Alanis Morissette Song You Oughta Know Is About Who

'[The label was] afraid of how intense it was, to exist honest. And I said, 'Well, I'm 19 and I'm intense.'' — Alanis Morissette

In June 1995, Morissette released a feminist manifesto in Jagged Niggling Pill that sold more than 33 1000000 copies and won multiple Grammy and Juno awards.

Violent. Vulnerable. Unapologetic. Alanis Morissette's voice tore out of 1995 with an album that split the decade.

Jagged Little Pill's precipitous arrival was unexpected: Morissette's previous piece of work included ii teen pop albums and a single that gave her the moniker "Too Hot" Alanis. It as well gave her a dance-pop image she wanted to milk shake. At 21 years quondam, Morissette no longer allow others define her;Jagged Petty Pill was her truth.

Dropped from MCA Records afterward those outset ii albums, Ottawa-born Morissette travelled to California to write new songs and eventually found a co-author in Glen Ballard (Paula Abdul, Wilson Phillips, the Pointer Sisters). Madonna'south characterization, Maverick Records, picked up the resulting anthology, and come June 1995, Morissette released a feminist manifesto inJagged NigglingPill that sold more than 33 million copies and won multiple Grammy and Juno awards.

Jagged Footling Pill's identify in history is unmistakable today, but the album's story starts in a small studio in Encino, Calif., only after an earthquake, at the same time and identify as the O.J. Simpson police car hunt. When a xix-yr-old Canadian adult female with a hell of a lot to say headed west from Toronto and found her voice.

With interviews from Morissette, Ballard, Bohemian's Guy Oseary and more than, we present the complete oral history of Alanis Morissette'sJagged Fiddling Pill.

Editor'due south notation: all interviews have been adjusted for clarity.

The making-of: 'I have zero regret about anything'*

Morissette: I really was dying to go to Hollywood. But I knew that if I went from Ottawa directly to Hollywood it simply would've been likewise big of a cultural change for me. And so I spent about a year or and then in Toronto, so I was dropped by MCA. And so I just kept writing. I was a workaholic then, I'm a recovering workaholic now. I was but writing 24-hour interval and dark — I have calendars from that period of fourth dimension where I accept a writing session in the morning time and a writing session at nighttime, seven days a calendar week, Saturdays and Sundays, and that's all I did.

Ballard: In February of 1994, a immature publisher named Kurt Dinney, who was at MCA Music Publishing, and was working in the Fifty.A. office, he called me and said that he had a writer coming in town from Canada and he had thought me to write with her and that's how it all started. It ended up that was Alanis Morissette. And he told me that she was going to exist in town for a curt time and wanted to write songs.

Morissette: I simply didn't want to stop [writing]. And it'south why I moved to Hollywood and wrote with so many different people, I didn't want to stop until a vocal really represented exactly what I was thinking and feeling. [I'd already written] probably 50 songs? [Laughs] I was a people pleaser, and I had a hard time stopping the procedure if I was writing with someone out of respect for them, and so I would finish the song, merely I knew that I would never use the song. The exercise of it was really illuminating for me only I knew I hadn't sort of found my rightful seat, so to speak.

Ballard: She was trying to figure out who she was in that moment, and it was this incredible thing. I merely felt similar she just was shaking her tree and fruit was falling out [laughs]. I hateful, she was just so prepare to have that happen. So it was a beautiful, cute fourth dimension. And it rarely happens that manner. I hateful perfect time, perfect place. She was 19 and 20 years old at the fourth dimension, and on her 21st birthday this record came out and it was a pretty nice birthday present [laughs].

My agenda was to be self-expressed and to be equally authentic as I possibly could, and I wouldn't stop until that happened. - Alanis Morissette

Morissette: When I moved to Fifty.A. I connected writing with a handful of different people and it just didn't click until I met Glen. He was intellectually sophisticated, so there was no ceiling for me there, and then musically he was really sophisticated, so at that place was no ceiling at that place, and and then he was just really curious about who I was and left this huge open infinite for me to write.

