I feel like history caught up with me when it comes to my #9 album of 2003, Jewel’s 0304.

The earnest acoustic singer-songwriter’s abrupt move into dance-pop territory was greeted with suspicion and derision at the time. Jewel was called a sell-out who embarrassed herself by embracing her sexuality and exploring a musical genre so far outside her wheelhouse. But I kinda loved it.

Reading about this album today, I’m seeing a lot of critics who admire and defend it, and acknowledge that it was misunderstood and unfairly attacked.

Sometime in the mid to late 2000’s, the “poptimism” movement in music criticism took over, and artists such as Beyoncé and Taylor Swift were taken as seriously as the rock heroes of previous decades. The previous dismissal of “lightweight” pop music was exposed as snobbery, often rooted in sexism.

Indeed, much of the criticism hurled at Jewel for 0304 was obnoxiously misogynistic.

Had this album come out a decade later, would it have been received with open arms like, say, Swift’s left-turn pop release 1989?