Jagged Little Pill

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Jagged Little Pill
Studio album by Alanis Morissette
Released	June 13, 1995
Recorded	Westlake Studios and Signet Sound, Hollywood
Genre	Alternative rock, Post-Grunge,
Length	57:33
Label	Maverick, Reprise
Producer	Glen Ballard
Professional reviews
All Music Guide link Robert Christgau (B+) link Melody Maker link Q Sept. 1995, p.118
Alanis Morissette chronology
Now Is the Time (1992) Jagged Little Pill (1995) Space Cakes (1995)
Singles from Jagged Little Pill
"You Oughta Know" "Hand in My Pocket" "All I Really Want" "Ironic" "You Learn" "Head over Feet"

Jagged Little Pill is the third studio album and the first internationally released album by Canadian singer-songwriter Alanis Morissette. Released on June 13, 1995 (see 1995 in music), the album broke into the mainstream with Morissette's confessional and emotional lyrics and vocals. The album garnered major success, spending twelve non-consecutive weeks at number-one on the United States Billboard 200 albums chart, and became one of three albums – along with Thriller by Michael Jackson and Falling into You by Céline Dion – to remain in the top ten for over a year (with sixty-nine weeks). In 2003, the album was ranked 327th by Rolling Stone on its list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.^[1] Media Traffic lists Jagged Little Pill as the tenth best-selling album of all-time,^[2] and it was the second best-selling album of the 1990s behind Shania Twain's Come on Over, with twenty-eight million copies sold by 2000. It had sold 30 million units worldwide by January 2005.^[3]

[edit] History

[edit] Background and production

In 1993, after leaving MCA Records Canada, Morissette moved from her home town of Ottawa to Toronto. Living alone for the first time in her life, she met with a bevy of songwriters, but the results frustrated her. A visit to Nashville a few months later also proved fruitless. Morissette began making trips to Los Angeles and working with as many musicians as possible, in the hopes of meeting a collaborator. During this time, she met producer and songwriter Glen Ballard. According to Ballard, the connection was "instant", and within thirty minutes of meeting each other they had begun experimenting with different sounds in Ballard's home studio in San Fernando Valley, California. Ballard and Morissette penned their first song together, called "The Bottom Line". The turning point in their sessions was the song "Perfect", which was written and recorded in twenty minutes. Morissette improvised the lyrics on the spot, and Ballard played guitar. The version of the song that appeared on Jagged Little Pill was the only take that the pair recorded.

Morissette later revealed that during her stay in L.A., she was robbed on a deserted street by a man with a gun. The writings and brainstormings that eventually made up Jagged Little Pill had not been taken from her purse. After the robbery, Morissette developed an intense and general angst and suffered daily panic attacks. She was hospitalized and attended psychotherapy sessions, but it didn't improve her emotional status. As Morissette later revealed in interviews, she focused all her inner problems on the soul-baring lyrics of the album for her own health. According to Morissette, Ballard was the first collaborator who encouraged her to express her emotions.

The demo recording sessions started in 1994 at Ballard's home studio and included only Morissette and the producer, who recorded the songs as they were being written. Ballard provided the rough tracks, playing the guitars, keyboards and programming drum machines, and Morissette played harmonica. The duo sought to write and record one song a day, in twelve- or sixteen-hour shifts, with minimal overdubbing later. All of Morissette's singing on the album respects that rule, and it was recorded in one or two takes each. The tracks that were redone later in a professional studio use the original demo vocals.

The first song to be shown to A&R and record company people was "Perfect", with a simple arrangement containing only Morissette's vocals and Ballard's acoustic guitar. In 1995, around the time that Morissette penned a deal with Maverick Records, the couple took the demos to a studio and started building some new band arrangements for some of them. However, half of the songs were untouched: "All I Really Want", "Hand in My Pocket", "You Learn", "Head over Feet", "Ironic" and "Not the Doctor". During the overdub sessions, Flea and Dave Navarro (then Red Hot Chili Peppers bandmates) appeared at the studio, discovered Morissette's work, and offered to play on "You Oughta Know".

There are seven known outtakes from the recording sessions: "Keep The Radio On", "Bottom Line", "Beautiful Intent", "Aura", "No Avalon", "Superstar Wonderful Weirdos", and an alternate take of "Ironic" with a lyric change ("It's like ice cream on a freezing day" instead of "It's a black fly in your chardonnay").

[edit] Release and reception

Maverick Records released Jagged Little Pill in June 1995. Because expectations for the album were low, Scott Welsh (Morissette's manager and long-time friend) and executives at Maverick did not expect the album to sell more than 250,000 copies.^[4] It debuted at number 118 on the U.S. Billboard 200 album chart.

