On “Not the Doctor,” she refuses to play mother or babysitter for someone else’s problems.
Human weakness is a theme-she’s hyperactive and distracted on “All I Really Want,” disoriented by happiness on “Head Over Feet”-but then, so is strength. So when the 21-year-old former Nickelodeon star released it in 1995 after being dropped by her label, MCA Canada, its fresh and unapologetic worldview just hit different.īeneath the record's radio-friendly hooks and shiny harmonies were startling observations on the messiness and banality of life. It is also fearlessly confrontational, with sharp-edged criticisms of Catholicism, technology, and boyish men that few artists since have had the guts to echo. Her blockbuster third LP (following two teen-pop records that went Top 40 in her native Canada) was poetic and straightforward, cynical and idealistic, sarcastic and wide-eyed, lost but hopeful (baby!). Like Morissette, whose arrival bridged the gap between grunge, alternative, and mainstream pop, much of the album’s enduring magnetism is in its embrace of chaos and contradiction. Alanis Morissette’s era-defining album is full of these moments-snarling, eye-rolling, ugly truths that feel so good to say out loud. Everyone has a moment on Jagged Little Pill that they feel like they belong to-a spitting wisecrack or rhetorical question that struck a nerve early on and continued to reveal its wisdom with age, time, and experience.
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