SPEEDWAY, INDIANA: Pop and country star Jewel's performance of the national anthem at the Indianapolis 500 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Sunday, May 28, has been slammed by fans, who thought it was "jazzed up" and "butchered." Earlier this month, Jewel was named the anthem singer.
Jewel has made the headlines several times in the past, including once when she said she was demeaned by former MTV anchor Kurt Loder in a 1998 interview. The songwriter said Loder spoke of her poetry book condescendingly and corrected her for misusing a word.
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'What an a*s to show himself like that'
Loder interrupted Jewel while discussing her then-new poetry collection 'A Night Without Armor,' disagreeing with her usage of the word “casualty” in a poem. At the time, Jewel said in response, "You’re a smart-a** for pointing that out.”
“I was so pissed,” she later said, according to Page Six. “He was just a di**. What an a*s to show himself like that. It was almost that thing where you’d feel sorry for somebody — it’s like, ‘Wow, here’s a full-grown man who does news for children, on a children’s network, for teenagers.’ Yeah. You’re bitter.”
Jewel also said, "My whole career, the slant that the media gave it was through a really, I dare say, patriarchal lens.” She added, "You think of my origin story, right? The whole world knows I lived in my car — they think because I was fighting for my dream of music. That is an absolute misrepresentation of what happened.”
When Kurt Loder apologized
Loder later apologized for the infamous MTV interview. "That MTV interview I did with Jewel was a shitty thing to do to anyone, and I’ve been ashamed of having done it ever since. If I could go back in time I’d smack me in the head. However, I’m not a college graduate…," he said in a statement.
