Jagged Little Pill |
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Released: June 13, 1995 Peak: 112 US, 111 UK, 121 CN, 110 AU, 18 DF Sales (in millions): 16.0 US, 2.7 UK, 33.0 world (includes US and UK) Genre: alternative rock |
Tracks:Song Title (Writers) [time] (date of single release, chart peaks) Click for codes to charts.
Total Running Time: 57:23 |
Rating: 4.327 out of 5.00 (average of 30 ratings)
Quotable:“A Nineties version of Carole King’s Tapestry: a woman using her plain soft-rock voice to sift through the emotional wreckage of her youth, with enough heart and songcraft to make countless listeners feel the earth move.” – Rolling StoneAwards:(Click on award to learn more).
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From Child Star to SuperstarAlanis Morissette got her start on the children’s variety show You Can’t Do That on Television at the age of 10. In a move now seemingly replicated by every actress to ever land a show on the Disney channel, she parlayed it into an attempted career as a dance-pop singer. She released two albums in Canada, one of which was a top ten hit, but remained an unknown internationally. Then she left the Great White North, partnered with producer and songwriter Glen Ballard (Paula Abdul’s Forever Your Girl, Wilson Phillips’ self-titled debut) in L.A., and tapped her bitter diary entries of teen angst to transform from “mall-pop songstress” to “angry rocker chick.” ZS Of course, she was savvy enough to give her songs enough pop gloss to move over 30 million copies of the album worldwide and inspire “a generation of soundalikes to bare their souls on record.” PRThe Recording“According to Ballard, the connection was ‘instant’, and within 30 minutes of meeting each other they had begun experimenting with different sounds…Ballard and Morissette penned their first song together, called ‘The Bottom Line’. The turning point in their sessions was the song Perfect, which was written and recorded in 20 minutes.” WK Alanis “snarls, at the top of her formidable lungs, about egregious slights – from parents who suffocate with their expectations.” TM She “improvised the lyrics on the spot, and Ballard played guitar. The version of the song that appeared on Jagged Little Pill was the only take that the pair recorded” WK and the first song shared with “A&R and record company people.” WKFrom there on, they aimed to write and record a song a day over 12-16 hour shifts. WK Ballard provided rough instrumentation and Morissette’s vocals were recorded in one or two takes each; those original demo vocals were still used when the tracks were redone in a professional studio later. WK Not the Best Singer – But She Didn’t Need to BeAlanis “isn’t a particularly good singer” AM as she “tends to wildly oversing every other line” EW’07 and stretch “the limits of pitch and credibility with her octave-skipping caterwauling.” AM However, her “wounded bleats and bellowing screams” TM “feel truly wild, too unruly to have been plotted beforehand.” TM She was able to “scream about the anger and confusion that comes with being alive.” CQ She “chews up and spits out the lyrics in a style reminiscent of Tori Amos at her most melodramatic.” PRThe Album Takes OffMaverick Records had low expectations for the record, assuming it wouldn’t sell more than 250,000 copies. WK However, “things quickly changed when a Los Angeles DJ from the influential radio station KROQ began playing You Oughta Know, the album’s first single.” WK After it took off, five more radio releases “kept Jagged Little Pill in the top twenty on the Billboard 200 for over a year.” WKHer “bitter diary entries are given a pop gloss that gives them entry to the pop charts.” AM Alanis knows “she’s selling pop songs. Not transcripts of therapy sessions.” TM “Jagged Little Pill is like a Nineties version of Carole King’s Tapestry: a woman using her plain soft-rock voice to sift through the emotional wreckage of her youth, with enough heart and songcraft to make countless listeners feel the earth move.” 500 It was “a defining disc for her generation.” ZS Angry Young Woman“Decades before Taylor Swift got lyrically mad at Jake Gyllenhaal over a scarf, Alanis was reminding her ex about the mess that he left when he went away.” CQ “The very first seconds of Alanis Morissette’s breakout record feature a blend of electric guitar and harmonica, signaling right from the beginning that a new voice in alt-rock had something to say. And an entire generation was listening.” CQ “If you were young, female, and alive in the 1990s, there’s a strong chance you didn’t just own this album, but had it memorized from beginning to end.” CQ “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.” AM She provided an “inside look into the minds and moods of young women who’ve been jilted and scorned” ZS refuting the “wisdom about how anger is not a terribly constructive emotion,” TM opting to “unflinchingly explore emotions so common, most people would be ashamed to articulate them.” AM “Every teenage girl who owned it says, ‘she’s not annoying, damn it! She’s me!’” ZSAlanis displayed an uncanny “knack for bringing listeners into the center of her storm. She doesn’t merely recount assorted setbacks, she offers a minute-by-minute tour of them, sparing no detail to describe raw and often uncomfortable emotions.” TM “Perhaps it was the individuality that made it appealing, since its specificity lent it genuineness.” AM A Perfect Fit with the Grunge EraAlanis’ “anger is articulated by a ferocious, sub-grunge sound” PR aided by some contributions on bass and guitar from the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Flea and Dave Navarro. Sonically, this “clearly is an attempt to embrace the ‘women in rock’ movement in alterna-rock.” AM Alanis “aspires to the swaggering confidence of U2’s big-tent anthems” TM with “similarly broad sing-along refrains.” TM “This combination of unsophisticated, low-fi sound and sexually explicit lyrics caught the mood of the moment and inspired a generation of soundalikes to bare their souls on record.” PRGrammy SuccessThe album garnered six Grammy nominations, of which Alanis snagged Album of the Year, Best Rock Album, Best Rock Song, and Best Female Rock Vocal Performance. She missed out on Best New Artist and Song of the Year. Until 2010, “she was the youngest person to receive the Album of the Year award, at age 21.” WKThe SongsHere’s more detail about each song individually.“You Oughta Know”
“Hand in My Pocket”
“All I Really Want” and “Forgiven” That song and Forgiven fester with a barely suppressed rage against institutionalized hypocrisy and what she sees as the emotional dishonesty of the male species.” PR The “lyrical hints” AM suggest “a record executive…took advantage of a young Alanis…This is such insider information that it’s hard to believe that millions of listeners not just bought it, but embraced it.” AM
“Ironic” Much has been made about how the song Ironic “ironically failed to use the word properly [but] it still managed to talk about bleak scenarios in a ‘well, everyone’s been there’ way.” CQ It was really “just Alanis speaking her piece about the perils of being a girl in a fickle-as-fuck world, singing like an acoustic guitar.” 500
“You Learn”
“Head Over Feet”
Notes:In 2005, a collection of the entire album performed acousticly was released in celebration of the album’s 10th anniversary. |
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First posted 3/22/2008; last updated 8/12/2024. |
One of my favorite female singer since I heard her is Alanis Morissette.
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