Hands

"Hands" is the first single released from Jewel's second album, Spirit (1998). Hands was the first single released by Jewel that was not altered from its original album version. However, a radio edit for the commercial release did surface. Radio edits are issued when the label feels the song is running too long for airplay. The radio edit cut the song short by less than a minute. A commercial single was never issued in the United States, and the singles that were issued internationally received the album version. The radio edit can be found only on promos for the single. Even though it was never released in physical format, it still reached number six on the Billboard Hot 100.

Many radio stations play Hands with their all Christmas music format.

Right after 9/11, a DJ remixed the song which was carried on stations across the country. Jewel was in the mountains with her longtime boyfriend, Ty Murray, during the attack. She first heard this version on the radio a few days after the attack. It was one of the first things she heard. She spoke of this experience at a Border's concert in Ann Arbor, MI prior to the release of Perfectly Clear.

Jewel appeared on Late Show with David Letterman just days after the tragedy, on September 18, 2001, and performed this song instead of the previously scheduled "Standing Still".

Music video

The video, directed by Nick Brandt, begins with Jewel driving along on a rainy night when she comes across emergency workers responding to a collapsed apartment building. She gets out of her car and stands with the crowd looking at the rubble and notices other onlookers walking away in horror and hopelessness. She follows others into the rubble and helps dig through the rubble for survivors, finding a man, alive, under the rubble and later three young children trapped inside a room. Throughout the whole video, she remains calm and collected, full of hope, as chaos ensues around her.

She explains the idea behind the video in an interview in 1998:

"I think the director just wanted to picture an earthquake. That gave the video a somber feel to the aftermath of the disaster."

Charts