TRACK REVIEW: Alanis Morissette - Reasons I Drink

TRACK REVIEW:

Alanis Morissette

PHOTO CREDIT: Matthew Welch for Interview Magazine

Reasons I Drink

8.6/10

The track, Reasons I Drink, is available from:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjyTCSirZrY

GENRES:

Alternative Rock

ORIGIN:

California, U.S.A.

RELEASE DATE:

2nd December, 2019

LABEL:

RCA

__________

I do love reviewing tracks from legends…

PHOTO CREDIT: Amy Harris/Invision/AP

because there is that history and brilliance behind them. A lot of this review of Alanis Morissette will study her breakthrough album, Jagged Little Pill of 1995. It turns twenty-five next year, and Morissette will take to the road alongside Liz Phair and Garbage to celebrate it. It has been a pretty eventful and successful past quarter-decade for Morissette; she has released some truly astonishing albums and changed a lot as an artist. I will come to the subject of musical shift and how Morissette’s role as a mother has altered her music and style. Before then, there is a lot of talk about Jagged Little Pill. Some artists would want to put some distance between themselves and their biggest album, because they feel like that is all people associate with them. Not only was Jagged Little Pill one of the biggest albums of the 1990s; it is also fascinating looking back at it and seeing how it has influenced modern artists. Morissette is excited this album has resonated and proved influential. Not only that, but it has made its way to the stage. It can be challenging translating an album to the stage, because producers and directors will treat that album as a musical in a traditional sense. They will have these big songs play like they’re coming from a jukebox and then hang a plot off of it. I am trying to think of recent musicals that have been successful; where they have taken a big artist or album and made it work. I remember hearing the announcement a while ago that Jagged Little Pill was being adapted into a musical. Even with renowned writer like Diablo Cody putting together this incredible story, I did wonder how critics would respond and whether she could bring such an important album to the stage successfully. The show not only proved a hit, but it has transferred to Broadway.

This recent review from The Guardian tells you a bit more about the musical:

“But turn that record over. On Broadway, Jagged Little Pill harnesses the hyperemotionalism of its source to shake off the cynicism and formulaic strictures of the typical jukebox musical. Yes, its plot is shaky and contrived, its songs – and there are so, so many of them – histrionic. It seizes on enough hot-button issues – sexual assault, the opioid epidemic, internet addiction, workaholism, misogyny, sex and gender identity, and OK, sure, gun violence, too – to singe the first row. It is, indisputably, too much and that too muchness is what makes it so watchable.

Morissette signed over the rights to the songs with a proviso: the producers couldn’t create a bio musical, her story was her own. Eventually, screenwriter Diablo Cody (Juno, Tully), who is, like Morissette, a Catholic girl who broke at least a little bad, invented a fictional narrative that would fit the songs. Somewhere in Connecticut lives the Healy family: tightly wound mom MJ (Elizabeth Stanley), workaholic dad Steve (Sean Alan Krill), golden boy son Nick (Derek Klena) and mildly rebellious adopted daughter Frankie (Celia Rose Gooding), who is African American and distrustful of MJ’s chirpy, Instagram-filtered ways. MJ has her own problems. (everyone in this show has problems, even the supporting characters.) A car accident has left her with an addiction to pain pills and triggered memories of an earlier sexual trauma”.

I hope Alanis Morissette will not mind me talking a lot about Jagged Little Pill – not that she will ever read this -, but it is an album that has remained relevant and fresh and, in the era of #MeToo, it sounds more powerful than it ever did. I shall come to that too a bit later, but Morissette must be so happy to see her album given this new life and voice; it is connecting with audiences nearly twenty-five years since its inception and speaking to so many people. I think it is fascinating to see Alanis Morissette now and how her life has changed since the 1990s. She is a mother and her more-recent albums have a very different sound to Jagged Little Pill. That said, Jagged Little Pill still sounds electric and extraordinarily powerful, especially when she performs its tracks. A review of an acoustic show she gave this year shows how much people relate to Jagged Little Pill.