Ballard: She walked in my studio in March of 1994, Encino, California, just near six weeks before that in that location'd been a huge earthquake, and my studio was just getting back online and when she showed up, she actually helped me finish the last day of getting it online. Nosotros were late getting started; the studio wasn't ruined, just a lot of stuff had been shaken up. Then it was kind of after this huge, seismic effect. And so when we're writing the tape, literally this O.J. Simpson saga was happening and at one bespeak, Robert Kardashian, he lived in Encino not far from my house. There were all these helicopters going over, chasing O.J. Simpson downwards the street and nosotros were going, "What the hell is going on?" We were writing a song called "No Avalon," which is non on the anthology only information technology'southward a very powerful song. It was kind of influenced by that event. And so it felt like there was a lot going on. Certainly every day was a pretty magical thing. In that location was no question about it. That doesn't happen every twenty-four hours.

Morissette: A lot of other people that I'd been put together with to collaborate had their own calendar. Especially in Canada, understandably. They'd known me as a teenage creative person. So everyone had an calendar oft when I would go into the studio with them, whereas Glen had no calendar. His begged question for me was, "Who are you? What do you lot wanna write about? What's going on with you?" That was a existent freedom, it was beautiful.

Ballard: The get-go song was called "The Bottom Line" [which later on became "All I Really Want"] and we recorded it, we wrote it and recorded it all that twenty-four hours and that became our pattern. We finished it that nighttime, recorded it and played information technology for our publisher the side by side day and they liked it, and they said keep going. So we did.

Morissette: Our ritual was such that we would just get together, maybe at noon or 1, we'd go to lunch, we'd have some conversation, some philosophical conversation nigh whatsoever the topic was that day, and so we would become into the studio and ofttimes the song would be about that topic.

Ballard: I think the biggest affair is that she wasn't on a record label, and nosotros weren't really trying to write something for the radio or for an A&R guy or whatever, we were just writing songs and I think that's the best thing that could've happened, considering I call back she was much too original. She didn't want to copy anything, I mean that wasn't in her. And and so it was the least derivative affair I've ever washed, information technology was literally just whatever we wanted to practice nosotros started doing.

Morissette: Nosotros did the music together the first few songs — and so "Closer Than You Might Believe" and "The Bottom Line" and "Ironic" were written past him and me, and he dove into some of the lyrics with me, too. So I was leaning on him a footling bit in that regard for the first few songs. And then afterward it only became obvious — well information technology didn't get obvious, only I just really sort of came into my own, so to speak, and was writing the music with him but then the lyrics would exist written all at the same fourth dimension with me and I felt like I was off to the races, with his back up.

Ballard: The best thing that happened in all the writing was that she sang a lot. She merely was singing. She didn't have all the words yet simply she was singing, singing, singing. And singing these melodies and changing things. For me, getting to hear her voice in the room a lot, that'due south how we were able to write those songs, one a day. So that was sort of the predicate, and literally every song we did in a mean solar day, and information technology was just the two of us.

Morissette: I think as we started writing more than and more songs together, I just thought, "Oh, this is an invitation, this is complete freedom for me to be who I am however at the aforementioned fourth dimension feel safety," correct? And then information technology wasn't like there were 500 people in the studio in the room, staring at me, judging me [laughs]. And again the lack of calendar was simply a very soulful experience for me, his lack of agenda. I had a actually big agenda: my agenda was to exist self-expressed and to be as authentic as I possibly could, and I wouldn't stop until that happened.

I literally idea perchance 10 people would hear this song. - Alanis Morissette on "Yous Oughta Know"

Ballard: I recorded all those vocals at the end of the night, sometimes one accept. "You Oughta Know," one take. Most of 'em, 2 takes. And it was that office of it, to this day, amazes me more than anything. Considering she did not ever, always get neurotic most vocals. A lot of singers but naturally will be. She just couldn't be less concerned. She just would go out and sing.

Morissette: I recall the procedure for me was actually sacred, but information technology wasn't precious. If I were to have gone in to re-record these vocals, they would've been very awkward [laughs]. Because I already had them, you lot know? There was a really urgent, visceral, immediate, existent-time capturing that Glen was able to do with his C12 mic, his magic mic, the original Magic Mike. And so I merely felt the vocals were already there, and he did likewise.

