TV Watch

Jewel: Dancing Comment Not a ‘Catty Girl Versus Girl Thing’

05/01/2009 at 12:00 AM EDT

Peter Kramer/AP; Karen Neal/ABC

Jewel wants to set the record straight.

The singer, whose comment that contestants on Dancing with the Stars should either compete injured or leave, is clarifying her remarks and says she's critical of the competition's rule -- not the dancers.

"I like Melissa Rycroft and think she's gifted (and a real Texas sweetheart), and I adore Steve-O," she writes on her MySpace page. "My comment had nothing to do with either of them. It was on a sports website about a rule I have never seen in any type of competition before. Name another sport where if you can't compete, they use your score from practice."

"I am not a mean-spirited person," she adds, "and I think all my fans know that… this isn't a catty girl versus girl thing they are trying to make it into."

And husband Ty Murray, who's one of the five remaining contestants on the show, is also coming to his wife's defense.

"It really got blown out of proportion," Murray said in an interview airing Monday on the Valentine in the Morning 104.3 MYfm radio show in L.A. "She doesn't have anything against Melissa, Steve-O, or anything."

Added Murray, "She feels horrible that it's got taken the way it's got taken." -- Eunice Oh

Peter Kramer/AP; Karen Neal/ABC