Random Stories Behind Alanis Morissette's 'Jagged Little Pill' That You Oughta Know (14 items)

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  (#1) Alanis Wrote Two Pop Albums Prior To 'Jagged Little Pill' And MCA Dumped Her Because They Thought Her Career Was Over At 17

  In 1991, Morissette released her first album called Alanis on MCA Records. The pop album, which was entirely written by the singer and producer Leslie Howe, was only released in Canada. Alanis produced three hit singles, and the album was a commercial and critical hit. The singer-songwriter became known as the "Debbie Gibson of Canada," which Morissette did not take kindly to.  

  The following year, Morissette released her sophomore album. Instead of having a pop-dance feel like her debut LP, Now Is the Time featured mostly ballads, and the lyrics were much more personal. The album was again only released in Canada. Her second effort was considered a commercial flop. 

  The pop star only signed a two-album deal with MCA, and after the disappointing sales of Now Is the Time, the label dropped her. Morissette, who was just 17, was surprised to hear from MCA Records that they thought her short career was already over.
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  (#2) Morissette Became Depressed Due To The Fame She Gained With 'Jagged Little Pill'

  When Morissette was younger, she thought she wanted the attention that came with fame. When Jagged Little Pill became a success, however, she began having panic attacks and suffered from depression. Twenty years following the massive breakout success of Jagged Little Pill, Alanis admits that fame nearly ended her. 

  "It’s taken a lot of work and therapy..." she revealed. "There's been a little PTSD I've had to work through over the years."

  "I didn't know what I was signing up for," added Morissette. "I was already quite an isolated person, and it got worse. I became averse to people even looking at me. I was always a people-watcher, I'd sit for hours observing, and then all of a sudden, every eyeball was on me. I was horrified by it."
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  (#3) Alanis First Met With Maverick To Perform 'You Oughta Know' In Her Sweatpants

  Morissette and Ballard were working in the studio one day when they got a call. Guy Oseary from Madonna's record label, Maverick, was willing to meet her. At the time, Morissette was wearing sweatpants, so she was rather reluctant to take a big meeting. The caller told her to get in the car and go see Oseary right away.

  Morissette showed up to meet Oseary in her sweats and played him "You Oughta Know," "Perfect," and "Hand in My Pocket." Oseary instantly loved what he heard. He later said: 

  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 background. I didn't know anything about them. The first song 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 blown away and never heard anything like it and wanted to sign her. That was really it, for me.
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  (#4) Alanis Says Her Biggest Embarrassment Is The World Reacting To 'Ironic'

  "Ironic" was the third single released off Jagged Little Pill. It became the singer's highest-charting hit on Billboard's Hot 100 and received two Grammy Award nominations. 

  Despite the song's massive success, if Morissette had a choice, she would still leave "Ironic" off the album. She's embarrassed because so many people have publicly shamed her for not really understanding the definition of irony. She explains, "People bring it up to this day. And you know what? I didn't even want that song on the record! But everyone else did, so I caved."
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  (#5) 'Your House' Is Based On An Experience She Had Staying Alone In The House Of A Man She Had A Crush On

  There is a hidden track on Jagged Little Pill. The final track of the CD (not on the original vinyl release) is a remix of "You Oughta Know." Five minutes and 12 seconds into the song, an a capella tune called "Your House" starts to play. 

  The track is about breaking into a lover's house without permission:

  Would you forgive me love if I danced in your shower
  Would you forgive me love if I laid in your bed
  Would you forgive me love if I stay all afternoon?

  It turns out that the hidden track is the only tune on Jagged Little Pill that is not autobiographical. Morissette explains where the idea for the song came from: 

  That is the only song on the record that's not 100% true. I was staying in this guy's house in Hollywood and he wasn't there for a week. I remember being overly curious and sleeping in his bed. It felt eerie and unnerving; I also had kind of a crush on him.

  I get burned at the end of the song because if I had really snooped around as much as I wanted to, it would have been wrong. I probably would have found something I didn't want to find. I deserved it.
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  (#6) Fans Would Break Into Her Hotel Room And Leave Notes In Her Undergarments During Shows

  Morissette was just 21 years old when Jagged Little Pill dropped in music stores and changed the outlook of her entire life. The singer had achieved small success in Canada with her first two albums but was still relatively unknown to the rest of the world. 

  Everything changed in June 1995 when Jagged Little Pill became an instant hit. She only thought it would sell about 125,000 copies; instead, it sold 33 million. Morissette became a music superstar in the 1990s. But, there was a price to pay for that fame. 

