I’ll admit that I was a little late in discovering the music of Jenny Lewis, but she’s become one of my favorite artists of all time. Being our featured artist this week, and having just released her third solo album, The Voyager, I put together this playlist with some of, what I consider to be, her best songs.

You probably know Jenny Lewis as the lead singer for the band Rilo Kiley, who formed in 1998. Their biggest radio exposure came from the track “Portions For Foxes” and that’s where I first heard of the band for the first time. Even though I liked the song when I would hear it on the radio, for whatever reason it didn’t make me go and check out their other material. It wasn’t until their album Under The Blacklight came out in 2007 that they made a huge impression on me, and to this day that is still my favorite Rilo Kiley release.

Around that same time, Jenny Lewis had already started pursuing a solo career. She had released her first “solo” album (performing alongside The Watson Twins) a year earlier, in 2006. In addition, she had also provided vocals for The Postal Service album Give Up back in 2003.

My wife and I saw Rilo Kiley in concert for the first time around 2007. We would later see them again at that year’s Coachella festival (something that consistently happened with most of Jenny Lewis’ projects from then on). Since then, we’ve seen her solo three times (including one performance in Washington D.C. during our honeymoon), twice with Jenny and Johnny (her side project with singer Jonathan Rice) and saw her with The Postal Service in 2013.

This playlist includes 18 tracks made up of recordings from Rilo Kiley, Jenny and Johnny, and from her first two solo albums. I hope you end up loving these songs as much as I do! With so much material to pull from, it was hard to narrow it down to about an hour’s worth of music

Some highlights include “Barking At The Moon” (from Disney’s Bolt soundtrack, where Jenny also provided one of the voices), “The Next Messiah” (her epic 8-minute long song, a concert favorite), “Handle With Care” (covering The Traveling Wilbury’s with a few of her musician friends), “It’s A Hit” (which without fail will get stuck in my head every time I hear it, sometimes for weeks) and “With Arms Outstretched” (which featured prominently in the first and last episode of the Showtime series Weeds).

The Best Of Jenny Lewis



1. Portions For Foxes (Rilo Kiley)

2. Silver Lining (Rilo Kiley)

3. Paint’s Peeling (Rilo Kiley)

4. Barking At The Moon (solo)

5. Committed (Jenny and Johnny)

6. A Man/Me/Then Jim (Rilo Kiley)

7. I Remember You (Rilo Kiley f/ Benji Hughes)

8. Rise Up With Fists (solo)

9. Under The Blacklight (Rilo Kiley)

10. The Charging Sky (solo)

11. Scissor Runner (Jenny And Johnny)

12. The Next Messiah (solo)

13. Capetbaggers (solo f/ Elvis Costello)

14. Let Me Back In (Rilo Kiley)

15. Handle With Care (solo, f/ Ben Gibbard, Conor Oberst and M. Ward)

16. Acid Tongue (solo)

17. It’s A Hit (Rilo Kiley)

18. With Arms Outstretched (Rilo Kiley)

What are your favorite Jenny Lewis/Rilo Kiley songs? Let me know in the comments below!