. It won me my humanity. I’m so proud of that decision. It was so funny to see it portrayed as some cute, fluffy little, ‘Aw, she was fighting for her dream.’”
She added: “I didn’t even have a dream. It’s not what I was doing.”