“Without context, Morissette’s special one-night-only acoustic show at the Apollo could be a continuation of her 1999 MTV “Unplugged” set. But it doesn’t take long to realize that this version of Morissette is not the same person. The singer, now 45, has been married for 10 years and has three kids — one of which she gave birth to over the summer. Unlike some of the darker subject matters in her lyrics, Morissette charms the audience with her playfulness, teasing herself about her Canadian heritage and how she can’t hear anything in the crowd. She’s clearly no longer the angsty young woman who penned “Jagged Little Pill,” although to judge by the hearty sing-a-longs taking place at the venue on Monday night, the crowd had been craving a dose of nostalgia.

While the deeply personal “Jagged Little Pill” was one of the biggest-selling albums — it’s been certified a whopping 16-times platinum by the RIAA — in the music industry’s most lucrative era — the ‘90s — it was also misunderstood. Morissette’s fury toward industry sexism and her own personal trauma often were discounted, her lyrics criticized as trite, and she — like Liz Phair and other young female artists coming of age at the time — wasn’t taken as seriously as she might have been. Plus, as Letters to Cleo singer Kay Hanley has said, when Morissette was coming up in the ‘90s, there was really only one slot available for songs by women in rock radio. But nearly two-and-a-half decades later, the album is getting a thorough and much-deserved second chance in the spotlight.

PHOTO CREDIT: Kevin Cummings/Getty Images

But diverging from the overall calmer tone of the evening, Morissette’s “Right Through You,” which detailed her experiences with industry sexism and harassment long before #MeToo, remained as biting as ever.

In-between “Jagged Little Pill” tracks, Morissette dropped in two new songs she penned for the musical: the moody “Smiling,” which could have been an outtake from the original album, and the harrowing “Predator,” a song about sexual assault. Straying from a typical encore, Morissette remained onstage before closing out her set with two non-“Jagged Little Pill” hits; she delivered a jaw-dropping crescendo during her power ballad “Uninvited” before aptly closing the show with her gratitude anthem “Thank U”.

Normally, I would not pour over a single album so much when reviewing a new track from an artist. The reason I make my reviews so expansive and detailed is because I want to look at an artist from different angles; talk about more than just the song on the table and to provide more story and background. I did not just want to leap in and assess Alanis Morissette’s latest track and leave things at that. Jagged Little Pill means a lot to different people. To me, as a boy of twelve when it came out, I was struck by the unusualness of Morissette’s voice and the wonder of the songs. I had never heard anyone like her and, even though some big themes were being tackled on the album, I could understand the songs and, all these years later, I still dip in and out of the album. Many would have wanted it to come to the stage, but there was always that gamble that it would not work. Reviewers have noted how it is not just a jukebox musical, and it seems like few have a bad word to say. It will give inspiration to other songwriters who want to bring albums to the stage. That sort of intrigues me. Which albums out there are primed for a musical?

We could all name a few, but there is something about Jagged Little Pill that makes it a perfect fit for the stage. Clearly, it is very personal to Morissette and she is extremely proud of the album. I think there was a perception back in the 1990s that anything with energy from a woman was a bit boring or that it was something they had to get out of their system. I remember Fiona Apple was criticised when she made her infamous VMA speech in 1997. She is someone who has been the subject of sexism and dismissal because she is a bold artist and speaks her mind. I know others like Tori Amos were also recipients of sexism. Now, we have so many strong and exciting female bands and artists who are releasing their anger and making people stand up. Not that Alanis Morissette alone can take credit for that, yet an album like Jagged Little Pill inspired artists making music today; it will inspire a new wave of artists and creators who are seeing it on the stage in the U.S. We live in a time when there is a lot of sexism still, and we are seeing so many harrowing cases of women being abused and assaulted. I think Alanis Morissette’s music has been such a catalyst and comfort for so many young women. The songwriter knows that there is so much work to be done. When she spoke with Vanity Fair about the musical version of Jagged Little Pill, she discussed the #MeToo movement:

“When Morissette rose to fame with Jagged Little Pill, artistic expressions of rage were such an anomaly for women that Rolling Stone put her on its cover alongside the words “Angry White Female.” Over two decades later, the musician is thrilled to see so many women getting in touch with and expressing their inner rage.

