Jagged Little POLL - Alanis Morissette

If we keep doing this "Hand in My Pocket" should win the next one.

oh my god it is so nice to read about this album without seeing the phrase "blackface ADATs"

On the awkwardness of the album's worst single.

I like that one.... More than “You Oughta Know” or “Ironic,” anyway.

It also falls in the interesting category of “songs that use the album title as a lyric phrase (but it’s not the song title).”

aw "you learn" is good imo

"head over feet" towers over everything else on this record though imo

imo

"head over feet" really is lovely

'You Learn' is one of my favourite songs on that LP!

Thank you is my favourite Alanis song

ILM Confession: I had no problem w/how the term “ironic” was used in that song (even if not technically accurate), and thought all the “Gotcha/Actually”–ing around it was silly.

feel like that’s the reasonable position

The claim that Liz Phair's success "counted to a large degree on the support of enthusiastic dudes for whom a woman with a guitar was the ultimate babe-with-a-brain fantasy" while Morrissette was by and large "loathed" by male fans does not match my memory of the era

It certainly was mine! Man, did guys hate her.

My memory is that everyone loved "You Oughta Know" but I only rarely met anyone who liked anything else.

I never would have thought to compare Liz & Alanis (or their reception); interesting move by Alfred, I guess.

I felt like Morrisette was a legit huge rock star who everybody I knew, men and women, basically liked, while Liz Phair fandom was more interior to feminism, not all the way to Ani DiFranco, but in that direction from Morrissette.

I mean I say this as a dude whose record collection in 1995 was probably 96% "dudes with guitars" and I owned Jagged Little Pill (and Supposed Former...!) but not Phair.

I love You Learn. Reminds me of Goodbye to You by Michelle Branch in a way (or probably a dozen other pop-rock power ballads from the late 90s early 00s).

Speaking for my lame dude self from back then, I ran away from Alanis when her second single wasn't also about going down on you in a theater and featuring the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Also the Ironic video, with the multiple Alanises manically writhing about in the car, was enough to push her over into "this girl is annoying" territory. I do remember some guy friends still thought she was great though, but not many.

I had a girlfriend at the time who loved "You Oughtta" because it felt "honest," but then as now I think it's musically a bit weak.

"You Learn," "Thank You," and "Hand In My Pocket" are excellent songs. The useful comparison is not Alanis vs. Ani or Liz (or Tori Amos, or Michelle Branch) but Alanis vs. Sheryl Crow.

he useful comparison is not Alanis vs. Ani or Liz (or Tori Amos, or Michelle Branch) but Alanis vs. Sheryl Crow.

don't at all disagree! But this became more obvious years later, not at the time (Alanis peaked between Crow's breakthrough and the eponymous album)

I was trying to make a point about her influence on all that later stuff.

i loved "you oughta know" but was ultimately sold by "ironic" as a song/video, i asked my parents to buy me the record the day after i saw it. got my dad into her too

Mary Jane 0

maura and i were recently talking about how this is the best jlp deep cut (it came up bc the main character of the alanis musical is named mary jane)

I agree, how's life.

That said, I think one could also draw a longer line of influence and spotlight access - Indigos, Suzanne Vega, Tori, Tracy Chapman, Sarah McLachlan, Shawn Colvin, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Lilith Fair - to Alanis etc., and forth to Michelle Branch and Anna Nalick.

I can’t think of many artists like Alanis (male or female), in 1995 or since – a solo act whose fans trended young and who effortlessly crossed between pop & alternative radio.

“Ironic” remains the worst of the JLP singles, to me, not for of the usual language-snob reasons—glenn mcdonald once referred to her “somewhat holistic definition of irony,” which is a fair way to put it—but rather because I don’t think she can pull off the whispiness of the verses. It’s not a mode she seems comfortable with, and it comes off sounding kind of Phoebie from Friends-ish.

21 Pilots! xp

I lost interest in trying to like her music when the followup album used that wispy mode.

alfred - some great sendup in that piece of her hallmark-card advice.... and yet it cannot shake my joy when she hits the audacious hail-mary of "the smoe-ooh-oh-oke clee-ers"

the dust seaaeaaaattles

I heart u Lord Alfred but I am not even the slightest bit put off by "sex gargoyle" or by "Chynna Phillips pillow talk." Both sound welcome to me at this historical remove.

