Review:

on 2011-02-27 CharlesMartel Said:

Once upon a time there was a little girl who made some pretty awful music as a child. Yes she had a career, but the dreadful stuff she churned out was, deservedly, overlooked and largely forgotten about outside of her homeland. However, the little girl grew up and as she did, she became very angry. And then she made "Jagged Little Pill". I have often wondered if she cringes with embarrassment when she looks back to those days.

I don't know what it was, the moment, the woman or whatever, but for a time Alanis Morissette was about to become the biggest thing on the planet. This album was one you just had to have. Never mind if you were into punk or pop, if you liked the singer songwriter or the death metal band, you had to get this. And people did. People got it in their droves. Why?

Well, she did her anger well, in my view. Here was a woman who was prepared to record songs, not the usual sort of stuff you had heard from previous female singer songwriters about peace and love and live together in glorious harmony (Joni Mitchell, Carole King) and certainly not the ooh aah I want to fall in love with you sort of garbage that female singers were usually forced to sing by the pop promoters. No, Morrissette came out and sang it like it was - women get pissed off; women have relationship problems with your attitude; why should women always have to do the cooking; yes women can have orgasms too; why don't you just fuck off!!! At a time when girl power meant prancing about, wiggling your arse in ridiculously tight costumes and warbling "I wanna, I wanna, I wanna" this was something altogether different and far more genuine.

Yet all this was done within the framework of a distinctly "pop" approach. The anger was accessible, understandable, almost contained. Geoff Ballard (who incidentally co-wrote a lot of the stuff on here) spotted a niche in the commercial market and drove Morrissette straight towards it. The result was the huge success of the album as a whole. Many thought it was unique and groundbreaking yet there were female singer-songwriters like Liz Phair who had trodden this ground before, they had just not got commercial recognition for it.

Sadly, she never followed it up. From standing on the edge of greatness, she failed to put out successor albums which held the popular attention. Worse, the baton of commercial success for the so-called 'independent woman' style of female singer passed to the hideously trashy Spice Girls and their nauseatingly manufactured concept of 'Girl Power' (like being unable to sing while shaking your arse is all that female empowerment is).

It took me over a decade to buy this. I wanted to be sure that it had some value to me as a person and was not just a transitory phase in commercial music. Well, it does have merit, and it does stand on its own two feet, even though it sounds a little passe these days. To get from Liz Phair to Sheryl Crow (or even Avril Lavigne) you must pass through Alanis Morrissette. Do not pass go and do not collect 200 pounds. Twelve years on, and it is now clear that this album does not live up to all the hype but it still represents an important moment in music and is worth a listen every now and again.
Rating: 6/10