Ballard: So much of it happened simply with the two of united states of america, honestly it's the nigh intimate record you could brand. Because the beginning two days we were working, I didn't have a recording engineer, largely because of this earthquake matter. I was just doing my all-time to get information technology on tape. Recording it on viii-adds. I take a overnice studio simply I don't consider myself to exist a recording engineer, just onJagged Little Pill I was. So the beginning two things we did, it was just me, and she said, "I like writing like that."

So I engineered all the original demos, every unmarried i of 'em.

Morissette: I think at that place were a couple times where we tried to maybe do another vocal accept and it just sounded like I was copying myself [laughs]. So nosotros kept a lot of the original demos. I retrieve "Mitt in My Pocket" is maybe the original demo with a few tweaks.

Ballard: On "You lot Oughta Know" it was xi o'clock at night, she sang information technology once. We were exhausted. That was it. That's the tape, that'due south the vocals. From a vocal standpoint, no one has that much courage. Everybody wants to set up their shit, she never did. She never did. She simply wanted it to exist that. And of course information technology was spectacular. Simply there was no Auto-Tune, no double track. We doubled sure things simply for effects, but all those vocals are just her at the end of the night, singing something she simply wrote. And that's the most amazing thing to me, is the way she finished it.

I think the malapropism in 'Ironic' was the only affair I regretted [laughs]. I was similar, oh God, if I knew more than ten people were gonna hear this, I would've been a stickler instead of being shamed publicly, planetarily, for 20 years. - Alanis Morissette

Morissette: There is this illusion of safety for artists, when you lot're alone in a room. Until the crazy fame that ensued, I literally thought maybe x people would hear this song. I didn't recall anyone would really hear it. I mean, I wanted to share it with as many billions of people as I perchance could, just I was alone in a room with Glen, and information technology was condom for me to talk and share and write, and and so I did, and it felt really liberating. It was only later that I realized that my own personal intimate experiences were things that people related to or were inspired by or comforted by. That came much later.

Recording engineer Chris Fogel was working for Ballard during the fourth dimension Morissette wrote Jagged Footling Pill, and he mixed most of the album.

Fogel: I'd come in in the morning, [Glen would] decide which song I was gonna mix, he'd leave me for the day to practise my thing with it, he'd come back and listen to information technology, make his tweaks to it and then nosotros'd take Alanis come up in that evening, mind to it, brand her tweaks to it, or they'd listen to it both together for the showtime time and make their tweaks. I'one thousand sort of the tertiary wheel.

Ballard: On May 26, we wrote the song "Ironic." And then that was the tertiary song nosotros'd written. And honestly, when we wrote that one I was actually excited because I loved information technology, it'due south all the same one of my favourite songs, and everything that happened in the writing of that vocal convinced me that this was special.

*Morissette: I recollect the malapropism in "Ironic" was the only thing I regretted [laughs]. I was similar, oh God, if I knew more than 10 people were gonna hear this, I would've been a stickler instead of beingness shamed publicly, planetarily, for 20 years. And Glen and I wrote that one together. But, you lot know, other than that I have zero regret about anything.

Fogel:We were listening to a lot of indie rock at the time, I recollect at the time the Cranberries were very popular. And so we were going for a piddling bit edgier, not so polished audio, and I recollect if you mind to the vocal sound in "Ironic," peculiarly the bridge department, that's heavily affected, that's something that I came upwardly with for the mix.

Ballard: We wrote a few more times then she had to go dorsum to Canada. And honestly, we wrote, I remember the final thing we wrote was in June, so I did non write once more with her until October of 1994. In a short bridge we wrote "You Oughta Know," "Mary Jane," "Forgiven," "Caput Over Feet," "Hand in My Pocket," "Right Through You lot," "You Learn," all that was in Oct or November. We were just on such a roll at that point, it just felt like nosotros knew what we were doing.

Fogel: Nosotros did alive versions of "Hand in My Pocket" with studio drummers and studio musicians and presented those to the label. Nosotros did versions of songs that never existed.

