The Jenny Lewis Lane
Jenny Lewis's new record "Joy'Yall" is the definition of classic rock. But where does a record, or an artist like her, even find a lane today?
Good morning.
One afternoon, in the spring of 2019, I was sitting at the table in my junior one bedroom apartment on State Street in Boerum Hill and listening to The Watch podcast, hosted by Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald, on The Ringer Podcast Network.
Anyone that’s spent a little time with me or has read anything I’ve written knows that I’m an absolute shill for anyone who spent any time working at Grantland. So it should be no surprise that I’ve been an avid listener of The Watch (and before that The Hollywood Prospectus Podcast).
The Watch mainly covers TV and movies, but sometimes they dip into music. That spring day in 2019, I was listening to an episode where Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald were discussing Jenny Lewis’s latest record, On The Line. I’d been a Jenny Lewis fan in college. I didn’t listen to much Rilo Kiley, but I’d loved and played songs from her 2006 solo album Rabbit Fur Coat on my radio show. I’d lost track of her career in the mid-2010s. But both Chris and Andy were fawning over her latest record, comparing it to Tom Petty, and my ears perked up.
On The Line soon became my favorite record of 2019. It was the first album that my girlfriend and I ever really shared as a couple. We saw Jenny Lewis live at The King’s Theater in Brooklyn, sitting in drink service seats, and it was one of the best shows I’ve ever seen. We’ve listened to On The Line during road trips through Greece, Norway, Texas, and Austria. The record has become one of those albums that is a part of you, stays with you forever.
This past June, Jenny Lewis released her latest full-length album, Joy’All, and I feel like it kind of came and went and I didn’t see or hear anyone talk about it. Maybe it’s because I don’t really use social media like I used to. AllMusic (the only place I trust) gave it 4 ½ stars, (from the great Stephen Thomas Erlewine, of course) which is a half star better than what they gave On The Line. And I think it may actually be a half star better.
I’ve been listening to the record this summer (and it is an absolutely perfect summer album) and thinking about Jenny Lewis and where she even fits into the music landscape now. And because I am by no means an expert on the music landscape—and probably never was even when I knew a lot about music—I’m going to make a jumbled attempt at trying to explain where I think Jenny Lewis actually fits into the music landscape today. And to be honest, I don’t even know what a music landscape is and that phrase has now lost all meaning to me because I’ve used it so much in this paragraph.
The music Jenny Lewis makes at this phase of her career is basically classic rock with a touch of country. It's not quite modern Americana (which Emily Nussbaum recently explored in contrast to Bro Country in Nashville) like Jason Isbell or even Sturgill Simpson. But it's not quite pop enough or truly contemporary to be Taylor Swift or even Kacey Musgraves. And she’s not a legacy classic rock act even though she shares songwriting similarities to legends like Tom Petty (R.I.P), Bruce Springsteen, and Stevie Nicks.
Tom Petty’s best-selling (non-compilation) album was Full Moon Fever. That record came out in 1989, when Petty was 38 years old. It was his 8th studio album (just counting solo and The Heartbreakers) and he was playing to arenas that fit over 15,000 people. Jenny Lewis is 47 and Joy’Yall is her fifth studio album as a solo artist. She’s supporting Beck and Phoenix this summer on a tour. Meanwhile Taylor Swift’s “Eras” tour is making headlines and breaking records and Kacey Musgraves sold out Madison Square Garden last year.
I can’t even think of an artist who in the lane that Sheryl Crow once occupied. Sheryl Crow broke through in 1994 when “All I Wanna Do,” from her debut album, became a huge hit, peaking at number two on the Billboard Top 100. She was 32 years old. Her self-titled follow up (a Borders CD listening station staple for me) was released two years later, went triple platinum, and she became one of the bigger rock stars of the 1990s.
So what? Right? The middle in the music industry is being squeezed out and has been for years. Straight ahead rock doesn’t sell anymore. The music business, like so many, is broken. Maybe Jenny Lewis’s songs just aren’t hits in the same way that Tom Petty’s were or Sheryl Crow’s have been. Most women artists have gotten the short end of the stick—and in ways I’m sure I don’t even know the half of. The last true rock star was probably Jackson Maine. He was still playing sold out stadium shows at 43. But he was fictional and even in a ridiculous movie that has aged poorly (watch it again, seriously) that was a stretch anyway.
Taylor Swift and Kacey Musgraves deserve all the success they’re having. I don’t like their songs as much as I like Jenny Lewis’s songs and that’s fine. They’re both still very good or great at what they do. I guess I’m just sad that artists like Jenny Lewis and Margo Price (who released a very Tom Pettyish album earlier this year called Strays and had an actual Heartbreaker play on it with her) are doing supporting summer tours instead of selling out bigger venues themselves.
But I really truly don’t know anything and I certainly don’t know how the music business actually works.
What I do know is that Jenny Lewis’s Joy’Yall may just be better than On The Line. I do know that the song “Apples and Oranges” deserves to have a whole stadium singing its chorus in a stadium on an August night that just won’t cool down even though autumn is on the edge of the leaves. I do know that “Cherry Baby” could’ve been on Darkness on The Edge of Town. I know that “Psychos” is another album opener that Warren Zevon would’ve been proud of just like “Heads Gonna Roll” on On The Line.
I do know that it’ll probably come and go like so many things. And that’s a shame. Because it is a quality work of art that is well crafted. I hope somewhere today someone is singing “Apples and Oranges” out an open car window. I might just have to do that once a day until maybe Jenny Lewis plays it somewhere I can see her live in my town.