“We live in a culture where our value system—it used to be that you had to be a millionaire,” continued Morissette. “Now you have to be a billionaire. You gotta look good forever. In the 60s and 70s, it used to be that fame was a means to an end—to serve, to be an activist—and now fame just is the end. So now fame, perpetual youth, and billionaire-ism seem to be the three main priorities of our value system. There is a negative effect to that. We’re feeling it in our bodies. We’re feeling it in our relationships. We’re feeling it as we speak.” On the subject of the Time’s Up and #MeToo movements, Morissette said, “I love that the conversation is being opened up with different contexts. It’s a really exciting time to be alive”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Willy Sanjuan/Invision/AP

I will come to the business of Reasons I Drink in a bit but, for now, I want to source from a brilliant interview Morissette provided Self this year. At the age of forty-five, Alanis Morissette is not the artist she was in the 1990s. Whilst she is proud of the album and the fact it is on the stage now, Morissette is a mother and she has maybe traded anger for a calmer sound. I am going to spend a lot of this review, obviously, talking about Morissette now and where she might head. So many of us were blown away by Morissette when she came onto the scene. She was much more than a mere Pop artist. Instead, she was a role model and a true original. Self explain more:

”Alanis recorded her first song when she was 10, and then released her solo dance-pop album, Alanis, in 1991, at 17, cowriting every track. It went platinum. In 1992 she took home the Juno, the Canadian equivalent to a Grammy award, for Most Promising Female Vocalist of the Year. She toured with Vanilla Ice. Her second album, Now Is The Time, was a commercial disappointment, but signaled that Alanis was starting to chafe a bit with her image in Canada: She was experimenting with more complicated lyrics, trying out ballads. There are many, many artists who are exceptionally famous in Canada because of being Canadian, and in part because of the CanCon regulations that require our radio and TV stations contain a certain percentage of content created by Canadians in our programming. Some of these artists never meaningfully pop in the United States (The Tragically Hip, for example) and some of them manage to cross over (Alanis). But the Alanis we had in Canada was never your Alanis Morissette. Alanis was...both Olsen twins in one body. She was our Tiffany, (and more frequently referred to as our Debbie Gibson) but much more. She was Robin Sparkles. She was a tiny dynamo with wild dark hair and a mezzo-soprano voice you couldn’t possibly overlook.

PHOTO CREDIT: Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP

Morissette has recently given birth to her third child, so life has changed drastically for her. She has worked tirelessly through her career and is an inspiration to so many. In terms of sheer work ethic and drive, there were few artists as hard-working as Alanis Morissette back in the 1990s:

“Your Alanis Morissette, the Alanis Morissette who has one hand in her pocket and would go down on you in a theater, is an American. Her American career has been wildly successful, as Jagged Little Pill (which sold 16 million copies in the United States, 33 million total) was followed up in 1998 by Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie and her performance on MTV Unplugged in 1999. Her (totally baller) album Under Rug Swept dropped in 2002, topping the Canadian charts and selling a million copies in the United States.

I won’t list all the work she’s done between then and now (in addition to several subsequent albums, you may remember her as God in the 1999 Kevin Smith movie Dogma, or as the woman who confirmed Carrie Bradshaw’s heterosexuality on Sex and the City, or for her work on Weeds), other than to say she has maintained a level of production consistent with studio stars in the era of Louis B. Mayer’s MGM. For Alanis, a lot of it stems from being a workhorse from such a young age. “I always remember working my ass off 24 hours a day and looking out and seeing the kids playing in the backyard and thinking, Well, I can't do that right now,” she said”.

I wanted to select a few other passages from the interview because, through her career, Alanis Morissette has written truly and not shied away from the raw and emotional. A lot of what was sung on Jagged Little Pill connected with girls and young women who heard that album and who have since taken it to heart and found a source of guidance.

