Alanis Morisette's Jagged Little Pill: Why the hype?

I've never really listened to this album but want to know what made it so special. I know it sold millions of copies back in the day and there's now a remastered special edition. Is it any good or just a product of its time?

Its both good and a product of its time. The album hit at the right time when woman in rock, mostly alternative rock were getting critical raves and releasing killer music.

Her music could be played on rock, alternative, and pop stations, and also a lot of women could relate to her lyrics. She was the perfect artist who came along just at the right time.

Blah. I always wondered that myself. I grew tired quickly of the overplay of those songs (you know which ones I mean).

If you were an angry young woman in the early 90s you were issued a copy of this album as soon as you entered college.

What Manny said. She's also a terrific songwriter with relevant lyrics. And the whole bite 'n snarl of her delivery was new to such an accessible format. I happen to think it was one of the best albums of the 90s.

I liked a lot of the angry young woman stuff from that era but I was digging Kat Bjelland, Polly Harvey, Kristin Hersh and Courtney so Alanis just lacked authenticity, she just came off like a whiney Canadian 

I remember there being something of a backlash against Alanis when it was revealed that she had released several albums' worth of Debbie Gibson-esque teen pop music in her native Canada prior to suddenly becoming the Voice of 90s Feminism.

Fat Freddy wrote:

If you were an angry young woman in the early 90s you were issued a copy of this album as soon as you entered college.

LOL!

Fat Freddy wrote:

I remember there being something of a backlash against Alanis when it was revealed that she had released several albums' worth of Debbie Gibson-esque teen pop music in her native Canada prior to suddenly becoming the Voice of 90s Feminism.

Or when her early career Nick tv show's starting popping up........

Of course she did make blow jobs in a theater mainstream

Quote :

Of course she did make blow jobs in a theater mainstream

thejokeriv wrote:

Fat Freddy wrote:

I remember there being something of a backlash against Alanis when it was revealed that she had released several albums' worth of Debbie Gibson-esque teen pop music in her native Canada prior to suddenly becoming the Voice of 90s Feminism.

Or when her early career Nick tv show's starting popping up........

Of course she did make blow jobs in a theater mainstream

thejokeriv wrote:

Fat Freddy wrote:

I remember there being something of a backlash against Alanis when it was revealed that she had released several albums' worth of Debbie Gibson-esque teen pop music in her native Canada prior to suddenly becoming the Voice of 90s Feminism.

Or when her early career Nick tv show's starting popping up........

Of course she did make blow jobs in a theater mainstream

/thread

Fat Freddy wrote:

I remember there being something of a backlash against Alanis when it was revealed that she had released several albums' worth of Debbie Gibson-esque teen pop music in her native Canada prior to suddenly becoming the Voice of 90s Feminism.

Actually, she did only two. I actually remember hearing two or three songs from them when I was a little kid. She was pretty big in Canada, but not all that well known elsewhere (not sure if her albums were even issued Stateside).

Both of her first two albums are out of print now, and she is supposedly very ashamed of them. It's kind of like those albums are to her as the 1980s are to Pantera.

I just remember my girlfriend at the time playing this album so often I wanted to toss the album and her off the 3rd floor balcony of our apartment.

S.D. wrote:

I just remember my girlfriend at the time playing this album so often I wanted to toss the album and her off the 3rd floor balcony of our apartment.  

Consider yourself lucky! Mine really loved Sheryl Crow!! 

Fat Freddy wrote:

I remember there being something of a backlash against Alanis when it was revealed that she had released several albums' worth of Debbie Gibson-esque teen pop music in her native Canada prior to suddenly becoming the Voice of 90s Feminism.

Actually, it turns out she wasn't that ashamed of them (I made a reference to Glen Ballard earlier today and it reminded me of this thread), but for marketing reasons, her past was kind of buried when she became a household name outside of Canada. They had been taken out of print around the same time Jagged Little Pill was released, and promotion for Jagged Little Pill marketed it as her debut.

Morissette said of Alanis and Now Is the Time, "...I'm not scared people might hear these records. I never did Playboy centerfolds. There's nothing I regret. Maybe people will just understand that my lyrics are from different experiences if they hear those records. It validates [Jagged Little Pill]...there was an element of me not being who I really was at the time and I'm now more experienced with my life. It was because I wasn't prepared to open up that way. The focus for me then was entertaining people and getting my feet wet in the business, it was about being young & having fun as opposed to sharing any revelations I had at the time. I had them, but I wasn't prepared or comfortable with sharing it."

Spin Magazine said after hearing the album, "It's as if her high school yearbook picture came to life and made an album designed to haunt her forever. Sometimes cheese is Velveeta."

She did play one song from her teen-pop era ("Too Hot!", her most well known song from that era) live in 2005 (an acoustic version of it, anyway). She also considering including a song or two from her first two albums on a "greatest hits" compilation released, but she was talked out of doing it.

One more funny thing about the early 90s Alanis albums, guess who she opened up for back then?

Vanilla Ice.

Boris2008 wrote:

S.D. wrote:

I just remember my girlfriend at the time playing this album so often I wanted to toss the album and her off the 3rd floor balcony of our apartment.  

Consider yourself lucky! Mine really loved Sheryl Crow!! 

Yeah, I was lucky, she's actually the one that turned me onto Miles Davis and started my jazz collecting.

Man, I hated this whiny, angt-filled b****'s music back when I had to listen to radio.  The local STL alt-rock station played her to death and I always immediately switched to the local classic rock station when her nasally voice came on.

EDIT: And I'll take Sheryl Crow over this beotch any and every day of the week.

Don't suger coat it, Toho. Tell us how you really feel about her.

007 wrote:

Don't suger coat it, Toho. Tell us how you really feel about her.

OK, how's this:

She's the female version of Dave Matthews to my ears.  Ugh.  I'd actually rather listen to growly death metal than this crap.

The worst part is you can't un-hear:

"It's like ra-a-a-a-a-a-a-inn....on your wedding day...:

once you've heard it a gazillion times.

Yeah, add Alanis to the Toho's Most Infamous list.  Right up there with Dave Matthews, Phil Collins and Steve Perry.

I didn;t mind it when it came out but I liked Juliana Hatfield much better (is she still around I forgot about Juliana).

And it's fun to believe that "You Oughta Know" is about Uncle Joey.



The Alanis I know is really fun to be around and really thoughtful and sweet. I think there’s a lot of things in Jagged Little Pill that are very deep and fueled by her interactions with a lot of people. At the time we were dating, she was writing a lot of music, and I was a newly divorced, single father with a two-year old son. She was living in Ottawa, Canada and I was living in Los Angeles. It was a tough time for me and a lot of distance for a budding relationship. I’ll always think of her as a really great person. As far as being the so-called subject of You Oughta Know…I’ll just let the urban legend folks keep spinning on that one."

For all the Grammar Nazis.

Can't say I've ever heard the whole album, but I'm quite familiar with the singles. As far as hype goes, I guess it just hit the right spot at the right time. 'You Oughta Know' was the 90's equivalent of 'I Will Survive'. It was the anthem of every girl that ever got cheated on.