Jewel is maintaining her country roots as she returns to the format with her second follow-up album, Sweet and Wild.

"My newest country album will share so many of my personal feelings of love and happiness that I have written into the songs," said Jewel, who married her longtime boyfriend Ty Murray in the summer of 2008.

Stephen Thomas Erlewine from AllMusic gave the album 4 out of 5 stars, saying that "She’s saved here--on both the produced main album and its bare-bones acoustic cousin on the deluxe version, which isn’t as different as it might initially appear--by her essential sweetness, which shines through in her melody and mellow moods that aren’t sullied by a hint of wildness".

The Slant Magazine review says that "While "Perfectly Clear" suggested that she has the potential to make a great country album, but the uneven Sweet and Wild certainly isn't it".

The Boston Globe review noted that "Jewel offers basic country tropes both musical (twanging Telecasters, whining fiddles, banjoes bubbling underneath the surface, train-track rhythms) and lyrical (with references to both Wal-Mart and a dying soldier imparting wisdom) in the hopes of rousing the market base she first courted on 2008’s Perfectly Clear".

Greg Kot from Entertainment Weekly gave a B- evaluation, saying that "The pedal steel and fiddle sound like add-ons designed to get her played on country radio, and a few of the melodies could've been hijacked from a Nashville jingles factory.

Jewel previously recorded a duet with Jason Michael Carroll on his first album Waitin' in the Country called "No Good in Goodbye".