Jagged Little Pill Turns 20 Today

[methodwriter85]

Alanis Morissette, who had spent the late 80's and early 90's as a Canadian pop star, shocked the world when she released her album, Jagged Little Pill, on this day in 1995. A searing and brutally honest album, it struck a chord with audiences and has sold over 33 million albums since its release twenty years ago today. Here's a retrospective from people who talk about what the album meant to them:

Revisiting Jagged Little Pill Twenty Years Later

On a personal note, my sisters were older so I got to listen to a lot of their music, and I remember just being astounded by listening to this as a 10/11-year old. There was such a great outpouring of wonderful female-centered music during the mid/late 1990's- Alanis Morisette, Jewel, Sarah McLachlan,Melissa Etheridge, Fiona Apple, Sheryl Crowe, Paula Cole, Shawn Colvin, etc etc. I'm glad I had teenaged sisters to introduce me to it.

Anyway, to celebrate, here are my favorite tracks from that album, aside from the obvious.

 

1.) "Hand In My Pocket"

This does such a great job of describing that twentysomething angst. I relate to this so much more now as opposed to when I was 10 years old.

2.) "Perfect"

Brutally honest tune. I didn't have parents like that (one was too busy gambling, the other was too busy drinking like a fish), but it still struck a chord in me for some reason. Later on, when I got to high school and saw the immense pressure a lot of my peers were under to perform, I really understood it.

 

3.) "Mary Jane"

I think it's a great tune to listen when you're depressed and need a pick-me-up. What a great "you just need to hold on" tune.

 

4.) "You Learn"

I always found this to be a great philosophy to live by. All the shit you go through- try and learn from it.

Her stuff still really holds up well. It's crazy when you think she was 21 when she pulled off such an epic music album

[JamesSavik]

[Thorn Wilde]

You Oughta Know was always my favourite off that album. <3

[FrenchCanadian]

It's just a good album altogether... 

 

I do like "Ironic" ... in her iTunes Originals special, she modified her lyrics to say "meeting the man of my dreams, then meeting his beautiful husband"

 

My favourites ones are : "Head Over Feet" and "You Oughta Know" and "Hand in My Poket"

[wildone]

I remember hearing it on the radio back 20 years ago. I think Ironic was the first song that the radio played. The thing about me is that I usually like a song based on the music and the lyrics are a second to me. That song drew the lyrics out to me and I found myself buying the CD immediately and listening to the entire CD and knowing every word. 

 

So many songs still bring back flashbacks to certain things in my mid 20's. Actually this morning I hit shuffle on the iPhone to my Favourites playlist on the iPhone and You Oughta Know came up first

 

One side story, that still has me laughing...I used to have a job at the Saddledome and saw many many concerts. Ozzy Osbourne was playing and as the lights went down, the entire back of the stage was a giant screen and randomly went through some of the top videos of the time. They were being played but they had inserted Ozzy into them. When ironic came up and there were 3 Alansis's and 1 Ozzy in the car singing their heads off, the crowd was going crazy. When that video ended, Ozzy was on stage and started the show. The cheering never ended from the video to the appearance of Ozzy.

[Slytherin]

I liked every song on that CD and that doesn't happen very often I have a CD player in my and I still listen to it, I really like her

[JamesSavik]

You Ought to Know hit me at a difficult time.

 

The guy I had been seeing, no had been living with for nearly a year traded me in for a lawyer.

 

I came home from work one day and he had just moved out. All his shit was gone (and some of mine).

 

I was devastated at first.   Then I ran into him at the grocery store a few weeks later and he told me to grow up and quit stalking him.

 

He turned out to be some shit I stepped in and it took me a while to wipe him off my soul.

 

I told him where he could stick his celery. So- I could relate to the angry, pissed off eX in that song.

 

A few years later I was grateful that he was gone after seeing that he had turned fat and bald.

 

Am I really a bad person for giving him the finger? After all- he did inflict the Cranberries on me.