Isn’t it ironic?
Alanis Morissette’s tough relationship with fame
Of all people, it is Alanis Morissette who appreciates the irony of her troubled relationship with fame. A self-confessed “attention junkie”, when the Canadian singer-songwriter finally achieved the adoration she craved, it left her battling panic attacks, predatory rock stars, deep depression, A-list break-ups and sex addiction.
The top of the world felt like rock bottom. Ironic? Perhaps. Terrifying? Undoubtedly.
Twenty years on, the singer is simply glad that she has survived. “It’s taken a lot of work and therapy to just not be suicidal,” she says. “There’s been a little PTSD I’ve had to work through over the years.”
Released in 1995, Alanis’ breakthrough album Jagged
LittlePill was a raw outpouring of anger, fear and insecurity that resonated with a generation. She hoped it might shift 125,000 copies. To date, it has sold 33
million. Buoyed by the global smash hits “Ironic”, “You Oughta Know”, “Hand in My Pocket” and “Head Over Feet”, the album made Alanis a superstar – and almost killed her in the process.
“I didn’t know what I was signing up for,” says the star, 43, who sheared off her trademark long locks after touring New Zealand in January. “I was already quite an isolated person and it got worse. I became averse to people even looking at me.
“I was always a peoplewatcher – I’d sit for hours observing and then all of a sudden, every eye was on me. I was horrified by it. I started landing at airports and there were 30,000 people there. I wound up hiding in my hotel room, but if I walked past the window, even my shadow on the drapes would cause people outside to scream. People would break in and leave notes in my underwear when I was doing a show. It felt like an obliteration of my boundaries.”
And that was just her fans. The attentions of male musicians left her feeling equally objectified. She recalls, “If certain men couldn’t sleep with me or didn’t want to sleep with me, they didn’t know what to do with me. If there wasn’t going to be romance or sex, they didn’t know how to categorise me.”
Today, Alanis has a solid family base. Since 2010, she’s been married to Canadian rapper Souleye, with whom she has two children, Ever, five, and Onyx, one. Her kids are on tour with her at the moment. “They’re both road dogs,” she laughs. “They like it.”
Healingwounds
At the height of her fame, however, Alanis felt like a trapeze act with no safety net. “I had no-one apart from a couple of therapists who I would phone from the road, desperately, at three in the
morning.” Was any of it fun? “No,” she says briskly. “No, it wasn’t fun.”
A teen prodigy, Alanis made two minor albums before being dumped by her first record label, who told her that her career was over at 17. When she began writing songs for JaggedLittle
Pill, she did so with an urgent compulsion. “These were stories I had to tell or I was going to die.”
The most dramatic of all of those stories was “You Oughta Know”, a brutal autobiographical rant at an older man who had wronged her. Alanis has always avoided naming the object of her anger. Last year, however,
FullerHouse actor David Coulier, aka Uncle Joey, outed himself as the “Mr Duplicity” who gets both barrels in the song. Perhaps he is. Alanis is still keeping mum.
“A lot of people have said that it’s a great revenge song, but the idea of revenge being acted out is something that I think is really dangerous. The reason I won’t say who it’s about is to protect them
Every eye was on me. I was horrified’
on some level, but mostly it’s about me wanting to make sure that I stand by my value system of not advocating for revenge.” Smiling again, she hoots, “But revenge fantasy? Go for it!”
More recently, Alanis’ relationship with actor Ryan Reynolds, to whom she was engaged between 2004 and 2007, was outlined in painful detail on her 2008 album FlavorsofEntanglement. She says the end of their relationship was “devastating” and that writing about the pain “didn’t necessarily ssarily help”.
She admits she’s e’s been reckless in matters rs of the heart. “I wanted relationships that couldn’t possibly sibly work out and those were re the ones that were enticing,” g,” says Alanis. “A lot of the he recovery work I’ve done has as been around love addiction, ction, sex addiction and d really, addiction in general.”
A new album is s due to be released d early next year. Meanwhile, Alanis s is heavily involved d in a musical production based on JaggedLittlePill, ll, which opened in Massachusetts in May. Like everything she e does, the singer jumped into this new project head first.
“That authenticity ity remains from when I was 19,” 9,” she says. “It’s always been about bout me chronicling what’s happening now. That’s the big question every time – what is i happening today?”