  In a 2018 interview, she revealed a few of the unsettling events resulting from her stardom:

  I started landing at airports internationally and there were 30,000 people there. I wound up hiding in my hotel room, but if I walked past the window, even my shadow on the drapes would cause people to scream outside. People would break in and leave notes in my underwear when I was doing a show. It felt like an obliteration of my boundaries.
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  (#7) Morissette Was Not Angry Or Bitter When She Recorded 'Jagged Little Pill'

  Since the angry breakup anthem "You Oughta Know" was the first track released on Jagged Little Pill, that's how most listeners were introduced to Alanis Morissette. In turn, most people think that she was angry while writing the song. Many of the tracks on the album, however, were sweet and light. For example, "Head Over Feet" is a pure love song and "Hand in My Pocket" is about how everything is going to be "fine, fine, fine."

  In fact, when Morissette was writing Jagged Little Pill, she wasn't angry or bitter. Ballard described the fun times that the two shared making the album:

  People think 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 just in a place of wanting fun and laughter, and she was making me laugh, so hard that I couldn't even sit up. Honestly, it was that fun.
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  (#8) Red Hot Chili Peppers' Bassist, Flea, Appears On 'You Oughta Know'

  Morissette, Oseary, and Ballard were all in agreement not to overproduce Jagged Little Pill. Their vision was to make it a "handmade record." They would add some drums and other instruments here and there, but that's it. There aren't vocal doubles or backup singers on the album. They just wanted to let the emotion of Alanis's voice do the talking. 

  That is, except for "You Oughta Know." Oseary just happened to be best pals with Red Hot Chili Peppers lead singer Anthony Kiedis. He discussed how he got Flea and Dave Navarro to play on Morissette's album:

  There's a guy named Jimmy who I was hanging with at the time who played in "You Oughta Know" and he just kept saying, "Gosh, imagine what this would sound like with a stronger bass and guitar." So he had the immediate vision for it. And then I talked to Alanis and Glen and asked if we could try to let Jimmy see out his vision. And so we did, we brought in Flea and Dave [Navarro], who were friends, and they tried it and the rest is history.
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  (#9) Dave Coulier Claims To Be The Older Man Whom Alanis Wrote 'You Oughta Know' About

  The first released track off of Jagged Little Pill is "You Oughta Know." The song and the video became instant hits. The lyrics demanded attention; there was absolutely nothing like it on the radio. It was raw, borderline salacious, and autobiographical. The song's narrative tells the tale of an older man who manipulates and lies. The mystery man leaves Morissette and quickly becomes involved with another woman: 

  You seem very well, things look peaceful
  I'm not quite as well, I thought you should know
  Did you forget about me, Mr. Duplicity?
  I hate to bug you in the middle of dinner
  It was a slap in the face
  How quickly I was replaced
  And are you thinking of me when you f*ck her?

  Morissette has never revealed the object of her scorn. Even decades later, she feels the need to protect him.

  "I'm not being coquettish," she said. "A lot of people have said it's a great revenge song, but the idea of revenge being acted out is something that I think is really dangerous in our world. The reason I won't say who it's about - certainly, it’s to protect them on some level, but mostly it's about me wanting to make sure I stand by my value system of not advocating revenge."

  According to Dave Coulier, Uncle Joey from Full House, he is the mystery man in question. The actor dated the singer in the early 1990s, so it's certainly possible. In a 2013 interview, Coulier said he called Morissette and asked her how she wanted him to respond to the media if they started asking him questions about the song. Morissette told him to say whatever he wanted. 

  Coulier revealed that the one line that gave it away for him was, "I hate to bug you in the middle of dinner," because, "We had already broken up... She called and I said, 'Hey, you know, I'm right in the middle of dinner. Can I just call you right back?'" He added, "When I heard the line, it was like, 'uh-oh.'"
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  (#10) Morissette Recorded The Vocals On Every Song In Just One Or Two Takes

  After Morissette was dropped from her label, she ventured out to Los Angeles. She was voraciously composing songs at the time, writing all day and all night. Kurt Dinney from MCA Music Publishing contacted Glen Ballard and said he wanted him to meet a young artist named Alanis Morissette. Dinney hoped that the two could write new songs together, and as it turns out, the pairing was perfect. 

