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 Hirway.
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 Meant 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 Meant 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.
I'm Jewel.