[Nosotros started] doing a whole bunch of different versions of the package that becameJagged Piffling Pill and eventually wound it back to what it was.

Ballard: What astonished me was that she was writing stuff in existent time. I hateful "Perfect" she wrote right in front end of me, and the whole concept of a child, sort of the pressure that a child feels from their parents. I mean, we weren't even writing that song, she wasn't thinking about it, it just kind of jumped into her encephalon.

Ballard: There was and so much non-exact intention in her vocal. You can hear there'southward the cry in the sound of her vocalism. What is that emotion, you know? What are the words that go with that? And somehow, she was able to practice it. I mean, it was but an extraordinary thing to witness. And I was sort of hearing her do information technology as I'm making these tracks, and we're kicking stuff dorsum and forth with the music, but she's only writing furiously, and then singing some, writing, singing, writing, singing, information technology was great. Sitting on the flooring, never would sit in a chair [laughs].

People call up that she was in this heavy state of mind when making it, the opposite was true. I've never been funnier, she laughed at everything I had to say. She was merely in a place of wanting fun and laughter, and she was making me express joy, then hard that I couldn't even sit up. Honestly, it was that fun.

The secret rails: 'Nosotros wanted to scare people'

Morissette: I started to write that vocal with nothing, and nosotros tried to envelop it with chords and music but it just didn't quite announce that haunted combination of shame and fearfulness and grief and hope and vulnerability. It just really connotated what was actually happening.

Ballard: I thought I had perhaps played piano, and actually, it'southward a song that I played electric guitar on and she sang to, and I just felt electric guitar didn't audio correct, we simply took it out. So information technology's a cappella now.

Morissette: Some of that was fictional apparently, I'm not that creepy, merely some of information technology was based on my having stayed at this person'due south house, whom I was dating, and but how bad-mannered I felt being in this person'southward house and everything was so vulnerable and out in the open. I had really good boundaries back and then in that sense, but it was my fantasy of, unfortunately, things that wound upward happening after, prophetically [laughs]. Simply it was a little haunted. That was actually probably the only fictionalized moments on the whole record. And that might've been why nosotros had it be a hidden rails, too.

Ballard: And we wanted to scare people. Information technology comes on a minute into the sequence. So information technology doesn't turn off the CD, merely if you were only sitting around, y'all've heard the tape and xxx seconds, 45 seconds get by and you think it's over, yous're thinking about something else, and you hear her singing. It'southward spooky. Information technology's scared me a few times, I dearest information technology. We're grateful to everybody who sticks around to hear it [laughs].

Getting signed: 'They were scared of me'

Ballard: Every at present and so, when something like that happens, it can't be stopped. And this couldn't be stopped. Lord knows, I tell you, at the finish of 1994, right at Christmas, I was deeply depressed. We had all these songs. Alanis had to get dorsum to Canada, and no i had signed information technology. I actually didn't know if I was actually going to come across her again, and it was just like what a bummer, y'all know? 'Cause I thought there was something special there.

Morissette: We had started the process of [shopping it around], just I actually put a cease to information technology because I was taking meetings with people and they were saying things similar, "Well how do you perform alive?" and I turned to everybody at the fourth dimension and I said I'm actually unwilling to take one more meeting where I have to describe what I practice versus just evidence what I do [laughs]. They'll see.

Ballard: [We shopped it to] all the major tape companies. Every single 1. Every one. Interscope virtually signed it, Atlantic, at that place was this guy at Atlantic named Steve Greenberg who loved it, he couldn't become his bosses to sign it. Warner Brothers passed, fifty-fifty though they [had] it up on Reprise. All the majors, I mean everybody, honestly, because we had a lot of people, we had enough connections to go people to hear it. Honestly, it was different. People sort of liked information technology, but it was similar, that doesn't hateful anything [laughs]. Are you gonna sign it or not? Y'all're not a footling scrap meaning. And nobody wanted to get usa pregnant. Information technology didn't matter. Honestly, how could information technology have been any better? It worked out perfectly.

