Alanis Morissette
Yes, it's true: Alanis Morissette isn't angry anymore. She's rich, successful, happily engaged to actor Ryan Reynolds, and getting in touch with her folkie side on an all-acoustic update of her classic 1995 album, Jagged Little Pill(available now in stores everywhere -- including ours).
So what does this former infatuation junkie listen to now that she's found some inner peace? We wanted to know, so we asked Alanis to make us a mixtape. Here's what she gave us.
1. Rufus Wainwright - "Poses" - "When on tour and needing to drop off the radar, I would put this song on repeat and lie on the floor, stare at the ceiling, play it 10 times in a row, and sob."
2. Joni Mitchell - "River" - "The emotion in this song comes closest to how it feels for me to be a Canadian and to feel the melancholy that often accompanies the dark winter months."
3. Tears For Fears - "Mad World" - "Reminds me of my fiancée, as we were both obsessed with this song last Christmas."
4. Stevie Wonder - "We Can Work it Out" - "We would listen to this song on the trains on tour in Japan, and be dancing all around the aisles, it's such a joy ball song."
5. The Sundays - "Summertime" - "Her voice is my fantasies woman's voice: young, conversational, not precious, joy, strong, smart, feminine. I had a dream not long ago that we hung out, she was very cool in the dream."
6. Nick Drake - "Pink Moon" - "I go through phases every few months (quarterly!) where I have to have the fix of hearing his voice, his choices and his sweet spirit."
7. David Wilcox - "Chet Baker's Unsung Swan Song" - "This song is one of my favorites, my fiancée played it for me on a drive up into the mountains, and I asked him to play it ten more times. For me it's like staring at a beautiful painting, while holding the painter's heart. Songwriters that are courageous enough to share their inner world, so grateful to be trusted with that."
8. Rickie Lee Jones - "On Saturday Afternoons in 1963" - "Living in Germany when I was younger, my parents' music was the only music I had access to, and I fell in love with this song, considering it a tip of the hat to my parents having exposed me to this whole era of music that I was too young to appreciate."
9. Jane Siberry - "Red High Heels" - "She was the first artist I was in love with when I was 10 years old. The first concert I ever went to, and the first song that validated my love of stream of consciousness. I would get lost in her words and landscapes for hours with my headphones on as a young girl."
10. R.E.M. - "Hope" - I love Michael. I love his willingness and courage and surrender and his immeasurable good will. And I love this song in particular because its melody tips its hat at Leonard Cohen, whom I also adore."
Alanis Morissette All Music Guide Biography
Alanis Morissette was one of the most unlikely stars of the mid-'90s. A former child actress turned dance-pop diva, Morissette later transformed herself into a confessional alternative singer/songwriter in the vein of Liz Phair and Tori Amos. However, she bolstered that formula with enough pop sensibility, slighthip-hop flourishes, and marketing savvy to become a superstar with her third album, Jagged Little Pill. Morissette was born in Ottawa, Canada, and began playing piano and writing songs during her childhood years. She also joined the cast of You Can't Do That on Television, a children's television program. Using money that she earned on the show, Morissette recorded an independent single,"Fate Stay with Me," which was released when she was only ten years old.Morissette then concentrated on a musical career after leaving the show's cast, signing a music publishing contract when she was 14. The publishing contract led to a record deal with MCA Canada, and Morissette moved to Toronto before releasing her debut album, Alanis, in 1991. Alanis was a collection of pop-oriented dance numbers and ballads that found success in Canada, selling over 100,000 copies and earning the singer a Juno Award for Most Promising Female Artist. However, no other country paid much attention to the record. In 1992,Morissette released Now Is the Time, an album that closely resembled her debut. Like its predecessor, it was a success in Canada, even if its sales did not match those of Alanis. Following the release of Now Is the Time, Morissette relocated to Los Angeles, where she met veteran producer Glen Ballard in early 1994.Ballard had previously written Michael Jackson's hit single "Man in the Mirror,"produced Wilson Phillips' hit debut album, and worked with actor/musician David Hasselhoff. The two decided to work together, and despite their shared experience with mainstream pop, they opted instead to pursue an edgier,alternative rock-oriented direction. The result was Jagged Little Pill, which was released in 1995 on Madonna's label, Maverick Records. On the strength of the angst-ridden single "You Oughta Know," Jagged Little Pill gained attention upon its release in the summer of 1995. The song soon received heavy airplay from alternative radio outlets and MTV, sending the album into the Top Ten and helping it achieve multi-platinum status. Jagged Little Pill's subsequent singles --"Hand in My Pocket," "All I Really Want," "You Learn," and "Ironic" -- kept the album in the Top Ten for an astounding 69 weeks, and Morissette was nominated for six Grammys in early 1996. She won several of those awards, including Album of the Year and Song of the Year. While she never managed to replicate the success of Jagged Little Pill, Morissette continued to release well-received albums into the 21st century. Her much-anticipated follow-up,Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie, was released in the autumn of 1998, setting a record for the highest first-week sales by a female artist. An Unpluggedset appeared a year later and featured a cover of the Police's "King of Pain,"while 2002's Under Rug Swept saw Morissette writing and producing without the help of collaborators. So-Called Chaos followed in 2004. A year later, she tookJagged Little Pill on the road as an acoustic tour. Those tour dates led to the release of Jagged Little Pill Acoustic, an album originally (and tellingly) sold exclusively through Starbucks outlets. Morissette and her fans had grown up, and Collection -- an 18-track retrospective of her work -- followed in November 2005. But Morissette wasn't done, returning in 2008 with the brooding Flavors of Entanglement, which dealt with the emotional fallout from the dissolution of her engagement with actor Ryan Reynolds. In 2010, Morissette gave birth to her first child, Ever Imre, with rapper Mario “MC Souleye” Treadway, resulting in 2012's spry and hopeful Havoc and Bright Lights, which focused on spirituality, marriage, and motherhood. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Rovi