PHOTO CREDIT: Steph Wilson for Self

There are some songs from Morissette that take you aback because of how she writes. This was picked up in the Self interview regarding the track, Under Rug Swept:

There was a question I both wanted and didn’t want to ask Alanis from the moment I got the call offering me the interview. It’s about the lead single off her 2002 album “Under Rug Swept,” which is set up as a conversation between an underage Alanis and an unnamed older man with whom she believed, at the time, she was in a “relationship,” a situation as familiar to women (and many men) as the feeling of sliding into your most comfortable pair of shoes.

The man’s lines in the song, delivered by Alanis with the withering scorn they deserve, are a master class in grooming a minor:

If it weren't for your maturity none of this would have happened
If you weren't so wise beyond your years I would've been able to control myself
If it weren't for my attention you wouldn't have been successful and
If it weren't for me you would never have amounted to very much

Just make sure you don't tell on me especially to members of your family
We best keep this to ourselves and not tell any members of our inner posse
I wish I could tell the world 'cause you're such a pretty thing when you're done up properly
I might want to marry you one day if you watch that weight and keep your firm body

So I took a deep breath, and said, “When we were talking about early patterns, it occurred to me how extraordinary it is that you put out “Hands Clean” almost exactly [15] years before [the larger] #MeToo [conversation] happened.”

I was fully prepared for an “I’m done talking about this,” or a polite “no comment” and instead was bowled over by Alanis’s reaction, which was to lean in and engage.

“How lovely that you know that,” she said, and I felt a surge of relief that I hadn’t upset her, and a wave of sadness too, that her life experiences had led her to have to answer this question at all. “I was just talking about 'Hands Clean' yesterday and how some people know what that song's about and other people just don't know? Just singing along and I'm like...that's the story of rape, basically,” she said”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Jeff Kravitz/Film Magic

Alanis Morissette is still releasing amazing music, and I hope she continues to do so for many years to come. One can see a stark difference between the artist who wrote these anthemic songs in the 1990s and the mother of today. I would urge people to read that entire Self interview, as it is very revealing and fascinating. I think there is this assumption that women are less relevant when they hit their thirties and forties. Male artists are still listened to where they grow older; they can write something a little less hard-hitting and youthful, but they are still provided an ear and opportunity. For Alanis Morissette, she is not going to write like she did decades ago. Her situation has changed and she is not in the same position as she was as a teenager and someone in their teens. I do think women are written off if they write more mature music. There seems to be this barrier of age that has not gone away. Morissette is still out in the world and releasing music that sounds phenomenal and memorable. She has endured for so long and, as I keep saying, she has inspired so many artists. It is really tough to survive in the music industry, and I know there are a load of musicians who look to Morissette and her career; someone who has evolved through the years and remains hugely important. It seems there have been some challenges and darker days in her life – before and after pregnancy -, but she seems in a happy place right now. With a fresh single in the ether, we get to enjoy this legendary artist who is about to enter her forth decade of recording – maybe fifth, for that matter. I should probably turn my attention to the latest Alanis Morissette single, Reasons I Drink.

PHOTO CREDIT: Stuart Pettican

Although Alanis Morissette recently performed Reasons I Drink on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, there is not a music video out there. I am sure that will come, as I would love to see how she brings the song to life in a visual sense. Alanis Morissette’s videos are always brilliant, so I will look forward to see what she does with Reasons I Drink. Those who are expecting an acoustic ballad or generic Pop from Morissette will be corrected immediately. In a way, there is almost a musical skip to the step of Reasons I Drink. Whether that sonic decision ties in to the Jagged Little Pill musical, I am not sure. There is this jaunty and pointed piano line that gives the track instant energy and personality. “These are the reasons I drink/The reasons I tell everybody I’m fine even though I’m not” are the opening words; they make you wonder whether this is a result of work pressures or post-partum depression. Morissette has been very open about struggles with depression and her mental-health. I quoted earlier from an interview that explains how Morissette has been working since she was a child. She makes reference to this in the track (“I have been working since I can remember, since I was single digits”). From the more kicking musical sound of the first part of the song, there is a more contemplative sound that has a serious edge. I do love how the composition goes from this pzazz-strewn thing to coming down and settling. The heroine talks about not being able to stop because of how deep the grooves dig. The line “I don't know where to draw the line 'cause that groove has gotten so deep” is very clever, as the ‘groove’ could refer to vinyl and the fact she has been making albums for many years. I love how Morissette’s voice has remained true and stayed the same through the years.

