Alanis Nadine Morissette born June 1, 1974 is a Canadian and American singer-songwriter. She is known for her emotive mezzo-soprano voice and confessional songwriting. Morissette began her music career in Canada in the early 1990s with two dance-pop albums. In 1995, she released Jagged Little Pill, an alternative rock-oriented album with elements of post-grunge. This album sold more than 33 million copies globally, propelling her to become a cultural phenomenon.It earned her the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 1996 and was adapted into a rock musical of the same name in 2017. The musical earned fifteen Tony Award nominations, including Best Musical. Additionally, the album was listed in Rolling Stone’s 2003 and 2020 editions of the “500 Greatest Albums of All Time” guide. The lead single, “You Oughta Know”, was also included at #103 in their “500 Greatest Songs of All Time”.
Alanis Morissette Facts
- Born :Alanis Nadine Morissette June 1, 1974 (age 49)Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
- Relatives: Wade Morssette (brother)
- Awards: Full list
- Genres: Alternative rock post-grunge electronica hard rock indie pop pop rock
- Labels: MCA Canada Maverick
Alanis Morissette Early life
Morissette was born on June 1, 1974, at Riverside Hospital in Ottawa, Ontario,to teacher Georgia Mary Ann (née Feuerstein) and high-school principal and French teacher Alan Richard Morissette. She has two brothers: her older brother Chad is a business entrepreneur, and her twin brother (12 minutes older) Wade Morissette is a musician. Her father is of French and Scottish descent, whereas her mother has Hungarian Jewish ancestry. Her parents were teachers in a military school and due to their work often had to move. Between the ages of three and six she lived with her parents in Lahr (Black Forest), West Germany.
When she was six years old, she returned to Ottawa and started to play the piano. In 1981, at the age of seven, she began taking dance lessons. Morissette had a Catholic upbringing. She attended Holy Family Catholic School for elementary school and Immaculata High School for Grades 7 and 8 before graduating from high school at Glebe Collegiate Institute.[30] She appeared on the children’s television sketch comedy You Can’t Do That on Television for five episodes when she was in junior high school.Alanis composed her first song at the age of 10
Alanis Morissette Music career
Morissette recorded her first demo called “Fate Stay with Me”, produced by Lindsay Thomas Morgan at Marigold Studios in Toronto, and engineered by Rich Dodson of Canadian classic rock band The Stampeders. A second demo tape was recorded on cassette in August 1989 and sent to Geffen Records, but the tape has never been heard as it was stolen, among other records, in a burglary of the label’s headquarters in October 1989.
In 1991, MCA Records Canada released Morissette’s debut album, Alanis, in Canada only. Morissette co-wrote every track on the album with its producer, Leslie Howe. The dance-pop album went platinum,[34] and its first single, “Too Hot”, reached the top 20 on the RPM singles chart. Subsequent singles “Walk Away” and “Feel Your Love” reached the top 40. Morissette’s popularity, style of music and appearance, particularly that of her hair, led her to become known as the Debbie Gibson of Canada;comparisons to Tiffany were also common. During the same period, she was a concert opening act for rapper Vanilla Ice. Morissette was nominated for three 1992 Juno Awards: Most Promising Female Vocalist of the Year (which she won), Single of the Year and Best Dance Recording (both for “Too Hot”)
In 1992, she released her second album, Now Is the Time, a ballad-driven record that featured less glitzy production than Alanis and contained more thoughtful lyrics.Morissette wrote the songs with the album’s producer, Leslie Howe, and Serge Côté. She said of the album, “People could go, ‘Boo, hiss, hiss, this girl’s like another Tiffany or whatever.’ But the way I look at it… people will like your next album if it’s a kick-ass one.” As with Alanis, Now Is the Time was released only in Canada and produced three top 40 singles—”An Emotion Away”, the minor adult contemporary hit “No Apologies” as well as “(Change Is) Never a Waste of Time”. The industry considered it a commercial failure since it sold only a little more than half the copies of her first album. With her two-album deal with MCA Records Canada complete, Morissette was left without a major label contract
Alanis Morissette 1993–1997: Jagged Little Pill
Morissette In 1993, Morissette’s publisher Leeds Levy at MCA Music Publishing introduced her to manager Scott Welch. Welch told HitQuarters he was impressed by her “spectacular voice”, her character and her lyrics. At the time she was still living at home with her parents. Together they decided it would be best for her career to move to Toronto and start writing with other people After graduating from high school, Morissette moved from Ottawa to Toronto. Her publisher funded part of her development and when she met producer and songwriter Glen Ballard, he believed in her talent enough to let her use his studio.The two wrote and recorded Morissette’s first internationally released album, Jagged Little Pill, and by the spring of 1995, she had signed a deal with Maverick Records. In the same year she learned how to play guitar. According to manager Welch, every label they approached, apart from Maverick, Maverick Records released Jagged Little Pill internationally in June 1995. The album was expected only to sell enough for Morissette to make a follow-up, but the situation improved quickly when KROQ-FM, an influential Los Angeles modern rock radio station, began playing “You Oughta Know”, the album’s first single, featuring Flea and Dave Navarro from the Red Hot Chili Peppers The song instantly garnered attention for its scathing, explicit lyrics,and a subsequent music video went into heavy rotation on MTV and MuchMusic.