Things quickly changed when a Los Angeles DJ from an influential radio station began playing "You Oughta Know", the album's first single.^[4] The song instantly garnered attention, and a subsequent music video went into heavy rotation on MTV. The subject of the song, an ex-boyfriend (widely rumored to be Dave Coulier of television's Full House fame^{[citation needed]}), became the most guessed-about antagonist since that of Carly Simon's "You're So Vain". However, it was the hit singles that followed that sent Jagged Little Pill to the top. After "All I Really Want" and "Hand in My Pocket", the fourth U.S. single, "Ironic", became Morissette's biggest hit. "You Learn" and "Head over Feet", the fifth and sixth singles, respectively, kept Jagged Little Pill in the top twenty on the Billboard 200 for over a year. Outside the U.S., "All I Really Want" was released in 1997 as the album's last single, and in Europe "You Learn" was released before "Ironic".

According to the RIAA, Jagged Little Pill is the best-selling debut album of all time by a female artist, with 14.6 million copies sold in the U.S. As of 2005, it had sold thirty million copies worldwide.^[3] It was officially the best-selling album in the United States of the 1990s, with (according to Nielsen SoundScan) 13.5 million over-the-counter-sales by January 1, 2000. In Ireland, when Morissette's sixth album Under Rug Swept was released in 2002, Jagged Little Pill re-entered the album chart on February 21 at number seventy-two^[5] and reached nineteen on March 7.^[6] It took nine weeks for it to depart the chart again, on May 2.

Morissette was attacked for collaborating with producer and supposed image-maker Ballard, although she was responsible for all of Pill's lyrics and much of the album's music, and such a collaboration was not uncommon for many solo artists at the time.^{[citation needed]} Her early dance-pop albums also proved a hindrance for her respectability, particularly in her native country. The album was nominated for six Grammy Awards in 1996, and Morissette won "Best Female Rock Vocal Performance", "Best Rock Song", "Best Rock Album", and "Album of the Year" (she lost "Best New Artist" and "Song of the Year"). Later that year, she embarked on an eighteen-month world tour in support of Jagged Little Pill, beginning in small clubs and ending in large venues. In 1997 she was nominated for two more Grammy Awards: "Record of the Year" and "Best Music Video, Short Form" for "Ironic". The video Jagged Little Pill, Live, which chronicled the bulk of the tour, won a 1998 Grammy Award for "Best Long Form Music Video". In 1998, Q magazine readers voted Jagged Little Pill the nineteenth greatest album of all time. In 2003, the album was ranked number 327 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

In 2005 Morissette re-released an acoustic version of the album, Jagged Little Pill Acoustic, on the tenth anniversary of the original album's release. This album was originally sold through Starbucks' Hear Music brand in an exclusive six-week deal that ended on July 26, 2005. For the duration of this partnership, music retailer HMV boycotted the sale of Morissette's entire catalogue in Canada.

[edit] Track listing

All songs by Alanis Morissette and Glen Ballard.

1. "All I Really Want" – 4:44
2. "You Oughta Know" – 4:09
3. "Perfect" – 3:07
4. "Hand in My Pocket" – 3:41
5. "Right Through You" – 2:55
6. "Forgiven" – 5:00
7. "You Learn" – 3:59
8. "Head over Feet" – 4:27
9. "Mary Jane" – 4:40
10. "Ironic" – 3:49
11. "Not the Doctor" – 3:47
12. "Wake Up" – 4:53

Some CDs contain two hidden tracks. At index mark number 13 appears another version of "You Oughta Know" with a heavier bass guitar (a mix of the original song known as "The Jimmy the Saint Blend" which is a remix by Jimmy Boyelle), followed by an un-indexed a cappella recording of "Your House" (sometimes referred to as "Forgive Me Love"). Other CDs only contain "Your House" as a bonus track.

[edit] Personnel

• Alanis Morissette – harmonica, vocals
• Glen Ballard – guitar, keyboards, programming, producer, engineer, mixing
• Dave Navarro – guitar on "You Oughta Know"
• Basil Fung – guitar
• Michael Landau – guitar
• Joel Shearer – guitar
• Lance Morrison – bass
• Flea – bass on "You Oughta Know"
• Michael Thompson – organ
• Benmont Tench – organ
• Taylor Hawkins – drums, percussion
• Rob Ladd – percussion, drums
• Matt Laug – drums
• Gota Yashiki – rhythm
• Ted Blaisdell – engineer
• David Schiffman – engineer
• Victor McCoy – engineer
• Rich Weingart – engineer
• Chris Fogel – engineer, mixing
• Francis Buckley – mixing
• Jolie Levine – production coordination
• Chris Bellman – mastering
• Tom Recchion – art direction, design
• John Patrick Salisbury – photography

[edit] Charts

[edit] Album

[edit] Singles

[edit] Certifications

[edit] See also

• List of best-selling albums in the United States

[edit] References