Alanis hit like a Molotov cocktail
The girl from Glebe Collegiate helped pave the way for strong female singer-songwriters
Ottawa rock radio host Kath Thompson often invited the Ottawa teenager on air to chat about her promising career as a pop singer.
But like everyone else in town, Thompson was flabbergasted when that confident young woman with the big hair and the bigger smile left Ottawa and returned a couple of years later with a searing song that hit the pop world like a Molotov cocktail.
Alanis Morissette had unleashed You Oughta Know, a raw anthem about a duplicitous lover: “Did you forget about me, Mr. Duplicity? Are you thinking of me when you f--her?” She wrote it when she was 20.
“I was so wonderfully shocked,” says Thompson. “Such a great song ... she was telling a story, you’re not sure how autobiographical it was, but it sure felt that way ... Oh my God!
“Then the rest of the album came out. It was spectacular.”
The album, of course, was Jagged Little Pill. The 1995 release was hailed as a generation-defining masterpiece. Another track on the album, the playful pop tune Ironic, became a monster hit single.
Alanis Morissette was already well-known in Canada, but Jagged Little Pill catapulted her into the ranks of international superstardom. Overnight, she became the most famous singer hailing from Ottawa since Paul Anka became a teen pop idol in the 1950s.
We claim her proudly, the girl who attended Holy Family Catholic School, competed in talent shows at the Ottawa Ex, starred in You Can’t Do That On Television, a wacky show for kids produced at CJOH, and knocked her way onto the Canadian charts with a dancepop album when she was just 17.
Alanis — she’s so famous now that no last name is required — hasn’t live in Ottawa since she graduated from Glebe Collegiate. Southern California has been her home for two decades. But we still have bragging rights. And Alanis has made an impact on the city just as surely as she helped shake up the music world.
Before Alanis, says Thompson, “What had come out of Ottawa? A few things, but ... Not female singer-songwriters who change the world and open up the door for a whole generation of female singer-songwriters.”
For other local musicians, and anyone else striving for the top of their field, it was a vote of confidence, she says. “It shows you can come from anywhere. I hope it said to a lot of people that you have to come from someplace, why not Ottawa?”
Canadian radio programmers were initially reluctant to play You Oughta Know, and not just because of the explicit lyrics, says Thompson. Alanis was known as a dance-pop singer, and the song didn’t fit any category. “It was alternative sounding, (not like) rock radio. Can we play Alanis and then play AC/DC?”
There was no such hesitation south of the border, says Thompson. “In the U.S., they said, ‘Here’s where it fits — at the top of the charts.’ ”
Dominic D’Arcy, Ottawa’s “singing policeman,” met Alanis when she was about 10 after he performed at her school. He was blown away by her big voice, and invited Alanis and her brother Wade to accompany him and other child stars at performances around Ottawa. “Every time she would come out to my show, she would steal it,” he says cheerfully. “She made people feel good when she came back here to sing here, because she’s worldfamous, and she’s from Ottawa.”
Alanis has returned to Ottawa over the years — for concerts, to visit her parents, to sing the national anthem at a Senators game. But since her triumphant return to collect the keys of the city in 1996, no one’s made a big deal over her. A very modest street near the South Keys shopping centre — it’s more like a long laneway — was christened Alanis Private.
It felt as if the slim thread that kept her attached to the city was broken after Alanis sold her luxury condo in the ByWard Market last summer. She had owned the twobedroom condo on Boteler Street, with its spectacular views of the Ottawa River, since 2001.
But Alanis will always be an important part of the history and fabric of this city, says Kathie Donovan, a former CJOH entertainment reporter who interviewed her after Jagged Little Pill was released.
“She was on the cutting edge of this concept of authenticity, which is a catchphrase now. But back then, she had to be extremely courageous to just be who she was. In the industry, there was always that model of cute girl, nice music. But Alanis just told it like it was.
“She stood out because women were not, we didn’t feel that courageous, to be that authentic and not care what people thought, generally speaking.
“She was authentically Alanis. In the music industry, people work to fit themselves into what they think will provide them with success. She was like, ‘I don’t care, this is who I am.’ And that’s what made her so powerful.”
It’s sad, adds Donovan, that Alanis had to leave Ottawa to find global success.
So we haven’t had a front-row seat as Alanis headed into adulthood, a sensitive, intense young woman who wrestled with her sudden fame and struggled with an eating disorder and depression.
Alanis says the aftermath of Jagged Little Pill left her with PTSD.
“There was a period of time during the Jagged Little Pill era where I don’t think I laughed for about two years,” she told The Guardian newspaper in 2012. “It was a survival mode, you know. It was an intense, constant, chronic overstimulation and invasion of energetic and physical literal space.
“It was a profound violation. It felt like every millisecond I was attempting to set a boundary and say no and people were breaking into my hotel rooms and going through my suitcase and pulling my hair and jumping on my car.”
These days, Alanis seems serene and happy. On her blog, she muses on the importance of nurturing relationships, healing past traumas, meditating, connecting, channelling, hugging, awareness. She gushes over chakra-inspired oil/water/ salt blend sprays and thousand petal lotus oil. She makes pleas on behalf of charities, from the National Eating Disorder Association to an organization that provides eco-sustainable feminine hygiene products to the Third World. She posts pictures of exquisite handcrafted rings and provides a recipe for vegetable soup.
Some of it’s baffling. She describes, for instance, waking up, bursting into tears, then retreating with a book to sit in the sun.
“These tears and this deep breathing — they make space for the channelling of art, messages, wisdom, ideas. Which makes space for shifts and brave steps and visions and transformations and returns-home. This reflective time allows for a re-setting.”
But Alanis probably doesn’t care. She’s been made fun of for decades for spilling her guts, for being vulnerable, for expressing herself and exploring her inner world.
And after some crushing romances, she seems blissfully happy with her husband Mario “Souleye” Treadway and their two young children: son Ever, 6, and daughter Onyx, 13 months.