A near-death experience prompted Johnny Jewel to destroy 15,000 CDs and 10,000 vinyl records of the long-promised Chromatics album Dear Tommy, Jewel's manager Alexis Rivera revealed yesterday on Twitter, as originally reported by Pitchfork.
Dear Tommy was originally announced in December 2014, followed by a string of track releases. Then, on Christmas Day 2015, Jewel nearly died, according to Rivera's account, declining to say how. "When he came back home to California he destroyed all copies of Tommy," Rivera tweeted. "15K CDs & 10K vinyl in the Italians warehouse in Glendale, all gone.” This wasn't even the first time he'd literally trashed an album – in April 2011, he destroyed vinyl and CD copies of the last Chromatics album, Kill For Love, before its eventual release.
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Jewel then set to work re-recording Dear Tommy; no release date has been announced. “Dear Tommy has the same titles, same lyrics, same track order, as when it was announced Dec of 2014," Rivera wrote. "Nothing's changed except it's better.”
Read the tweets below via Pitchfork.
The FADER has reached out for comment. Nearly all of the previously shared Dear Tommy songs have been removed from the internet, except for the Adult Swim Single Series track "Shadow," streaming below.
