Alanis Morissette Looks Back At 'Jagged Little Pill' In Candid Essay

Tue, November 3, 2015 at 10:19 AM UTC

You oughta know that Alanis Morissette has re-released her seminal 1995 album "Jagged Little Pill" and penned an essay on her website reflecting on her experiences making it.

"When 'You Oughta Know' was first taken to radio, the consistent response was, 'We are already playing two female artists, we don’t need another one,'" Morissette wrote on her site, describing the tough time she had finding collaborators after her first record label dropped her. Twenty years later, Morissette can boast that "Jagged Little Pill" sat atop the Billboard chart for 13 consecutive weeks, produced four No. 1 singles and won the Grammy for Album of the Year.

"There were attempts to clean it all up, 'perfectify' it all … " the singer wrote. "I was admonished on more than one occasion for the record sounding 'too caustic' and 'too imperfect.' I got a lot of dirty looks for that one. I remember telling them, 'Well, if you wanted a record that sounded like Dan Steely, then maybe you should have signed someone in their thirties, rather than me, a 19-year-old.' This was met with silence, in typical form. My friend quickly leaned over and said, 'It’s Steely Dan, Alanis.' Oh, jeez. I said, 'Well, regardless, this record represents me, and anything other than this is not a record I am interested in being a part of.'” (It wasn't until she played the material for Guy Oseary at Madonna's Maverick Records that Morissette found a home for her music.)

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The "Jagged Little Pill" re-release revisits Morissette's journey making the record. It contains 10 demos she recorded with producing partner Glen Ballard before diving into the tracks that now comprise the album. They've been in the "archive vault" since "Pill" was released, Morissette said Monday on "Good Morning America."

Read Morissette's full essay on her blog. The 20th-anniversary edition of "Jagged Little Pill" is now available.

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