As slick as the music is, the lyrics are unvarnished and Morissette unflinchingly explores emotions so common, most people would be ashamed to articulate them. Jagged Little Pill is the third studio album (and the first to be released internationally) by Canadian singer Alanis Morissette. All of this adds up to a record that's surprisingly effective, an utterly fascinating exploration of a young woman's psyche. At its core, this is the work of an ambitious but sophomoric 19-year-old, once burned by love, but still willing to open her heart a second time. What's all the more remarkable is that Alanis isn't a particularly good singer, stretching the limits of pitch and credibility with her octave-skipping caterwauling. The excellent Broadway jukebox musical Jagged Little Pill uses songs from Alanis Morissette’s 1995 album to furnish a family saga of addiction, sexuality, race, and so much more. Often, it seems like Glen Ballard's pop inclinations fight against Alanis' exorcisms, as her bitter diary entries are given a pop gloss that gives them entry to the pop charts. Perhaps it was the individuality that made it appealing, since its specificity lent it genuineness - and, even if this is clearly an attempt to embrace the "women in rock" movement in alterna-rock, Morissette's intentions are genuine. She never disguises her outright rage and disgust, whether it's the vengeful wrath of "You Oughta Know" or asking him "you scan the credits for your name and wonder why it's not there." This is such insider information that it's hard to believe that millions of listeners not just bought it, but embraced it, turning Alanis Morisette into a mid-'90s phenomenon. This, after all, plays like an emotional purging, prompted by a bitter relationship - and, according to all the lyrical hints, that's likely a record executive who took advantage of a young Alanis. Everything’s going to be fine, fine, fine.It's remarkable that Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill struck a sympathetic chord with millions of listeners, because it's so doggedly, determinedly insular. In the easygoing “Hand in My Pocket,” now a time capsule of cigarettes and taxi cabs, she forgives herself for not having it all figured out. For my part, it came out when I was 12, but gained traction when I was 13/14, I think. It seems to resonate with a lot of women, and Im just wondering what your relationship to it is. Perhaps that’s why, for all her angst and anger, Morissette is relatively kind to herself. What does Alanis Morissettes album, 'Jagged Little Pill' mean to you In the thread about angsty teenage music, one of the higher posts is about this album. Yet even if the album’s core spirit is disillusionment-a refusal to smile, play along, or indulge-listeners seem to cling to its hopefulness, the idea that bleeding, screaming, and learning is also, ultimately, living. For women, many of Morissette's lyrics felt like a reckoning: “Right Through You” skewers a man for not taking her seriously (“You took a long hard look at my ass/And then played golf for a while”), and on “You Oughta Know,” the cheating-ex send-up lit with rage, she captures the fury felt from such blatant disrespect: “And every time I scratch my nails down someone else’s back I hope you feel it/Well, can you feel it?”
On “Not the Doctor,” she refuses to play mother or babysitter for someone else’s problems. Human weakness is a theme-she’s hyperactive and distracted on “All I Really Want,” disoriented by happiness on “Head Over Feet”-but then, so is strength. So when the 21-year-old former Nickelodeon star released it in 1995 after being dropped by her label, MCA Canada, its fresh and unapologetic worldview just hit different.īeneath the record's radio-friendly hooks and shiny harmonies were startling observations on the messiness and banality of life. It is also fearlessly confrontational, with sharp-edged criticisms of Catholicism, technology, and boyish men that few artists since have had the guts to echo.
Her blockbuster third LP (following two teen-pop records that went Top 40 in her native Canada) was poetic and straightforward, cynical and idealistic, sarcastic and wide-eyed, lost but hopeful (baby!). Like Morissette, whose arrival bridged the gap between grunge, alternative, and mainstream pop, much of the album’s enduring magnetism is in its embrace of chaos and contradiction.
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Alanis Morissette’s era-defining album is full of these moments-snarling, eye-rolling, ugly truths that feel so good to say out loud. Everyone has a moment on Jagged Little Pill that they feel like they belong to-a spitting wisecrack or rhetorical question that struck a nerve early on and continued to reveal its wisdom with age, time, and experience.