Jewel's debut album, Pieces of You, is a haphazardly put together collection of music which resulted in an absolutely beautiful product. Most songs recorded on it are taken from previous recordings of live playing, and the cuts between tracks are poor in a couple of places, but the result is to provide an album with far more integrity than most releases, aimed at studio purity. All three hit songs from this album, You Were Meant for Me, Who Will Save Your Soul, and Foolish Games, were re-recorded prior to single release, and the preferential version of all seems oddly to be the re-recording.
Jewel is a highly spiritual, highly beautiful person who, though seemingly innocent in tone and subject matter, has an astonishing level of reality in viewpoint; she possesses a Christian leaning, but tempers it with a solidly grounded perspective which is uncommon among Christian artists.