The Story of Alanis Morissette's JAGGED LITTLE PILL - The Album That Defined A Generation

This season, singer songwriter. Alanis Morissette heads to Broadway with Jagged Little Pill, an exhilarating new musical inspired by the themes and raw emotions laid bare in her seminal album of the same name.

Telling the story of The Healys, a picture-perfect suburban family coming to grips with some long-buried issues, this original story is ignited by Morissette's groundbreaking music - including such lasting hits as "You Oughta Know," "Head Over Feet," "Hand In My Pocket," and "Ironic".

While the show may be the first foray into Morissette's catalog for younger theatregoers, the Gen X and millennial set remain all too familiar with the memory of Jagged Little Pill's mid-90s, multi-year reign atop the pop and rock charts and Morissette's meteoric rise to musical immortality.

In 1994, Canadian child television star and blossoming recording artist, Alanis Morissette, was seeking a new direction for her music. Despite achieving platinum status with her award-winning, self-titled debut, her two album deal with MCA Records had not ended in a recording contract, sending Morissette and her new manager, Paul Welch, in search of fresh collaborators for the young star.

After graduating high school, Alanis made the move from her hometown, Ottawa, to Toronto and finally to Los Angeles. There she met and worked exclusively with Glen Ballard, a music producer who keenly observed her talent early on.

"I just connected with her as a person, and, almost parenthetically, it was like 'Wow, you're 19?' She was so intelligent and ready to take a chance on doing something that might have no commercial application. Although there was some question about what she wanted to do musically, she knew what she didn't want to do, which was anything that wasn't authentic and from her heart," Ballard told Rolling Stone.

The duo connected instantly, experimenting with sounds and songs just 30 minutes after meeting each other. They began recording what would become the bones of Jagged Little Pill in 1994, with Ballard providing all the instrumentation and Alanis on vocals and harmonica.

Ballard commented: "I'm telling you, within 15 minutes we were at it - just writing. 'Ironic' was the third song we wrote. Oh God, we were just having fun. I thought 'I don't know what this is - what genre it is - who knows? It's just good'."

With a handful of songs cut, including, the soon-to-be mega-hit "Ironic" and the ballad "Perfect", Alanis and Glen began shopping an acoustic demo to a dozen or so record labels, all of which passed on the project. Their luck changed when the demo hit the desk of Maverick Records founder, Guy Oseary, who instantly connected to the material.

"They both walked into my office, I didn't know if they were a band, actually. I didn't know anything, really - when I saw Glen I didn't have background, I didn't know Alanis' background. I didn't know anything about them." Oseary said of their first meeting.

He continues, "The first song they played me was the demo of "Perfect." Within, I don't know, 20 or 30 seconds into the song, I was done. I was already blown away and never heard anything like it and wanted to sign her. That was really it, for me."

Morissette soon inked a record deal with Maverick and the duo headed back into the studio to began work on what would become Jagged Little Pill.

As the album came together, it proved to be a total departure from Alanis' previous releases, which leaned heavily on dance and pop music. Building on the foundation of their demo, the album would feature grunge guitars, canned drums, harmonica and razor sharp lyrics.

Communicated through Morissette's raw, yet warm vocal stylings, the lyrical content of the album touched on the complicated themes of female rage and sexuality, depression, rape culture, and fraught parent-child relationships, much of it culled from Morissette's own diary. Sticking to a rigorous work schedule, the two sought to write and record one song a day, working twelve to sixteen-hour shifts.

For the album's lead single, "You Oughta Know", Alanis and Glen enlisted Jane's Addiction guitarist, Dave Navarro and Red Hot Chili Pepper's bassist, Flea to punch up the song's hard rock sound.

Navarro said "The structure of the song was in place but there were no guide tracks, we just had the vocal to work from. It was just a good time and we basically jammed until we found something we were both happy with. Alanis was happy too."

Heading into its 1995 release, projections for the album were modest, with the label anticipating just enough success for Morissette to release a follow-up. Those expectations quickly changed as the album's raging anthem, "You Oughta Know" hit the charts and instantly captured the public's interest with it's explicit lyrics and frank discussion of female sexuality.

Following the explosive debut, Alanis continued to dominate the charts and MTV landscape for well over two years with the album's infectious follow-up singles, "Ironic", "Hand In My Pocket", and "Head Over Feet" and "You Learn" and their memorable music videos. The era also launched Alanis as something of a style icon, with many young women imitating her long wavy locks and distinct, no frills fashion sense.

In the US, Jagged debuted at No. 117 on the Billboard 200 and peaked at No. 1 in October 1995, almost 3 months after it was released. It was the first album to reach both 12 million and 13 million in sales in the US since 1991.

In 1996 it was named the best selling album worldwide with 18.7 million copies sold with 500,000 or more copies sold during more than 15 non-consecutive weeks. Morissette held the record for the youngest artist to be certified diamond in the US, until she was beaten by Britney Spears with her debut album ...Baby One More Time in 1998.

After topping the charts in thirteen countries, Jagged Little Pill went on to be nominated for nine 1996 Grammy Awards, and won five, including Best Female Rock Vocal Performance, Best Rock Song, Best Rock Album, and the top prize, Album of the Year, making Alanis the youngest artist in history to receive the honor until Taylor Swift won for her album Fearless in 2008. She was also named Best New Artist at the 1996 MTV Video Music Awards, and picked up two additional moonmen for Best Female Video and Best Editing In A Video.

In her native Canada, Alanis picked up six 1996 Juno Awards, including Album of the Year, Single of the Year, Female Vocalist of the Year, Songwriter of the Year and Best Rock Album.

Thanks to the smash single "Ironic", the album's accolades continued into the following year, receiving two 1997 Grammy nominations for Record of the Year and Best Music Video, Short Form. The song also took home Single of the Year at the 1997 Juno Awards, where Morissette was also honored with Songwriter of the Year and the International Achievement Award.

Alanis would make a third trip to the Grammys in 1998 with the world tour chronicle, Jagged Little Pill, Live. Co-directed by Morissette, the film won the 1998 Grammy Award for Best Music Video, Long Form.

Overall, the album has sold 33 million copies worldwide, making it one of the most successful albums in music history and one of the best-selling albums of all time. Its success also made Morissette is the first Canadian to achieve double diamond sales and the first Canadian to top the US Billboard 200.

In the years since its release, Rolling Stone ranked it number 327 on its list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time", number 45 on its list of "The 100 Greatest Albums of the Nineties", number 50 on its list of "Women Who Rock: The 50 Greatest Albums of All Time". It also earned a place the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die and appears on the National Association of Recording Merchandisers' "Definitive 200" list at number 26.

Over the past 25 years, Alanis Morissette's timeless pop rock opus has gone on to become a sort of musical right of passage, an eternal rallying cry for young women coming into their own, while navigating a male-dominated world in which the female experience goes largely dismissed.

Despite the album's inherent femaleness, however, the universality of its emotional DNA has enabled Jagged Little Pill to transcend even the most narrowly defined demographics and achieve the status of bona fide cultural touchstone.

Ballard said of the album's legendary success, "Of course I know that it moved a lot of people, and I'm still astonished by how many people were touched by that record. Over 30 million people went out and bought it. These days, you can't even imagine it."

"I was just writing about my human condition, and perhaps the human condition, you know?" Morissette recently told CBS, "The vulnerability, the rage, the betrayal."

In tapping into her own pain, Alanis managed to capture the ears and hearts of music fans all over the world, creating a lasting body of work that would define her generation and, as it enters its next phase on the musical stage, many more to come.

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