Morissette After the success of “You Oughta Know”, the album’s other hits helped send Jagged Little Pill to the top of the charts. “All I Really Want” and “Hand in My Pocket” followed, and the fourth U.S. single, “Ironic”, became Morissette’s biggest hit. “You Learn” and “Head over Feet”, the fifth and sixth singles, kept Jagged Little Pill (1995) in the top 20 on the Billboard 200 albums chart for more than a year. Jagged Little Pill sold more than 16 million copies in the U.S.; it sold 33 million worldwide, making it the second biggest-selling album by a female artist (behind Shania Twain’s Come On Over).
Morissette’s popularity grew significantly in Canada, where the album was certified twelve times platinum and produced four RPM chart-toppers: “Hand in My Pocket”, “Ironic”, “You Learn”, and “Head over Feet”. The album was also a bestseller in Australia and the United Kingdom.
Morissette’s success with Jagged Little Pill (1995) was credited with opening doors for female singers such as Meredith Brooks, Tracy Bonham and Patti Rothberg, and later Avril Lavigne and Pink.She was criticized for collaborating with producer and supposed image-maker Ballard, and her previous disco pop albums also proved a hindrance for her respectability. Morissette and the album won six Juno Awards in 1996: Album of the Year, Single of the Year (“You Oughta Know”), Female Vocalist of the Year, Songwriter of the Year and Best Rock Album.At the 16th Brit Awards she won Brit Award for International Breakthrough Act. At the 38th Annual Grammy Awards in 1996, she won Best Female Rock Vocal Performance, Best Rock Song (both for “You Oughta Know”), Best Rock Album and Album of the Year.
“Morissette Ironic” got the instant success, though the lyrics were heavily criticized for its malapropism, and the music video received 6 nominations at the 1996 MTV Video Music Awards, where it won Best New Artist in a Video, Best Female Video and Best Editing in a Video (won by Scott Gray, Editor), and was also nominated for Viewer’s Choice, Best Direction in a Video and Video of the Year. Rather than perform that song at the ceremony, she performed Your House instead. The song was also nominated for two 1997 Grammy Awards—Record of the Year and Best Music Video, Short Form—and won Single of the Year at the 1997 Juno Awards, where Morissette also won Songwriter of the Year and the International Achievement Award.
Morissette Following the album release in 1995, Morissette embarked on an 18-month world tour in support of Jagged Little Pill, beginning in small clubs and ending in large venues. Taylor Hawkins, who later joined the Foo Fighters, was the tour’s drummer and Radiohead joined as the opening act in the summer of 1996. The video Jagged Little Pill, Live, which was co-directed by Morissette and is about the bulk of her tour won a 1998 Grammy Award for Best Music Video, Long Form.
Following the tour, Morissette began practicing Iyengar Yoga for balance. After the last December 1996 show, she went to India for six weeks, accompanied by her mother, two aunts and two friends. The trip left her with an indelible impression and set the cornerstone for the concept of her next albu
Alanis Morissette 2001–2005: Under Rug Swept and So-Called Chaos
In 2001, Morissette was featured with Stephanie McKay on the Tricky song “Excess”, which is on his album Blowback. Morissette released her fifth studio album, Under Rug Swept, in February 2002. For the first time in her career, she took on the role of sole writer and producer of an album. Her band, comprising Joel Shearer, Nick Lashley, Chris Chaney, and Gary Novak, played the majority of the instruments; additional contributions came from Eric Avery, Dean DeLeo, Flea, and Meshell Ndegeocello.
Under Rug Swept debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 chart, eventually going platinum in Canada and selling one million copies in the U.S. It produced the hit single “Hands Clean”, which topped the Canadian Singles Chart and received substantial radio play; for her work on “Hands Clean” and “So Unsexy”, Morissette won a Juno Award for Producer of the Year.A second single, “Precious Illusions”, was released, but it did not garner significant success outside Canada or U.S. hot AC radio.