Morissette: I was in the studio writing "All I Really Want" with Glen in my sweatpants [laughs] and we got a call from Ken Hertz, who was a partner of one of the lawyers I was working with. He said, "You've gotta come with me right now, meet me at Bohemian." And I said, "I can't, I'm wearing my sweatpants." [Laughs] And he said, "Too bad, I don't care, get in the car." And so Glen and I were laughing and we just got in the car and I was similar all right, well this is cypher presentation, I'm not coming in with my stilettos and my special makeup or anything.

We went from just being the unwanted stepchild to being Cinderella. - Glen Ballard

Ballard: I drove Alanis to Bohemian and nosotros walked in the front door, 8000 Beverly Boulevard, and we played Guy a couple songs and he was like, "Oh man," immediately he didn't play any games, he simply loved information technology.

Guy Oseary started working for Maverick Records at 17 years erstwhile in the early '90s. Today, he manages Madonna and U2.

Oseary: They both walked into my office, I didn't know if they were a band, actually. I didn't know anything, really — when I saw Glen I didn't have background, I didn't know Alanis's groundwork. I didn't know annihilation about them. The first vocal they played me was the demo of "Perfect." Within, I don't know, 20 or 30 seconds into the song, I was done. I was already diddled abroad and never heard anything like information technology and wanted to sign her. That was really it, for me.

Morissette: Guy was peradventure two or three years older than me at the time. We played him "Perfect" and "You Oughta Know" and "Paw in My Pocket" and he was completely freaking out.

Ballard: I think we needed that, you know? And so it was enormously encouraging, and the next thing you know he was disarming everybody in that building: this is what Maverick Records should sign. And he convinced everybody. I mean honestly, the music did a lot of the convincing, but it was not without everybody feeling that this could piece of work. Nosotros went from just existence the unwanted stepchild to being Cinderella.

Morissette: That's why I wasn't as crestfallen as perhaps I could've been during that process of rejection subsequently rejection is that I but thought well, someone's gonna get information technology. Glen got it. Kurt Dinney [who continued Ballard and Morissette] got information technology. And we had a small group of people who really got what we were up to and then I thought information technology's possible to have people understand this music and so I just won't stop until someone does. Then Guy did.

Oseary: I didn't even understand what "Perfect" meant. When I finally understood information technology, when I finally had a chance to listen to information technology, it blew me abroad even further, right? I mean that vocal is unbelievable, lyrically and musically, it is pure. And then well written, and so well sung. But for me it just, I can't explain it. It just clicked. Very quickly, and I really roughshod in love. I brutal in love with Alanis, she warmed my heart.

Ballard: Information technology's a sweet vindication when a small label like Bohemian and a young genius like Guy Oseary hears one vocal and wants to sign it. I mean, after everybody had heard all of information technology and passed. And then you know, we just had to wait for that moment, and it was kind of like it needed to happen that way.

Morissette: I retrieve there was something to exist said for the fact that [Guy] was my historic period, correct? He was my generation and so those lyrics resonated with him in a way that perhaps a 54-year-old at the time didn't go. They were scared of me [laughs]. But the people who were younger were high-fiving me.

Oseary: I feel even though a lot of people passed on Alanis, I don't feel like, "Oh I'm the guy who said yeah," I feel as if I'grand the fortunate guy she said yep to. Over again, I merely found out most a lot of it later that everyone else passed. I didn't intendance about any of that. I merely loved information technology and was really happy that she believed in me, this kid that was an upwards-and-coming child who believes in her. It was really mutual, and it was actually swell. It's one of those things that only felt right all around.

Alanis Morissette in her first official printing photo for Maverick. (Michelle Lavita/Bohemian)

Final production: 'I'one thousand xix and I'm intense'

Ballard: We had to get the record really fix quickly and nosotros didn't really do much else to it. Nosotros had six or seven other tracks, we added some musicians to it, just essentially every song it started with our demo, and whatever we added to it yet is the demo.

