Before Jagged Little Pill, Alanis Morissette was Canada's teen dance-pop star
In the early 1990s Alanis Morissette had big hair, dance-pop singles, a slot opening for Vanilla Ice, and a reputation as Canada's Debbie Gibson. Then her label dropped her. A few years later, after almost every other label had passed, an album made in a Los Angeles studio sold 33 million copies.
Morissette was born in Ottawa in 1974, twelve minutes after her twin brother Wade. Her parents taught at a Canadian air base in Lahr, West Germany, for several years before returning home, and she grew up Catholic, appearing as a child on the sketch show You Can't Do That on Television. Her mother had fled Hungary in 1956; Morissette only learned of the family's Jewish ancestry in her late twenties.
Her Canada-only debut, Alanis, came out in 1991 and went platinum, earning her a Juno as most promising female vocalist. The follow-up, a more reflective ballad record in 1992, sold about half as many copies and was judged a failure, and MCA Canada let her go. One early demo had an odd fate: a cassette sent to Geffen in 1989 has never been heard, because it was stolen when the label's headquarters was burgled.
Moving first to Toronto and then Los Angeles, she found a collaborator in producer Glen Ballard, who let her sound develop rather than reshaping it. Maverick Records, the only label willing to take her, released Jagged Little Pill in June 1995 with modest hopes. Then the Los Angeles station KROQ started playing You Oughta Know, with Flea and Dave Navarro of the Red Hot Chili Peppers on it, and the album took off. Ironic became her biggest hit, despite endless jokes about its examples of irony.
The record sold more than 16 million copies in the United States alone and won Album of the Year at the 1996 Grammys, making her the youngest winner of that award at the time. The 18-month tour that followed featured future Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins and, for a stretch, Radiohead as the opening act. Worn out, she took up Iyengar yoga and spent six weeks in India, a trip that shaped her next album.
Source: Alanis Morissette
