It’s hard to believe that it’s already been 25 years since Alanis Morissette blessed us with her third studio album, Jagged Little Pill.
Featuring classic hits like “Ironic,” “You Oughta Know” and “Hand in My Pocket,” it’s an album that we still can’t get enough of, all these years later. Now, in an exclusive new interview with 360aproko, Morissette reflects on what it was like releasing the record back in 1995.null
“In the ’90s, it was angry white female,” the 46-year-old singer tells Keltie Knight. “I love anger. Not the destructive, acting out [kind], but anger is a big life force that can move things and set boundaries and fuel activism. It’s great.”
“Just before I moved to Los Angeles, I committed to myself that I wouldn’t do anything other than make a record that really was a snapshot of that period of time, and that’s what wound up happening,” she continues. “While I was writing, I was just really insulated. I would work five days a week and then I would rollerblade on the weekends from the Santa Monica Pier to Manhattan Beach and back. That’s all I would do. I was in that mode of just writing and I promised myself that I wouldn’t stop until I wrote a record that I really loved.”
Flash forward to today, Morissette is gearing up for the release of her ninth studio album, Such Pretty Forks in the Road, out Friday. She tells 360aproko that being a mom to three kids — Ever, 9, Onyx, 4, and Winter, 11 months — with husband Souleye has definitely changed how she creates her music.
“Before children, before marriage, I would be doing a vocal, and if there was anything in my peripheral vision I’d freak out and say, ‘I can’t focus,'” she recalls. “Now I’m doing vocals and my daughter’s on top of my head, I’m breastfeeding, there are doors opening and closing. ‘Where’s the puppy,’ you know? I’m doing vocals and writing and trying to eat soup … so, multitasking has been taken to a whole new level.”
“Thankfully, I can still write and I can still do vocals,” she adds. “It’s just 50 more interruptions a day. And that’s just part of this lifestyle now.”
Explaining the album’s quirky title, Morissette says, “It’s me being slightly checked out by calling it ‘pretty,’ and just really talking about the multiple junctures — having lived in Los Angeles for 25 years, moving to Northern California, starting a family, and getting married was completely outside of my wheelhouse.”
As for how Morissette has been handling all the extra time at home with her family amid the coronavirus pandemic, the singer admits it’s definitely been “challenging.”
“Being insulated together, in the home together, it’s been real,” she confesses. “It’s been a hot kitchen for [me and Souleye] in our marriage, but we love it. I I love when things get dicey, and what I mean by dicey is challenging. He and I both know we’re not going anywhere, and that the tougher it gets, the more healing [is done].”
“I think conflict is just growth trying to happen, and healing trying to happen. Because we frame conflict that way, we’re not terrified,” she adds. “In 10 years, we’ll look back on this [time] collectively as a planet and just think, ‘What the heck happened here?'”
