ELIMINATI

Jes: "I was sick when we wrote the song."
Jewel: "That's not an excuse. You always fucking do this."
Jes: "I'm not using it as an excuse, I'm just explaining that I was sick."

Jewel: "Yeah, like as an excuse. How is that relevant? I have written songs while stranded in the mountains, skinning catamounts and panthers for their hides and meat. I have written songs while cutting off my own arm to escape a rockslide that pinned me for 127 hours. I have written songs while trapped in a car by a possessed Saint Bernard that symbolizes adultery. I have written songs while pretending to be mentally ill in order to document the inhumane conditions in our mental health care system. I have written songs while engaging in satyagraha, the nonviolent civil resistance that brought freedom to India. I once wrote a song in the middle of a very awkward conversation with Renee Zellweger. Don't you tell me... Don't you even dare..."

Kara: "Jewel, honey. Chill. Basically Jes, that was everything we've come to hate about you. Those barfy dumb lyrics cannot be blamed on your illness. Not unless that illness is Huntingtons."
Jes: "It was me at my worst. I guess I was just so caught up in trying to convince myself and the entire world that I was in love with Johnny that I forgot what the fuck I am here for."

Kara: "There is no way to understand why you're crushed out. You never explained it. You gave no specific qualities."
Jes: "That's what vague, fake love is all about! I literally cannot produce any qualities or features for you. It's all my own junk, spread on a Johnny-shaped piece of bread like solipsistic mayonnaise. He told me we were in love and I was like, 'That sounds fine to me.' How do you write a song about that?"
Judges: "That's how you end up with fake, insincere bullshit that sells itself as though it were momentous. Teen poetry. That's who you're being right now."

Jes: "But Joanna Newsom sings about fruit and whatever, and my voice is actually listenable and not like being slowly crushed by a thousand squeaking chalkboards..."
Jewel: "JES. There is a difference between being simple and being simplistic. You were the latter. The fact that you think you can fool us about that -- or really that you are yourself fooled about that -- tells us everything we fucking need to know."