She still has that unmistakable accent and sound, but there is more depth and nuance in her voice today, I think. Her words still have the power to move and affect. Even though Morissette has been in the business for decades, she does not feel the need to temporise her words or fit in what the industry wants. There is a perception of women in their forties (and older) and the sort of music they should be writing. The more I listen to Reasons I Drink, the more I wonder whether there is a problem of addiction or the odd drink. She has children and there are the responsibilities of home. It must be stressful coping with three children or various ages. On top of that, Morissette has been involved with a musical and there is the third side of the coin: producing new work and looking ahead. In a way, she has been pulled in three directions: to the past, to the future and remaining rooted to home. That must have been challenging for her, and one can hear the words dig deep: “Here we are/I feel such rapture and my comfort is so strong/One more hit/It feels so helpful in my need for respite”. In a desire to feel some relaxation and solace, Morissette needs a drink. Again, I wonder whether a single drink turns to more; where does that desire lead her? Whilst the song concerns reasons why she drinks, the song opens up and investigates other sides. One asks whether Morissette has these addictions because she wants to cope with the pressure, or whether something else is at play. Even though Alanis Morissette has released eight albums so far, she still has the ability to move and stun with her words: “And here are the reasons I eat/Reasons I feel everything so deeply when I'm not medicated/And so that's it, I am buying a Lamborghini/To make up for these habits, to survive this sick industry”. Whilst her choruses might not have quite the same hook and memorability as they did on albums like Jagged Little Pill, there is still something arresting about Morissette. She sings about feeling rapture and comfort; the need for another sip and hit of relief. From its musical skip to a calmer frame, the song then ramps back up and shows its teeth. Before the song’s end, a few lines leaped out and grabbed me. When Morissette sings “And these are the reasons I don't even think I would quit/And these are the reasons I can't even see straight/And these are the ones whom I know it so deeply affects/And I am left wondering how I would I function without it”, one is sobered by such heartfelt and striking words. There is a balance of defiance, heartache and stress that makes Reasons I Drink such an interesting song. Alanis Morissette is one of these songwriters that tells it like it is and lays it out bare. It is amazing to hear, and Reasons I Drink shows she has lost little of her power and potency. I look forward to next year and hearing yet more new music from the Canadian icon.

Of course, we all know what 2020 holds for Alanis Morissette. Check the Jagged Little Pill musical website, and it gives you a lot of detail. It is on Broadway at the moment, and I wonder whether it will come to the West End. At the moment, we do not really have any musicals over here that are as real and evocative as Jagged Little Pill; that take you back a great album, but we also get this amazing story and memorable experience. Morissette has been involved with the creative process and working alongside the cast and crew. The musical has collected so many huge reviews and it is getting a lot of love. The musical is more than framing this iconic album and just giving us the hits. Other musicals, as I said early, simply put together a half-arsed plot as an excuse to get those songs to the people. Jagged Little Pill has been brought to the stage wonderfully and it comes with this engrossing story, superbly performed by its talented players. It will be exciting to see where the musical goes and whether it will be taken around the world. Alanis Morissette will be taking to the road to celebrate twenty-five years of Jagged Little Pill, and there will be talk around a new album. Such Pretty Forks in the Road has been announced for next year – it is her first since 2012’s Havoc and Bright Lights. I will keep my eyes open, because a new Alanis Morissette album is a great thing. I feel she will have something to say about modern politics and the #MeToo movement. Morissette will also reflect on new birth and becoming a mother for the third time. It must be strange for Morissette right now, as she has one part of her heart and mind dedicated to her 1995 album and making its musical a success. On the other hand, she is preparing for new work and looking ahead. It must be confusing for Morissette but, as her involvement with the musical is minimal now, it seems it is all steam ahead for 2020 and new work. As we end 2019 and revel in Jagged Little Pill’s Broadway success and the brilliance of Reasons I Drink, it is clear Alanis Morissette…