I thought she was terrible at the time and only ever liked "head over feet" which is cute and lovely. That said, I found myself at the Jagged Little Pill musical a couple weeks ago. It was . . . not good.

I can’t think of many artists like Alanis (male or female), in 1995 or since – a solo act whose fans trended young and who effortlessly crossed between pop & alternative radio.

― i’m still stanning (morrisp), Wednesday, May 30, 2018

To close the loop on this – it occurred to me that Lorde is another artist who fits this description.

One of the greatest albums of the last 30 years.

Still sad I never interviewed Chantal kreviazuk.
Family member died so they called it off.

https://variety.com/2019/music/news/alanis-morissettes-jagged-little-pill-defense-letters-to-cleo-kay-hanley-1203175891/

good stuff, esp that last line

This is a gift and we don’t deserve it. pic.twitter.com/DgzC2Q66sV

— Simon Ward (@simonjward) April 1, 2021

A little late to the Jagged Little Pill Party, but am I alone in thinking that the bridge in "Ironic" is even better than the already-great chorus, to the point where she could have used it as the base for a completely new song, like what Van Halen did with the outro riff from "Jump" to make "Standing On Top Of The World"?

I'm also curious if any other Ilxors who may have been in the San Diego area in the mid-'90s remember a very bizarre radio moment, which felt like a quasi-regular segment where the "wise" rocker DJ aimed to put fans of Alanis "in their place". In January '96, this dude responded to a caller asking him to play the not-yet-a-single "All I Really Want" by acting as if he was going to do so, but then pulling the switcheroo with "Nah, I think you should hear *this* instead, you'll see why...", then proceeding to play the (also-awesome) Dwight Yoakam track "Never Hold You". While they ironically (sorry) share a similar guitar riff - and I'm sure his dudebro demo went head over feet for said antics - since Dwight's "Gone" was released a few months after "JLP", his rockist/"authenticity" claptrap came off very clunky and ridiculous.

That bridge has always reminded me of a Cocteau Twins song, not sure which one but from the Blue Bell Knoll/Heaven or Las Vegas era.

Cico Buff? Similar chords and beat.

Yeah! Exactly that.

Hell, I'm totally checking that out ASAP!

“Not The Doctor” is my favorite, closely followed by “Head Over Feet” and “You Learn”

and the new documentary is pretty good

“not the doctor” and “mary jane” are the best deep cuts for me. “head over feet” the best single

thought the doc was pretty ok but could’ve been 30 minutes shorter

and i felt there was more focus on the phenomenon of the album than the album itself which i wanted more of the latter but this is why they don’t give me money to make documentaries

don't have a lot of interest in watching it tbh but still wanna know what made her disavow it and her own participation in it

I am semi-interested in the doc, but some details of her background sound, well, triggering. I was thinking of starting when she starts working with Ballard?

xpost brad i agree with that

i liked how much of her thoughts we get though, she’s great on camera. and i had no idea taylor hawkins had played on her tour.

I watched the 2021 Jagged doc last night (I had forgotten about it, then noticed it on Max). It's so bizarre to me how Alanis ended up disavowing it, saying it had a "salacious agenda" and "includes implications and facts that are simply not true." The film is essentially a hagiography, with nothing remotely critical or that makes her look bad in any way... and most of the "implications and facts" come from (or at least are framed by) her own long interview (which she vaguely walked back in her statement at the time, saying it had been conducted at "very vulnerable time (while in the midst of my third postpartum depression during lockdown)"). I'm at a complete loss to see what misgivings she had, after the fact, about what essentially feels like a glossy, "official" doc that could have been produced by her own camp. (Maybe she herself said something that wasn't true? Idk)

Anyway, I too wish it had focused a little more on the album itself; though it was cool that it talked as much as it did about her process making it w/Ballard. Some of the tour footage was pretty wild, with these stadiums full of intense fans... I guess I hadn't realized, at the time, just how big a "rock star" she was!