Morissette: There were a couple of pieces of feedback, not from Guy only from another people in the company who wanted to hear dissimilar versions of songs and I begrudgingly, we re-recorded some of them and so when Maverick heard information technology they just said, "Ew, no no no, we desire the originals." [Laughs]

Ballard: There was a sense, peculiarly with Alanis, and I call back with Guy, to try and not overproduce information technology. I mean my instinct was like OK we'll recut everything but boy, that would've been the wrong thing. Because I just looked at it every bit demos, you know? "My little demos."

Morissette: I retrieve [Warner] thought information technology was a piddling too caustic, and they were just agape of how intense information technology was, to be honest. And I said, "Well, I'm 19 and I'm intense." [Laughs] If yous want a Steely Dan record, why don't you get sign a Steely Dan band? Because I'thousand 19 and I have some intensity, and so you lot just may have signed the wrong person. So that was a good boundary to set, and then nosotros used the versions of songs that I loved.

This was a really handmade record, you know? And certainly that was essential, I think, to its honesty. - Glen Ballard

Ballard: Nosotros added drums on six things, plainly some guitars and bass.

We did it on a couple things and we didn't go to a big, well-known mixer. [Chris] had been recording our stuff from at that place, nosotros all simply kind of believed that what nosotros had was good plenty. Non just practiced plenty simply it was the right thing. But none of information technology had the usual spit and polish of a tape, of the many records I'd even made. I'd been a staff producer for Quincy Jones, and I'd made all these big, elaborate records. This was a handmade, really handmade record, you know? And certainly that was essential, I call up, to its honesty.

Oseary: The record generally was Glen and Alanis, it really is their album, their baby, and y'all know, I was fortunate plenty to exist able to help hither and there, but really didn't need whatever of my help. I recollect that record was inevitable.

Except for one runway: the radio version of "You Oughta Know" has Flea and Dave Navarro playing on it. Oseary, it turns out, is best friends with Red Hot Chili Peppers' Anthony Kiedis.

Oseary: There's a guy named Jimmy who I was hanging with at the time who played in "You Oughta Know" and he but kept saying, "Gosh, imagine what this would sound like with a stronger bass and guitar." And then he had the immediate vision for it. Then I talked to Alanis and Glen and asked if we could endeavour to allow Jimmy run into out his vision. And so we did, we brought in Flea and Dave [Navarro], who were friends, and they tried information technology and the rest is history.

Album release: 'She was Justin Bieber then, without the net'

Ballard: I think her artist development needed to happen outside of the system. Clearly it did considering the system didn't really like it. Only the public liked it. The public in this example, they spoke much more loudly than anything any critic could say. Considering when they got on the radio a couple of times, people went crazy. Honestly, it was that fast.

Steve Waxman, director of publicity at Warner from 1992 to present, first heard Jagged Fiddling Pill in the spring of 1995 while putting together a slideshow for a sales convention in Banff. At the convention, Alanis and her band ended upwardly existence clandestine guests.

Waxman: The band performed that night at the opening of the convention and completely blew everybody away. They were spectacular. And her functioning was amazing. I remember the club in [Banff] was called Wild Bill'southward, it'due south a pretty small wing joint. And it was simply the Warner staff, which would've been virtually 50 people. And it was just a really, actually great performance and when it was over, I mean everybody was merely over the moon.

I didn't know if radio programmers and press would exist able to become past her past. So I think I'm the one person, probably in the company, that thought, 'Meh I don't know.'​​​​ - Steve Waxman

They were smokin' hot players and they're just, f--k, it was similar a full-on stone show. I mean at that place's no other fashion to describe it. That being said, I have to admit, that I think I was the only one in the room that was skeptical at all most whether or not we would be successful with this matter.

Craig Halket worked for MuchMusic when the "You Oughta Know" video arrived in 1995. He was a host, live floor managing director and likewise associate music developer. He'd previously worked with Alanis during her "Too Hot" time, when she performed on Electrical Circus.

Halket: A lot of people just felt that [Jagged Little Pill] felt too different. Some of those people were simply, again, more than skeptical, not so much cynical, but a niggling more skeptical well-nigh whether information technology would intermission through. Just it just seemed and then confident and just seemed so raw compared to what she'd done. I idea everything she did virtually it seemed to be the right matter to practise to motility herself away from what she was. And information technology had been a few years, she'd moved away and there had to be an understanding that she wasn't xv anymore.

