Jagged Little Pill
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Jagged Little Pill | ||
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| Studio album by Alanis Morissette | ||
| Released | June 13, 1995 (U.S.) | |
| Recorded | Westlake Studios and Signet Sound, Hollywood | |
| Genre | Pop/Rock | |
| Length | 57:33 | |
| Label | Maverick | |
| Producer(s) | Glen Ballard | |
| Professional reviews | ||
|---|---|---|
| Alanis Morissette chronology | ||
| Now Is the Time (1992) |
Jagged Little Pill (1995) |
Space Cakes (1995) |
Jagged Little Pill is Canadian singer-songwriter Alanis Morissette's third album in total and first to be released outside Canada, released on June 13, 1995 (see 1995 in music). Morissette's confessional lyrics and emotional vocals helped Jagged Little Pill dominate the year's sound in music.
Contents |
[edit] History
[edit] Background and production
In 1993, after leaving MCA Records Canada, Morissette moved from her home town of Ottawa to Toronto. Living alone for the first time in her life, she met with a bevy of songwriters, but the results frustrated her. A visit to Nashville a few months later also proved fruitless. Morissette began making trips to Los Angeles and working with as many musicians as possible, in the hopes of meeting a collaborator. During this time, she met producer and songwriter Glen Ballard. According to Ballard, the connection was "instant" and within thirty minutes of meeting each other, they had begun experimenting with different sounds in Ballard's home studio in San Fernando Valley, California. Ballard and Morissette penned their first song together, called "The Bottom Line". The turning point in their sessions was the song "Perfect", which was written and recorded in twenty minutes. Morissette improvised the lyrics on the spot, while Ballard played guitar. The version of the song that appeared on Jagged Little Pill was the only take the pair recorded.
Morissette later revealed that during her stay in L.A. she was confronted on a deserted street by a man with a gun, and robbed. The writings and brainstormings that eventually made up Jagged Little Pill had not been taken from her purse. After that happening, Morissette developed an intense and general angst, which she revealed during random daily panic attacks, even on planes. She was hospitalized and attended psychotherapy sessions, but it didn't improve her emotional status. So, as Morissette later revealed in interviews, she focused all her inner problems on the soul-baring lyrics of the album for her own health. According to Morissette, Ballard was the first collaborator who encouraged her to express her emotions.
The demo recording sessions started in 1994 at Ballard's home studio and included only Morissette and the producer, who recorded the songs literally as they were being written. The rough tracks were basically provided by Ballard, playing the guitars, keyboards and programming drum machines, plus some harmonica played by Morissette. The method used by the duo was the goal-establishment of one song written and recorded a day, in twelve- or sixteen-hour shifts, with minimal overdubbing later. All Morissette's singing on the album respects that rule, and it was all recorded in one or two takes each. Even the tracks that were redone later on a professional studio use the original demo vocals.
The first song to be shown to A&R and record company people was "Perfect", with a simple arrangement containing only the singer and the producer's acoustic guitar. In spring 1995, around the time that Morissette penned a deal with Maverick Records, the couple took the demos to a studio and started building some new band arrangements for some of them. However, half of the songs stood 100% original: "All I Really Want", "Hand in My Pocket", "You Learn", "Head over Feet", "Ironic" and "Not the Doctor". During the overdub sessions, Flea and Dave Navarro, then Red Hot Chili Peppers bandmates, appeared at the studio, discovered Morissette's work and offered to play on "You Oughta Know".
There are four known outtakes from the recording sessions: "Bottom Line", "Beautiful intent", "Aura", and "Superstar Wonderful Weirdos". "Superstar Wonderful Weirdos" has been in wide circulation on filesharing networks and bootlegs.
[edit] Release and reception
Maverick Records released Jagged Little Pill in June 1995. Because expectations for the album were low, Scott Welsh, Morissette's manager and long-time friend, and executives at Maverick did not expect the album to sell any more than around 250,000 copies.[1] The album debuted at number 118 on the U.S. Billboard 200 album chart.
Things changed quickly when a Los Angeles DJ from an influential radio station began playing "You Oughta Know", the album's first single.[1] The song instantly garnered attention and a subsequent music video went into heavy rotation on MTV. The subject of the song, an ex-boyfriend (widely rumored to be Dave Coulier of television's Full House fame), became the most guessed-about antagonist since that of Carly Simon's "You're So Vain". However, it was the hit singles that followed that sent Jagged Little Pill to the top. After "All I Really Want" and "Hand in My Pocket", the third single, "Ironic", became Morissette's biggest hit. (Critics noted that many of the situations Morissette described in the song do not actually qualify as being ironic.) "You Learn" and "Head over Feet", the fourth and fifth singles, respectively, kept Jagged Little Pill in the top twenty on the Billboard 200 for over a year.
