Story highlights
"Jagged Little Pill" was released in June 1995
The album would go on to sell 33 million copies worldwide
It spawned three top 10 hits and made Alanis Morissette a star
Alanis Morissette’s album of siren songs for pissed-off chicks everywhere, “Jagged Little Pill,” turns 20 this month.
Way back in the summer of 1995, songs like “You Oughta Know,” “Hand In My Pocket” and “You Live” spoke to a certain type of girl who felt all of her feelings and didn’t mind broadcasting them.
The album took MTV by storm and would go on to sell 13 million copies in the U.S.
Morissette’s confessional lyrics gave fans permission to talk openly about oral sex, masturbation, unhealthy romantic attachments and mommy and daddy issues – the stuff good girls and boys keep under wraps.
Pull out the old CD and have a listen – the songs are still fresh.
“I thank sweet baby Jesus that I can actually perform these songs,” Morissette, 41, said at the Elle Women in Music Awards in Hollywood last month. “There’s timelessness to it for me that I can actually stand by these lyrics still. Thank God. Because otherwise, I probably wouldn’t want to.”
In honor of the milestone, here are 20 facts you might not know about JLP and Morissette:
1. Alanis turned 21 the month “Jagged Little Pill” was released.
2. She was a Canadian child actress and singer who appeared on the kids’ show “You Can’t Do That on Television” and released two dance-pop albums in her teens.
3. Morissette worked with pop group Wilson Phillips’ producer Glen Ballard to perfect the biting lyrics for “Jagged Little Pill.”
4. The album was one of the first big successes for Madonna’s Maverick Records.
“I remember before I met Guy Oseary at Maverick, I was writing ‘All I Really Want’ in my sweatpants,” she told Entertainment Weekly. “And they said, ‘You need to go over and meet everybody at Madonna’s label.’ And I said, ‘I’m in my f***ing sweatpants!’ And they said, ‘Well, you gotta go now!’ So my first meeting with the whole team was me in my sweatpants. It was horrifying. Thankfully, they loved my music.”
5. “Jagged Little Pill” produced six singles and three U.S. top 10 hits. Three songs went to No. 1 on the Billboard alternative chart.
6. We still don’t know who inspired “You Oughta Know.” “Full House” actor Dave Coulier once jokingly copped to being the former boyfriend who sparked the breakup anthem but later walked back his statement.
7. “Jagged Little Pill” has sold 33 million copies worldwide.
8. Morissette continues to act. She played God in Kevin Smith’s film “Dogma” and appeared in an episode of “Sex and the City” in which she kissed Sarah Jessica Parker’s character, Carrie Bradshaw.
9. She was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame this year and is loaded down with awards: seven Grammys and 14 Junos, the top Canadian music award.
10. The versatile singer-songwriter is adapting “Jagged Little Pill” into a Broadway production.
11. An acoustic re-issue of “Jagged Little Pill” was released in 2005.
12. She has released eight studio albums to date.
13. She’s married to rapper Mario “Souleye” Treadway, with whom she has a 3-year-old son, Ever.
14. Rolling Stone named “Jagged Little Pill” one of the 100 best albums of the ’90s.
“Proof that the gods of rock are unfair bastards: A former TV moppet from the not-so-dirty North hooks up with Wilson Phillips’ producer and makes an opportunistic angst-rock platter that not only sells 13 million copies – it doesn’t suck. In fact, it’s damn near flawless …” the magazine grumbled.
15. Morissette sings in the mezzo-soprano vocal range.
16. She started playing piano at 6 and composing music at 7; she began writing songs at 9.
17. Ironically, the song “Ironic” includes several non-ironic lyrics. English teachers have used it to teach the true meaning of “irony.”
18. The video for “Ironic” won three of six MTV Video Music Awards for which it was nominated in 1996.
19. Morissette is a big proponent of spirituality. She hosts Esalen workshops and embarked on a journey to India after the JLP tour wrapped, a trip that inspired songs on her next album, “Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie.”
20. She turned 41 on June 1.
