Background
After refashioning herself as a dance-pop diva on 2003's 0304, which debuted at number two on the Billboard 200 chart, Jewel back to safe territory with "Goodbye Alice in Wonderland". Like 0304, the 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."
According to Allmusic's senior editor Stephen Thomas Erlewine, assisted by producer Rob Cavallo -- who has produced records for Michelle Branch and the Goo Goo Dolls -- Jewel has created her most sonically appealing record, one that has plenty of different shades and textures.
The record finds the singer-songwriter exploring a number of musical styles—from the country tinge of "Stephenville, TX" and upbeat pop of "Satellite," to the folksy opening one-two punch, "Again and Again" and "Long Slow Slide." "I'm a Gemini," Jewel says to explain her range. "I have a lot of moods."
To give her moods a flow, she programmed Alice's thirteen songs—all recorded live—as if the album were a concert. "I start in a certain place," she says, "bring it up into sort of a rock set, and then I come back down."
Jewel opted not to renew her contract with Atlantic Records at the end of 2006, and because of this it became official that Goodbye Alice in Wonderland would be her final studio album of new material with them.
Read more about this topic: Goodbye Alice In Wonderland
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