According to the RIAA, Jagged Little Pill is the best-selling debut album of all time by a female artist, with 14.4 million copies sold in the U.S. As of 2005, it had sold thirty million worldwide.[2] It is the second best-selling album by a female solo artist of the Nielsen SoundScan era, behind Shania Twain's Come on Over (1997). It spent twelve non-consecutive weeks at number one on the Billboard 200 and sixty-nine consecutive weeks in the top ten. This makes it one of only three albums — the others being Falling into You (1996) by Celine Dion and Thriller (1982) by Michael Jackson — to remain in the top ten of the Billboard 200 for one full year. In Ireland, when Morissette's sixth album, Under Rug Swept, was released in 2002, Jagged Little Pill re-entered the album chart on February 21 at number seventy-two[3] and reached nineteen on March 7.[4] It took nine weeks for it to depart the chart again, on May 2.
Morissette was attacked for collaborating with producer and supposed image-maker Ballard, although she was responsible for all of Pill's lyrics and much of the album's music, and such a collaboration was not uncommon for many solo artists at the time. Her early dance-pop albums also proved a hindrance for her respectability, particularly in her native country. The album was nominated for six Grammy Awards in 1996, and Morissette won "Best Female Rock Vocal Performance", "Best Rock Song", "Best Rock Album", and "Album of the Year". Later that year, Morissette embarked on an eighteen-month world tour in support of Jagged Little Pill, beginning in small clubs and ending in large venues. The video Jagged Little Pill, Live, which chronicled the bulk of the tour, won a 1998 Grammy Award for "Best Long Form Music Video". In 1998 Q magazine readers voted Jagged Little Pill the nineteenth greatest album of all time. In 2003, the album was ranked number 327 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.
In 2005 Morissette re-released an acoustic version of the album, Jagged Little Pill Acoustic, on the tenth anniversary of the original album's date of release. This album was originally sold through Starbucks' successful Hear Music brand in an exclusive six-week deal that ended on July 26, 2005. For the duration of this partnership, music retailer HMV boycotted the sale of all of Morissette's catalogue.
[edit] Track listing
All songs written by Glen Ballard and Alanis Morissette.
- "All I Really Want" – 4:44
- "You Oughta Know" – 4:09
- "Perfect" – 3:07
- "Hand in My Pocket" – 3:41
- "Right Through You" – 2:55
- "Forgiven" – 5:00
- "You Learn" – 3:59
- "Head over Feet" – 4:27
- "Mary Jane" – 4:40
- "Ironic" – 3:49
- "Not the Doctor" – 3:47
- "Wake Up" – 4:53
Some CDs contain two hidden tracks. At index mark number 13, there is another version of "You Oughta Know" with a heavier bass guitar (a mix of the original song known as the "Jimmy the Saint Blend"), followed by an un-indexed a cappella recording of "Your House". Other CDs only contain "Your House" as a bonus track.
[edit] Personnel
- Alanis Morissette - harmonica, vocals
- Glen Ballard - guitar, keyboards, programming, producer, engineer, mixing
- Dave Navarro - guitar
- Basil Fung - guitar
- Michael Landau - guitar
- Joel Shearer - guitar
- Lance Morrison - bass
- Flea - bass
- Michael Thompson - organ
- Benmont Tench - organ
- Taylor Hawkins - drums, percussion
- Rob Ladd - percussion, Drums
- Matt Laug - drums
- Gota Yashiki - rhythm
- Ted Blaisdell - engineer
- David Schiffman - engineer
- Victor McCoy - engineer
- Rich Weingart - engineer
- Chris Fogel - engineer, mixing
- Francis Buckley - mixing
- Jolie Jones Levine - production coordination
- Chris Bellman - mastering
- Tom Recchion - art direction, design
- John Patrick Salisbury - photography
[edit] Charts and certifications
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| Year | Title | Chart positions | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CAN | U.S. Hot 100 | U.S. Modern Rock | U.S. Adult Top 40 | U.S. Top 40 Mainstream | UK | AUS | ||||||||||
| 1995 | "You Oughta Know" | 20 | 6 | 1 | 7 | 22 | 4 | |||||||||
| "Hand in My Pocket" | 1 | 1 | 25 | 4 | 26 | 12 | ||||||||||
| 1996 | "Ironic" | 1 | 4 | 1 | 5 | 1 | 11 | 1 | ||||||||
| "You Learn" | 1 | 6 | 7 | 3 | 1 | 24 | 20 | |||||||||
| "Head over Feet" | 1 | 25 | 1 | 1 | 7 | 1 | ||||||||||
| 1997 | "All I Really Want" | 2 | 14 | 59 | 38 | |||||||||||
[edit] Notes
- ^ a b Kawashima, Dale. "Great Publishing Story: John Alexander & Alanis Morissette". Songwriter Universe Magazine. Retrieved November 16, 2006.
- ^ Newman, Melinda. "10 Years On, Alanis Unplugs 'Little Pill'". Billboard. March 4, 2005. Retrieved November 16, 2006.
- ^ [1]
- ^ [2]
| Studio Albums | Alanis (album) | Now Is the Time | Jagged Little Pill | Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie | Under Rug Swept | So-Called Chaos | Jagged Little Pill Acoustic |
| Live Albums | Alanis Unplugged |
| Compilations & Rarities Collections | Feast on Scraps | Alanis Morissette: The Collection |
| E.P.s | Space Cakes |
