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What's the soundtrack of your youth? In ELLE.com's new column, Best Song Ever, we revisit the tunes that made us who we are. In today's installment, the immortal "Who Will Save Your Soul" by Jewel. (Previously: The Backstreet Boys' "I Want It That Way.")

Admitting that I love "Who Will Save Your Soul" by Jewel is a little like carbon-dating myself, but I don't care about that too much, because this shake-your-shit up ditty is everything to me. The world first heard this Alaskan canary singing in the mine of consumerism, celebrity-worship ("People living their lives for you on TV / They say they're better than you and you agree"), and spiritual emptiness in 1995, and it filled a metaphysical chasm that many of us suspected we had. One might even say it saved our...never mind.

Anyway, 2016 has been a big year for Jewel Kilcher. In September, her memoir Never Broken came out in paperback, accompanied by the Never Broken website—an "emotional fitness destination" aimed at helping people change their lives. She also recently returned to her family's homestead for the first time in six years in the Discovery Channel's Alaska: The Last Frontier. In the midst of all that, we spoke to Jewel about the song that started it all.

"Who Will Save Your Soul" was the first song Jewel ever wrote.

"I wrote it when I was 16 so I could hitchhike to Mexico for spring break, like all parents hope their children will do one day. I was going to school in Michigan and couldn't afford to go back home to Alaska during the break, and so I decided to make lemonade out of lemons, or whatever.

I got a guitar and played A minor, C, G, and D in that order—I couldn't go out of order because I didn't know how. I didn't have an ear, much less know enough chords to learn songs off the radio, but it was easy for me to improvise and make up lyrics, because I was raised improvising with my dad, even though I'd never really written a song. It took about four days to get to San Diego and then I crossed the border and hitch-hiked down to Cabo, San Lucas and then sang on the docks there and gave foot rubs—whatever I had to do to get ferry money."

It was originally much, much longer.

"It had like 300 verses originally, I think, and I just kind of pared it down."

She thinks the celebrity worship she referenced in the song still exists—and always has.

"Throughout history, there's always been the opportunity to perceive or think that something outside of us is better than us. To perceive and think that something outside of us, if we just put our face in it, can save us instead of us really doing the work that it takes to be a good person. Before there was celebrity in America, there were different types of celebrity. Before there was social media and television, there was royalty.

Our version of it is just a lot more immediate. Now you do have advertising agencies taking advantage of a very human plight, which is this idea of, 'Am I capable? How do I learn if I'm capable? Do I need somebody else to tell me I'm capable?" I think that struggle is in the human DNA and it's been going on since the beginning of time."

Even though Jewel performed as a child, she never thought she'd make a career out of it.

"I was raised singing on stage and other people seemed to like my singing, but I never once thought, 'Oh, this is gonna be a career for me.' I mean, I was a kid in the wilderness of Alaska, so it just—it's funny. I never looked in the mirror—well, we didn't have a mirror [laughs]—but I never held a hairbrush and thought, 'This will be my microphone, I'm gonna be a star one day,' you know? Even when I started singing in coffee shops in San Diego, the only reason I did it is because I got fired from work because I wouldn't have sex with the boss.

I ended up living in my car until I got a new job and then my car got stolen, and then I had sick kidneys, and I just doubled-down on songwriting, thinking maybe I could get a gig singing somewhere, because that's what I did with my dad growing up."

It might be a classic now, but people didn't catch on to "Who Will Save Your Soul" straight away.

"It took a long time. It wasn't an overnight success. Radio just kept saying no—this was at the height of grunge. It sounded like absolutely nothing on the radio and so I got a big fat no for 12 months. I think I did at least 700 shows a year. I did two in three cities a day; I did four and five shows a day. I would do a show in the morning playing high schools, and then I would go sing at a record store, and then I'd go sing—I remember singing at like a shoe store. It took a lot of work to make that one fly, but I had nothing else to do, you know? I was just gonna be living in a car.

But I believed in what I was doing. I felt like, you know, I was facing the same thing culture was facing, which was angst, and how do you handle it. And what are we doing with ourselves? I think at least a good year after we put the record out, it finally started to get some traction on the radio."

There's a very specific reason the video was filmed in a restroom.

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"It was a really cheap video; we did it for almost nothing. I had been very, very homesick for Alaska and so I used to carry some Tupperware around of dirt from Alaska. [laughs] So hippie.

And I would go in bathrooms and just chill out. I was a very shy, introverted, yet determined young person and I was sensitive. I was built to be a writer and not necessarily a road dog, so I found it really hard. I used to go in bathrooms and just kind of chill and meditate and gather myself, and so I decided to shoot the video in a bathroom, because it makes for the best people-watching."

How does Jewel feel about the song now?

"I'm 42 and I wrote it when I was 16, so you'd think I'd be sick of singing it, but I actually really enjoy singing that song still. I find new meaning in it, a new relevance in it every time I sing it. So, I'm proud of it; I have a sweet spot in my heart for it just because it was my first and it started me on this path."

Is there anything she would tell her younger self?

"I would say don't have your mom manage you...and I would say you're gonna be okay, and relax. I always thought hyper-vigilance would keep me safe. I thought if I stayed hyper-vigilant and I worried and I tried to look ahead for the next bad thing that would happen, it would keep me safe. And you actually don't get to avoid pain in your life. You might avoid some, but you'll find others. That's just part of life. What actually kept me safe was how I handled pain, and I didn't know that at the time. I just stumbled on that one."

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