Waxman: I didn't know if radio programmers and press would be able to get past her past. So I think I'k the i person, probably in the company, that thought, "Meh I don't know." I hateful I knew that the tape was really proficient and I knew that the performances she put on was a really great rock performance, just I also didn't have all that much faith in radio programmers and the press people at the time, giving her the opportunity to limited herself the way she wanted to express herself. I ended up servicing the record to media without telling them who it was, initially.

Halket: There was a lot of talk near how [Alanis] was Canada's Debbie Gibson, how most of the American media was portraying information technology. [She] was releasing a tape and we didn't really know what it was gonna be. We knew some of the people that she worked with — Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, in that location were a lot of people that had been talked. So at that place was a lot of anticipation for when the tape company was gonna deliver information technology. When information technology finally arrived, I immediately grabbed it, took the tape and ran to the back of the MuchMusic studio to popular it in and Sook-Yin Lee was VJing at the time so we both watched it.

Halket: We just sat down and watched it, and I loved it. I mean I but think that the song was simply then obvious. The fact that she was trying to push button some buttons with the lyrics, that was the matter that stood out the most the get-go time: "Would he go down on you in a theatre?" That kind of stood out. And it was like OK, this is a new Alanis.

Lisa Worden is the music manager at KROQ-FM in 50.A., which was the first American radio station to play "You Oughta Know" when it came out.

Worden: The [Maverick] tape rep had called us saying, "We take something really special, we want to come play it for you and it's a new artist and she'due south out of Canada," and whatever, and so they came in and played us "You Oughta Know." And I recall sitting in the room and me and my boss, Kevin, and my coworker Jean, all of us kind of looked at each other on i listen and just went holy crap, that thing is huge. I think in one of those rare instances, we put the record on that moment. Information technology seriously was 1 of the biggest phone reactions I've ever seen in the history of the station.

Maie Pauts was a midday announcer throughout the '90s at Toronto'due south alt-rock radio station the Edge, where people also kept calling in requests for Jagged Fiddling Pill singles.

Pauts: I think it blew us away as someone who was not simply working in the industry simply every bit also a female listening to other female person artists. What stood out to me was that [Alanis] was accepting her vulnerability but she definitely was non, shall we say, a victim. She was very angry, she was very ambitious. And I think the tone of the wholeJagged Piffling Pill anthology was one that embraced women for all that we are. Yes, we are women who have emotions and, similar anybody else, weaknesses, but that doesn't mean that we don't have our strengths. And I actually think that that spoke to u.s.a.. To a lot of our audience.

Waxman: [My reservation] was completely unfounded. Completely unfounded, I was an idiot [laughs].

Halket: [The pickup] was adequately immediate. People really forgave and forgot. I mean, I retrieve certainly some of the radio people were probably hesitant at the get-go because it was moving to a completely different genre. We played Alanis and so and we decided to play Alanis now, simply based entirely on that, I mean, in that location was a lot of hype nearly who she worked with and the themes of the songs. So she did really kind of shake things up.

Waxman: People were so overwhelmed by the record. It was actually fascinating to scout because information technology wasn't merely that people were reacting so positively it'south merely that the record really seemed to connect with everybody. It was really quite astonishing.

Ballard: Of grade I know that it moved a lot of people, and I'm still astonished by how many people were touched past that record. Over 30 meg people went out and bought it. These days, y'all can't even imagine it.

Halket: She was an MTV artist. She was a MuchMusic artist certainly, but it was MTV Awards, it was all of the video outlets, everything. VH1. Everything was all about Alanis. She was the creative person.

She was Justin Bieber then, without the net.

Waxman: As big as information technology was, and as rapidly as information technology got large, when she was on the cover of Rolling Stone information technology was like holy shit. This is f--king big.

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Source: https://www.cbc.ca/music/you-oughta-know-an-oral-history-of-alanis-morissette-s-jagged-little-pill-1.5160094

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