Alanis Morissette

One Liner: The biggest post-grunge hitmaker still out there teaching people about irony

Wikipedia Genre: Alternative rock, post-grunge, electronica, hard rock, indie pop, pop rock

Home: Ottawa

Poster Position: Headliner!
Both Weekends.  

Saturday at 6.

Thoughts:   I am pumped that she is on this lineup.  I am also pumped that she is playing the same stage as the Foos so that I can just park over there and live my best life.  If you don't already know Alanis, then I'm fascinated by you.

Her biggest hit has spawned memes and mansplaining for years, as people have debated the meaning of the word ironic.  "More than two decades later, her hit song “Ironic” from the 1995 album Jagged Little Pill is still the punch line of scores of irony-related jokes."  The problem with the song, as recounted by many people over the years, is that the examples she names in the song are not actually irony, but are just examples of unfortunate circumstances.  Ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife - that is not irony.  Irony is "the use of words to express something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning."  Like, when it is 106 degrees outside for the 47th day in a row, saying "I think a cold front came through!"  But here is what Alanis herself said about it: "For me the sweetest moment came in New York when a woman came up to me in a record store and said, ‘So all those things in ‘Ironic’ aren’t ironic.’ And then she said, ‘And that’s the irony.’ I said, ‘Yup.’”  So, either she's covering for it now with this new theory of Meta-Irony, or she meant that the whole time.  Anyway, 383.2 million streams.

All of my snarky over analysis aside - banger song.  Classic 90's pop grunge stuff that nailed the current time on the head.  But still, like "rain on your wedding day" would only be ironic if you followed it up with more facts, like, the wedding was in Death Valley or the bride was the weatherwoman who had predicted that it would never rain again.  Also, this is one of the very (very) few albums that my wife owned when we met, and so it makes me happier than it should to jam this song and think of 19 year old Wife singing along at the top of her lungs in her Mercury Topaz, before she met me and I probably ruined the song by trying to explain irony to her.

Alanis Nadine Morissette is from Ottawa (I would have spelled that as Ottowa every day of the week, weird) Canada, and blew up with her debut album in 1995.  Jagged Little Pill sold more than 33 million copies, won the Grammy for Album of the Year, made Rolling Stone's 2003 and 2020 editions of the best albums of all time, and ended up with a handful of top charting singles.  In addition to "Ironic," "Hand in My Pocket," "You Oughta Know," "Head Over Feet," and "You Learn" topped the charts and became songs that still pop up in my head.  Let's just bang them out for any weirdo who doesn't know this stuff.

"I'm brave but I'm chickenshit" is the line in that one.  164 million streams.

"would she go down on you in a theater" has always been the wild line in that one for me.  201 million.

81 million streams, and yet that one might be my favorite of the whole group.

59 million streams, but still a massive hit back in the day.  She's such a rebel!  Speaking of back in the day, what is the weirdest act you can think of for her to be the opening act for?  Did you guess Vanilla Ice in 1991?  How the hell did that happen?

She was born in 1974, so she's two years older than me, to a teacher and a high school principal.  She is a twin as well - Wade Morisette is apparently also a musician.  She started playing piano at 6, ended up on You Can't Do That on Television in middle school, and then made her first demo in 1989.  Hold up.  Do y'all remember YCDTOT?  The slime?  So good.  But this is soooo bad.

That video footage is so bad, that I thought she was a dude the whole time until they used her name.  Her debut album was actually before the hit - called Alanis and released in 1991.  She was called the Debbie Gibson of Canada, and this, obviously, is how she ended up opening for Vanilla Ice.

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.  What the actual fuck is that?  She has the same vocal mannerisms, and yet she's cranking an awful song and dancing like she's Paula Abdul.  Good Lord.  After that album (released only in Canada), she released Now Is the Time in 1992, but it was also not a major commercial success.  After graduating from high school, she moved to Toronto and started working with Glen Ballard (co-wrote "Man in the Mirror" and worked with a ton of successful artists from Michael Jackson to Aerosmith to No Doubt to Dave Matthews Band to Van Halen to Katy Perry to Stevie Nicks).  That partnership created Jagged Little Pill and launched her career.

BTW, "You Oughta Know" apparently has Flea on it.  That's cool.  That album ended up the second biggest selling album by a female artist, right behind fellow ACL poster dweller and Canadian Shania Twain.  Another ACL connection, Taylor Hawkins, the recently deceased Foo Fighters drummer, was her drummer on her Jagged Little Pill tour.

Her next hit was a single for the movie City of Angels (massive soundtrack because of that damn Goo Goo Dolls song), that won her two more Grammys.  "Uninvited."  46 million streams.

I guess I recall that one.  Sort of makes me think of Evanescence, and those bombastic Dave Matthews songs where they take an ill-fated trip to India.  Her next album, 1998's Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie, came hot out of the gate, but apparently disappointed a lot of fans for being too wordy and personal.  The big hit from that one was "Thank U."  100 million streams.

Alanis booty!  Alanis titties!  Why is she thanking India?  I've never really thought about the lyrics to that song until seeing them written out.  Ah, she apparently travelled to India with her mom before writing the song, and was grateful for the enlightenment she received there.

Next album was 2001's Under Rug Swept, and it spawned the hit "Hands Clean" while debuting at #1 on the charts.  39.8 million streams.

By the way, these streaming numbers are great for songs that came out before streaming existed.  Pretty sure I illegally downloaded that song when it came out.  Again, reading the lyrics as I listen opens my mind to what its really about.  Yikes.  You know some record exec heard that and was like, "oh shit."  "My intention in writing this song was to get to a place where I could be as truthful and as honest as I possibly could be about certain relationships in my past. It's definitely not with the intention of seeking any sort of revenge for the person who is at the heart of the song that I'm singing about, but it was in my silencing myself to protect somebody else that I was ultimately completely abandoning myself. And any time I speak untruths in my life, and often-times I feel by not speaking the truth, by being silent, there's an element of an untruth in that. Withholding the truth sometimes can feel just as horrible as a lie to me. So as I get older, I think I want more and more to introduce the bliss of speaking transparently and truthfully and as honestly as I possibly can, knowing that the truth in this case is my truth only."

She's still been releasing stuff - 2003's Feast On Scraps, 2004's So-Called Chaos, 2008's Flavors of Entanglement, 2012's Havoc and Bright Lights, 2020's Such Pretty Forks in the Road, and then a freaking weird ambient electronica album in 2022 called the storm before the calm.  But none of those have popped anywhere near the old stuff.  Jagged is still for sure her hit.  Just out of curiosity about whether she's still got it - here is a July 29, 2023 show at Fuji Rock.

Still sounds good, but maybe not as strong as back in the day?  Or maybe the mix is just bad, because it is hard to hear her voice.  She probably needs a cordless mic if she's going to walk around so much...  Also, that pre-show montage was a little much?

Yeah, man.  I'll go see it just for the nostalgia of the main hits.