FEATURE:
Childhood Treasures: Albums That Impacted Me
Alanis Morissette - Jagged Little Pill
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ON several occasions…
IN THIS PHOTO: Alanis Morissette in her hotel room in Cologne, Germany in 1995/PHOTO CREDIT: Kevin Cummins/Getty Images
I have focused on Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill a few times before. This 1995 classic, it is actually an album that some critics do not like. In years since its release, I think views have changed since its release. Maybe the intensity of Morissette’s vocals or the nature of the song divided some. I am including it in the feature, as I got the album when it came out when I was twelve. With songs like Ironic and Hand in My Pocket being sun around the schoolyard, Jagged Little Pill was everywhere! It is an important album, as it opened my eyes to powerful women of the 1990s. We have great women of Rock and Indie now, though there was a really rich climate and waves in the ‘90s. With great female-fronted bands like Garbage (Shirley Manson) producing such incredible and arresting music, it is not a surprise that Jagged Little Pill stuck with me. I think this is an album that will never grow old or lose its relevance. The songs still sound amazing now over twenty-five years since they were released. I am going to, as I normally do, highlight a review for the album. An interesting feature from Albuism last year discussed the significance and resonance of Jagged Little Pill:
“Just two years after Madonna co-founded the Maverick record label back in 1992, the company signed a then relatively unknown 20-year-old Morissette. Just over a year later and her debut album for the label had been released and proved to be the smash record the label had envisioned. With total sales now in excess of 33 million units globally, the album not only cemented Morissette’s star status, but went 16x platinum in the US, became the best-selling debut album of all time and garnered the singer five out of the nine GRAMMY Awards she was nominated for in 1996, not to mention taking out the number one spot in a staggering 14 charts around the world. But this album is about so much more than just groundbreaking statistics—it’s a powerful album about personal experiences.
Whilst the walk down memory lane in revisiting the album twenty-five years later is full of coming-of-age stories and in many ways, articulated everything that I was feeling then, aged nineteen, I am also reminded that Morissette was a mere year older than me at the time and wrote and produced music that not only belied her youth, but gave a voice to a generation.
Jagged Little Pill surfaced at a time when grunge was at its peak and although Morissette presented a strong, multifaceted woman, open and honest, she hadn’t ridden the same wave that her feminist peers like Courtney Love and Ani Di Franco had done. Instead, she had received success with her first two pop albums in her native Canada and even dated “Uncle Joey” (Dave Coulier) from Full House, all things that couldn’t have been further from the voice expressing torment, pain and vulnerability on Jagged Little Pill.
All that changed when Morissette met legendary record producer and songwriter Glen Ballard (Michael Jackson, The Pointer Sisters, Paula Abdul). With Ballard now providing some guidance and a wealth of production knowledge, the two set about bunkering down in Ballard’s studio, supposedly recording a song a day. According to Morissette, she penned the track “Perfect” in a mere twenty minutes and requested that her original demo vocals be used to create a rawness on the album. Ballard in tow, it only seemed fitting to have session musicians lend their wares and there was no better fit than Dave Navarro and Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers to provide some serious guitar work on the album’s lead single “You Oughta Know.”
A total of six singles were released from the album, with all of these songs (except "All I Really Want”) entering the top ten in various charts around the world and “Ironic” taking out the number four spot on the Billboard Hot 100, her highest charting single in the US. But it was “You Oughta Know” that set the tone for the album and gave license to a type of female sexuality and unabashed raw anger not seen on a commercial scale, showing that women get equally as irked as men, most definitely as horny and may even get a little perverse as captured in lines like, “Is she perverted like me / Would she go down on you in a theater?”
With hope in her heart, the album’s second single “Hand In My Pocket” showcases a self-assured Morissette who is able to have a little fun. The third single and album smash “Ironic”— the much-disputed irony-free song that Morissette stood by in the wake of criticism over its linguistic usage—became her trademark. Whether or not you deem the song situational irony, dramatic irony or even completely unironic, you can’t deny that Morissette’s indifference to the world and how it will eventually do you over in the end makes for a damn good song.
Apart from the officially released singles, there is even more beauty on this album. Whether it be the togetherness on “Mary Jane” as Morissette reassures a friend in the midst of grief or the religious hindsight on “Forgiven,” she adds even more layers to her self-exploration and that of others too.
Morissette delivered an opus of immeasurable beauty on Jagged Little Pill, a beauty entrenched in her psyche, her anger, her lovelorn heart and her hope. She created a fluidity and slickness within this album rare for a twenty-one-year-old novice artist. She kept her words raw and articulated emotions and feelings that many women had felt too ashamed to even acknowledge, let alone put out there for the whole world to hear.
She created a mood and attitude that has defined an era. Its connectivity is in its broad content that spans pious fraud, parental expectations, mental illness, co-dependence, the patriarchy, friendship, amour propre and adultery. Complicated this music may be, but it’s precisely this that resonates with people and the complexities of simply being alive sometimes, something everyone goes through at some point in their lives.
Twenty-five years later and Jagged Little Pill has just as much meaning as it did back in 1995. Sure, there have been others to follow in Morissette’s footsteps, and let’s be clear here: Morissette wasn’t the original purveyor of female empowerment. But what Jagged Little Pill is, is a definite reminder that although we have come a long way when it comes to the micro (and not so micro) aggressions women face daily, we still have a long way to go. And lest one forget it, all that is needed is a spin of this record”.
I still listen to Jagged Little Pill now. It takes me back to a time and place, but it also sounds so wonderful today. Jagged Little Pill is an album stuffed with big singles. The deeper cuts are also incredible. With all lyrics by Morissette and music by Morissette and producer Glen Ballard, Jagged Little Pill is one of the most important albums from my childhood. I quote AllMusic reviews quite a bit, as they go deep and provide interesting perspectives. This is what they said in their review:
“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. 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. 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.
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. 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. 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. 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. All of this adds up to a record that's surprisingly effective, an utterly fascinating exploration of a young woman's psyche. 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. This doesn't make Jagged Little Pill great, but it does make it a fascinating record, a phenomenon that's intensely personal”.
I am going to conclude. I might finish this feature in a few weeks. I feel it is important and useful highlighting albums that helped to shape me as a child. Whether that is making me conscious of new types of music or helping me to grow, there are many others who have their list of albums they hold dear. Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill is a timeless album that artists are still being shaped and influenced by. To this day, I hold the album…
IN such high esteem.