Goodbye Alice in Wonderland

2006年5月2日，珠儿发行了第6张专辑《Goodbye Alice In Wonderland》。尽管人们对这张专辑的评价不一，但这张专辑仍然在公告牌专辑排行榜上名列第8名。这张专辑在发行后的第一周达到82,000张的销量。主打单曲《Again and Again》在广播成人歌曲前40名排行榜（Adult Top 40 Radio）上获得成功，最高达到16名。第2首单曲《Good Day》于6月下旬在电台播放，并且在成人流行歌曲排行榜（Adult Pop Songs）上最高位列第30名。Yahoo! Launch上出现的她的下一首单曲《Stephenville, TX》的音乐电视。在拍摄了她在德克萨斯州的农场后，珠儿决定让摄影师库尔特·马库斯为歌曲《Goodbye Alice in Wonderland》拍摄音乐电视。《Market Wire》商业期刊上的一篇评论称，因为珠儿的公共关系小组的广泛宣传，“这份家园摄像剪辑完美地反映了这首歌曲的本来的声音和它浓厚的自传风格的故事。” 截至2006年12月，这张专辑只卖出超过270,000张，使它成为珠儿的第一张未能完成金唱片销量的唱片。CMT的音乐批评家Timothy Duggan称赞这张专辑说：“这张专辑展示了珠儿作为抒情诗人的独特才能以及她在音乐才能上的成长。如果珠儿那时就有她现在具备的音乐知识的话，那么《Pieces of You》就能达到这首单曲的成就了。总而言之，这首单曲令人非常满意”。 但是，《滚石》称，这张专辑“制作即过火，又欠缺火候”，如果一共有5星的话，只能评2星。 到目前为止，这张专辑的销量仅超过377,000张。 珠儿为新歌《Quest for Love》发行了一个音乐电视，这首新歌是电影《亚瑟和他的迷你王国》（Arthur and the Invisibles）中的主打歌曲。这首歌只能在2007年1月发行的电影《亚瑟和他的迷你王国》的音带上找到。 by Stephen Thomas Erlewine The last time listeners encountered Jewel, the famously sensitive singer/songwriter had just performed an extreme makeover on herself, refashioning herself as a dance-pop diva on 2003's 0304. Artistically, it worked against all odds, and it did pretty well on the charts too, debuting at number two on the Billboard Hot 100, but her fans didn't necessarily warm to it, and three years later, Jewel is running away from the album she proclaimed as her "first record I enjoy listening to" ("It's fun!"), and back to safe territory with 2006's Goodbye Alice in Wonderland. Like 0304, this album comes with an explanation/apology from its auteur: "Goodbye Alice in Wonderland is the story of my life and is the most autobiographical album I have made since Pieces of You...By the end of the 13th song, if you have listened closely, you will have heard the story of the sirens song that seduced me, of a path I both followed and led, of bizarre twists and turns that opened my eyes, forcing me to find solutions so that discovering the truth would not lead to a loss of hope." And, yes, the album is indeed a song cycle, tracing her crisis of the soul in the wake of her dance-pop move, which might make Goodbye Alice in Wonderland sound pompous and self-absorbed, which it kind of is on one level; after all, albums that find an artist examining the fallout of a commercial success that they were a willing participant in are kind of narcissistic. But even if Goodbye is a bit of an unwitting star-trip -- Jewel may be trying to run from stardom, but the issues she explores here are too autobiographical, too much like diary entries to resonate deeply on a larger scale -- it doesn't mean the album doesn't work. In fact, as a piece of music and as a coherent set of songs, it's Jewel's strongest yet. Assisted by producer Rob Cavallo -- who has produced records for Michelle Branch and the Goo Goo Dolls, along with every Green Day album since 1995's Nimrod -- Jewel has created her most sonically appealing record, one that has plenty of different shades and textures. This keeps her ceaseless introspection from sounding like excessive navel-gazing, but it also helps draw out the variety within the songs themselves, which range from the meandering ballad of the title track to the ruminative, moody "Last Dance Rodeo" to the blatantly Dylanesque phrasing of "Stephenville, TX" to a trio of her best pop songs in "Again and Again," "Only One Too," and "Words Get in the Way." True, Jewel still has a tendency to spin out lyrics that are embarrassingly precious, but as a writer she's never been stronger, particularly in terms of the construction of the songs; these are tight, sturdy, melodic songs that are among her most memorable. And not only are the individual moments strong, but they add up to a cohesive, satisfying whole. In that sense, it's not altogether dissimilar to 0304, which she may be apologizing for now, but prior to this album, it was the only one of her records that held together from beginning to end. Goodbye Alice in Wonderland may have an entirely different feel and intent than its glitzy predecessor, but like 0304, it is proof that even if Jewel doesn't have as high a profile, or perhaps as large an audience, as she did in 1996, she's a better songwriter and record-maker than she was at the outset of her career.