Morissette Later in 2002, Morissette released the combination package Feast on Scraps, which includes a DVD of live concert and backstage documentary footage directed by her and a CD containing eight previously unreleased songs from the Under Rug Swept recording sessions. Preceded by the single “Simple Together”, it sold roughly 70,000 copies in the U.S. and was nominated for a Juno Award for Music DVD of the Year.Morissette hosted the Juno Awards of 2004 dressed in a bathrobe, which she took off to reveal a flesh-colored bodysuit, a response to the era of censorship in the U.S. caused by Janet Jackson’s breast-flash incident during the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show Morissette released her sixth studio album, So-Called Chaos, in May 2004.She wrote the songs on her own again, and co-produced the album with Tim Thorney and pop music producer John Shanks. Morissette The album debuted at number five on the Billboard 200 chart to generally mixed critical reviews, and it became Morissette’s lowest seller in the U.S. The lead single, “Everything”, achieved major success on Adult Top 40 radio in America and was moderately popular elsewhere, particularly in Canada, although it failed to reach the top 40 on the U.S. Hot 100. Because the first line of the song includes the word “asshole”, American radio stations refused to play it, and the single version was changed to include the word “nightmare” instead. Unhappy that U.S. radio networks had required her to change a word in the song, Canadian radio played the unaltered version, with Morissette stating at the 2004 Juno Awards in Canada: “Well, I am overjoyed to be back in my homeland, the true North, strong and censor-free.”Two other singles, “Out Is Through” and “Eight Easy Steps”, fared considerably worse, although a dance mix of “Eight Easy Steps” was a U.S. club hit. Morissette embarked on a U.S. summer tour with long-time friends and fellow Canadians Barenaked Ladies, working with the non-profit environmental organization Reverb
To commemorate the 10th anniversary of Jagged Little Pill (1995), Morissette released a studio acoustic version, Jagged Little Pill Acoustic, in June 2005. The album was released exclusively through Starbucks’ Hear Music retail concept through their coffee shops for a six-week run. The limited availability led to a dispute between Maverick Records and HMV North America, who retaliated by removing Morissette’s other albums from sale for the duration of Starbucks’s exclusive six-week sale.As of November 2010, Jagged Little Pill Acoustic had sold 372,000 copies in the U.S.,and a video for “Hand in My Pocket” received rotation on VH1 in America. The accompanying tour ran for two months in mid-2005, with Morissette playing small theatre venues. During the same period, Morissette was inducted into Canada’s Walk of Fame.The singer opened for The Rolling Stones for a few dates of their A Bigger Bang Tour in the autumn of 2005.
Morissette released the greatest hits album Alanis Morissette: Morissette The Collection in late 2005. The lead single and only new track, a cover of Seal’s “Crazy”, was an Adult Top 40 and dance hit in the U.S., but achieved only minimal chart success elsewhere. A limited edition of The Collection features a DVD including a documentary with videos of two unreleased songs from Morissette’s 1996 Can’t Not Tour: “King of Intimidation” and “Can’t Not”. (A reworked version of “Can’t Not” had also appeared on Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie.) The DVD also includes a ninety-second clip of the unreleased video for the single “Joining You”. As of November 2010, The Collection had sold 373,000 copies in the U.S., according to Nielsen SoundScan.That same year, Morissette contributed the song “Wunderkind” to the soundtrack of the film The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song.
Alanis Morissette 2011–2016: Havoc and Bright Lights and Jagged Little Pill 20th anniversary
Morissette On November 20, 2011, Morissette appeared at the American Music Awards. When asked about the new album during a short interview, she said she had recorded 31 songs, and that the album would “likely be out next year, probably [in] summertime”.On December 21, 2011, Morissette performed a duet of “Uninvited” with finalist Josh Krajcik during the performance finale of the X-Factor.
Morissette embarked on a European tour for the summer of 2012, according to Alanis.com. In early May 2012, a new song called “Magical Child” appeared on a Starbucks compilation called Every Mother Counts
On May 2, 2012, Morissette revealed through her Facebook account that her eighth studio album, entitled Havoc and Bright Lights, would be released in August 2012, Morissette on new label Collective Sounds, distributed by Sony’s RED Distribution.On the same day, Billboard specified the date as August 28 and revealed the album would contain twelve tracks. The album’s lead single, “Guardian”, was released on iTunes on May 15, 2012, and hit the radio airwaves four days prior to this.The single had minor success in North America, charting the Billboard Bubbling Under Hot 100 Singles in the US and almost reaching the top 40 in Canada. It was a hit in several European countries.