On July 12 Alanis Morissette will be the head of Cruïlla Barcelona, Festival that will also feature Texas, Viva Sweden, 30 Seconds to Mars, Sex Pistols and two special concerts of Love of Lesbian, among many others. With this expected visit that I guessed last year in the middle of an Avril Lavigne concert, we dedicated a chapter of our podcast revelation or thymus to his career. Especially to ‘Jagged Little Pill’, who sold more than 30 million copies and is one of the most successful records in history, but not only ‘Jagged Little Pill’. Juan Sanguino accompanies us in this episode.
It is true that Alanis’s influence was lost in the late 90s, that those born in the 21st century are not so aware of their legacy. But it also is that in 1996 he was the queen of the world, a reference for the and especially the adolescents of half a globe, marking the career of people like Katy Perry, as she herself has recognized, or Taylor Swift, with whom she ended up singing ‘You Ooughta Know’ on one occasion.
During the preparation of this podcast, we are surprised to run into so many parallels between the lyrics of Alanis Morissette and Taylor Swift: the stories of ex -boyfriends for all known, ingenuity and mordacity in the deployment of details, and intertextuality. Also that total honesty is perceived in the lyrics of Billie Eilish and the Bedroom Pop.
‘Jagged Little Pill’, with his strange pace boxes, can be interpreted as a bridge between the grunge and the Riot Grrrls – he edited a year after the death of Kurt Cobain – and the “Girl Power” of Spice Girls. But apart from the place that we give in the music industry, it is a visceral and honest work, which deals with issues such as female liberation (‘You Oughta Know’), the impossibility of satisfying our parents (‘Perfect’) or also unconditional love (‘Head Over Feet’). The press of the time gave too much prominence to Glen Ballard (‘Man on the mirror’ by Michael Jackson), given the machismo prevailing in the assumption of credits, but the key in it are letters translated into different languages, evidently written by Morissette.
‘Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie’ was the complicated second album, so strange that it seems a third, and we also dissect it because it is worth it in all its rarity; Before Alanis’s career was delivered to numerous attempts to recreate the rock magic of his international debut, with increasingly impossible titles. In the last part of the podcast, we speak in a random way of other glories of other times, such as Gloria Estefan or Shania Twain, obviously from Shakira and also Lady Gaga.
Spotify has taken out its nails in terms of use of music in podcasts, which prevents us from clicking fragments of Alanis Morissette music in this podcast. However, apart from the “Greatest Hits” that you can hear in any artist’s playlist, we recommend the recovery of these songs:
-Joining You
-That I Would Be Good
-Are You Still Mad
-So Pure
-Unsent
-Hands Clean
-Everything
-Reasons I Drink
Alanis Morissette is a head of Cruïlla Barcelona poster, and will also go through Mad Cool (July 11) and Coruña (July 9).
