Alanis Morissette looks back on the phenomenal success of her 1995 album Jagged Little Pill in a new interview conducted for the ‘Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso’ podcast, and reflects upon the fact that some of the harshest criticism she received at the time came from trail-blazing female artists and music writers who she admired.
“I think I had these fantasies that I would be snuggling up with Annie Lennox, and Joni [Mitchell] would be massaging my feet,” the 52-year-old Canadian singer/songwriter jokes. “I just had these fantasies of what it could be like… and it wasn’t.”
Introduced by lacerating lead single You Oughta Know, an unforgettable takedown of a toxic ex-boyfriend, Jagged Little Pill, Morissette’s third album, won five Grammy Awards and has sold north of 33 million copies worldwide, making it one of the biggest-selling albums ever. But the phenomenal success of the record was accompanied by some scathing criticism, with some of the harshest critiques, as Morissette acknowledges, delivered by women she respected, Tori Amos, Sinead O’Connor and Joni Mitchell among them.
In an interview with Details magazine, which Fragoso reads aloud, Mitchell commented, “I’m a musical explorer, and not just a pop songwriter or or an occasional writer of a song or half a song like these other women. Alanis Morissette writes words, someone helps set it to the music, and then she’s kind of stylized into the part.”
“Yeah,that’s a that’s a woman who’s been baked in patriarchy, projecting it on a fellow woman,” Morissette responds. “Happens all the time… What a bummer.”
“It’s also inaccurate,” she adds. “That’s the reduction of the patriarchy. A woman can’t possibly fill in the blank.”
During the interview, Morissette also reveals that no-one at her record label, Maverick, wanted to have You Oughta Know, which featured Red Hot Chili Peppers duo Flea and Dave Navarro, come out as the first single from the record, and she had to fight for its release.
“It wasn’t a popular choice,” she admits. “With the inner team, nobody wanted You Oughta Know. They were terrified of that song. I remember having thought at the time that I would much rather come out being maybe misinterpreted, maybe reduced, but starting on a note that is intense. And I am here for it. I can explain anger till the cows come home.
“Every woman I knew was pissed, because they were paying attention. How do you not get pissed? You’re inside a patriarchal Truman Show woman-hating dome, and then you say to the feminine, ‘Have fun in there’.”
Watch the interview in full below.