The Enduring Appeal of Alanis Morissette and Jagged Little Pill

As You Oughta Know features on the trailer for Little Fires Everywhere, Issy Sampson examines why Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill has never really gone away.

Alanis Morissette

by Issy Sampson |
Updated on

Dig out your oversized silk shirt and your grungy beanie: Alanis Morissette is touring the UK again. Her seminal album, Jagged Little Pill, turns 25 this year (yes, TWENTY FIVE) and to celebrate she’s doing an arena tour.

The thing is, the album doesn’t feel that old, because it’s never really gone away. Rather than a retro act flogging their one hit album for a retirement fund, Alanis’s world tour feels like a victory lap, a celebration of a legendary album that’s still extremely culturally relevant.

Even a quarter of a century after it was released, Jagged Little Pill’s tracks keep popping up everywhere. You Oughta Know soundtracks the climax to the new trailer for Reese Witherspoon’s Little Fires Everywhere and was used in Booksmart’s pivotal scene, when Amy finally lets loose, hi-jacks the karaoke mic from drama nerd George and delivers a blistering version of Alanis’s classic.

Booksmart director Olivia Wilde – who is 35 – personally wrote to Alanis asking to use the song in the movie, telling her 'how much she had meant to me in my youth and when I was in high school ― Jagged Little Pill, in particular. Her strength as a woman and an artist and her singularity had really inspired me.' The song is also apparently actress Kaitlyn Dever’s go-to karaoke choice, and if you’re wondering how a 23-year-old knows a song that came out two years before she was born, wait until you hear about Spotify – it’s going to blow your mind.

Another track from the album, Hand In My Pocket, featured in 2017’s Lady Bird (again, director Greta Gerwig wrote to Alanis to ask her permission before putting the song in the scene in the car, where Lady Bird tells her dad that the song was written in under an hour), and the song has popped up in Amazon’s Transparent and even got the Glee treatment. No word on if they wrote to Alanis about using the song, sorry.

Even in 2020, you can’t say something’s ironic without someone making an Alanis joke (related: do not bring the song up to rain-soaked brides whose wedding day is a washout, it doesn’t go down well). Last year, Alanis performed an ‘updated’ version of Ironic on James Corden’s US chat show, with lyrics that reference Tinder, Snapchat, Facebook and 'a no smoking sign/ when you bought your vape' it’s completely fair if you’ve wiped it from your pop culture memory bank to preserve the original.

It’s not just Hollywood that keeps coming back to Alanis. Katy Perry has called Jagged Little Pill 'the most perfect female record ever made', and Taylor Swift got Alanis up onstage to duet on You Oughta Know during her 2015 tour. Alanis also performed the track with Demi Lovato at the American Music Awards that same year, while Beyonce performed the song during her 2011 Glastonbury set, and Britney covered it on her 2009 Circus tour.

The album has even been made into a musical – currently a huge hit on Broadway. Not exactly a family-friendly Wicked-style show, the Jagged Little Pill musical covers (deep breath) drug addiction, sexuality, porn addiction, rape, family feuds and has a whole scene about the meaning of irony, where a character reads out a list of things that are not ironic, just unfortunate. See? Alanis does have a sense of humour about that song!

So why, 25 years later, are we all still obsessed with Jagged Little Pill? Firstly: it’s still an almost-perfect album. Hand In My Pocket, You Oughta Know, Right Through You, All I Really Want: pretty much every track is a classic. And sure, some of it is nostalgia: who in their mid-thirties doesn’t know all the lyrics to You Oughta Know, learned by repeatedly screaming along to it as a teenager your bedroom, angry at the world and (probably) at the fact streaming hadn’t been invented so you were listening on a cassette?

But also, Alanis was ahead of her time – back then, it was unusual for a woman to be so openly and publicly angry. In 1995, pop was dominated by extremely chill artists like TLC, Sheryl Crow, a Velvet Rope-era Janet Jackson, Brandy and (retro flashback incoming …) Sophie B. Hawkins – when Alanis came along, it was groundbreaking. She opened the door to furious female popstars – without her, there would arguably be no Kelis, and no Beyonce’s Lemonade.

Now, pop stars have to apologise for not being publicly angry enough – for instance, in Taylor Swift’s Netflix documentary Miss Americana. We’ve got #MeToo, #TimesUp and awards ceremonies – hello The Oscars – are basically a stream of female celebrities taking turns to shout about injustice from a podium. And in 2020, what ISN’T there to be angry about as a woman? Never mind post-breakup – just looking at Twitter makes you want to scream.

And remember, Alanis was very much the Taylor Swift of 1995: she’s spent 25 years refusing to confirm who You Oughta Know is about (it’s widely thought to be Full House actor Dave Coulier, who has himself admitted that it’s probably about their split). Even recently, when Alanis appeared on Andy Cohen’s E! show, she avoided the question, joking that she’d never reveal who she wrote it for.

But honestly? It’s probably endured because the song – and the album – is still very, very relatable. If Alanis released You Oughta Know in 2020, it’d be huge. Who hasn’t felt a deep burning anger after a break-up? There are a lot of songs about heartbreak and sadness, but where are the ones about the stage of a split where you’re about to explode with apocalyptic fury, the ‘sending the WELL ACTUALLY, four page long WhatsApp of truth after six white wines’ moment? It’s no coincidence that the some of the pop songs with the biggest cultural impact over the last few years are defiant post-break up anthems: Dua Lipa’s New Rules, Ariana Grande’s Thank U, Next – all the way back to Beyoncé’s Single Ladies.

'For women sometimes, we're told we can't be angry; we can't be sad and we can't be…17 other feelings. You can't be anything. So just sublimate it all. Just squish it all down,' Alanis said on Watch What Happens Live in December. 'But I think I was really just devastated when I wrote that and it's a lot easier to siphon that through anger sometimes.'

Welcome back, Alanis. Now we’re off to scream along to You Oughta Know alone in our rooms.

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