  Ballard is credited, along with Morissette, for composing the music for every track on Jagged Little Pill. He was impressed that the artist could nail her vocals on each song in just one or two takes. Ballard explained:

  I recorded all those vocals at the end of the night, sometimes one take. "You Oughta Know," one take. Most of 'em, two takes. And it was that part of it, to this day, [that] amazes me more than anything. Because she did not ever, ever get neurotic about vocals. A lot of singers just naturally will be. She just couldn't be less concerned. She just would go out and sing.

  Morissette talks about how she was able to record the vocals so quickly:

  I think the process for me was really sacred, but it 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 know? There was a really urgent, visceral, immediate, real-time capturing that Glen was able to do with his C12 mic, his magic mic, the original Magic Mike. And so I just felt the vocals were already there, and he did too.
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  (#11) 'Jagged Little Pill' Was Initially Rejected By Several Record Labels

  After completing Jagged Little Pill, Ballard and Morissette shopped it around to record labels. Unfortunately, the pair initially faced nothing but rejection. Ballard discussed how every label turned them down: 

  [We shopped it to] all the major record companies. Every single one. Every one. Interscope almost signed it, Atlantic, there was this guy at Atlantic named Steve Greenberg who loved it, he couldn't get his bosses to sign it. Warner Brothers passed, even 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 get people to hear it. Honestly, it was different. People sort of liked it, but it was like, that doesn't mean anything.
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  (#12) Ballard And Morissette Would Write One Song Every Day

  The pairing of Glen Ballard and Alanis Morissette seemed to be pure kismet right from the start. The singer was not armed with a record deal, but she did have ideas for dozens of songs in her arsenal. The writing duo got to work in a studio located in Encino, California. The space was loaded with an abundance of windows to let the sunshine in. It even had a tranquil garden. There were no engineers or other musicians working with them.

  The team would write music together for 10-12 hours a day. At the end of each writing day, they would emerge with a demo. Ballard revealed Morissette's process:

  She had bunches of journals, she had reams of thoughts and ideas, which she did reference. But usually it was only as a reference. Most everything, she was just writing it right out based on where we were going musically.

  She might have a phrase, but the most important thing for me was that she started singing early. I was hearing this incredible voice in the room, even if the words weren't completely there. It certainly guided me musically - it was a really wonderful process. The words came out of what we were doing right in that moment and the conversations we had.
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  (#13) Alanis Wrote ‘Hand in My Pocket’ In One Hour

  One of the quickest songs to come to Alanis was the hopeful and fun "Hand in My Pocket." The clever lyrics juxtapose each other:

  I'm broke but I'm happy, I'm poor but I'm kind
  I'm short but I'm healthy, yeah
  I'm high but I'm grounded, I'm sane but I'm overwhelmed
  I'm lost but I'm hopeful, baby
  What it all comes down to
  Is that everything's gonna be fine, fine, fine
  'Cause I've got one hand in my pocket
  And the other one is giving a high five

  Ballard described the ease of writing "Hand in My Pocket:" "I saw her write that in front of me, like, in an hour. I had a 12-string Epiphone electric guitar and we just wrote it on the spot."

  "Hand in My Pocket" became the second single released off of Jagged Little Pill. Like "You Oughta Know" before it, the song was No. 1 on Billboard thanks to a lot of radio play. The music video is in black and white and became a staple on MTV.
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  (#14) Tom Kitt Turned 'Jagged Little Pill' Into A Broadway Musical In 2019

  In 2013, it was announced that Tony Award-winner Tom Kitt would bring Jagged Little Pill to the Broadway stage. 

  "I look forward to taking the heart of Jagged Little Pill and expanding its story, fleshing it out into ever deeper layers of emotionality, specificity, humanity, power, physicality, spirit and fabulism," Morissette said of the adaptation. "I look forward to collaborating with Vivek and Tom and our whole inspiring team to create something greater than the sum of our parts."

  The music and lyrics for the production were taken directly from Morissette's album. Academy Award-winner Diablo Cody (Juno) wrote the musical's book. Kitt added music supervision, orchestrations, and arrangements. Tony Award-winner Diane Paulus took on directing duties. 

  Jagged Little Pill opened on Broadway in December 2019. A synopsis for the show states: 

  Mary Jane Healy is a high-achieving homemaker who will do anything for her family, including their adopted African-American daughter Frankie, who is struggling to find her place in their lily-white community. But when the Healys' lives begin to unravel, Mary Jane's drive to keep her family together threatens to break them apart.

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