ode to alanis
Written by Rachel Hughes
Picture this: I am four years old, still strapped into a car seat, Velcro shoes kicking to the beat as my mom and I sing“ are you thinking of me while you fuck her” in tune to Alanis’ raw voice, live from some venue in 1999, the year I was born. This is not about whether a four-year-old should be singing fuck. Cast aside your judgments and instead, picture the intense togetherness of a mother and daughter, divided by the front seat and backseat of a car, divided by the tension of an ongoing custody battle, singing out their rage and grief in unison. This was the soundtrack of my childhood: Live/Unplugged by Alanis Morissette – a red, scratched-up disk always in the mouth of my mom’s stereo.
Alanis Morissette is known for her confessional-like lyrics and unique voice. Her first internationally released album was Jagged Little Pill, which emerged in the summer of 1995.“ You Outta Know”, the song I’d be singing with my mom almost ten years after its debut, became an instant hit. The album had six hit singles and stayed in the top 20 of the Billboard Top 200 albums list for over a year. Jagged Little Pill became the second best-selling album by a female artist at the time. Over the 30 or so years of her career, she has released 10 studio albums, 3 live albums, and over 40 music videos. She’s impressive, to say the least. And yet, even with such popularity and success, I argue she still goes largely underappreciated. Especially by me.
When the custody battle settled and the divorce faded to an event of the past, Alanis’s Unplugged album was retired to my mom’s glovebox. I began to develop my music taste, which included writing off Alanis Morissette’s music as “ angry lady music” which I seemed to view as lesser than and annoying. We see this time and time again — people writing off woman musicians because they sing about men who hurt them. It’s a criticism Taylor Swift has received since the beginning of her music career. For some reason, a woman singing about her breakup is automatically viewed as cringe and overdone. And thus, I wrote off Alanis Morissette for the same reason. Why would I ever feel the need to listen to the “ angry lady music” that my mom listened to 20 years ago?
Then, in early 2024, just as I turned 25, I went through a very difficult fight with my dad. Every text I received from him made me want to throw up. Things between us hadn’t been this bad in years, but it reminded me of all the times it had been bad before and made me think about all the times it could be just as bad in the future. I was exhausted; I was angry. Though I could not divorce him, as my mother once had, I essentially did the next best thing: I told him I was done and I blocked his number. It was one of the scariest things I’ve ever done. I think anyone who has gone“ no contact” with an abusive relative/significant other can relate to that. I’m incredibly proud of the decision I made, but that doesn’t mean it was easy. Pressing the red“ block this number” button on your phone doesn’t erase years of trauma, sadness, and anger that come with being raised in a broken home. So, feeling very much alone and angry, I did the same thing I always do when things get tough: I turned to music.
Enter Alanis Morissette. I’m not sure what possessed me to look for her on Spotify, but one day I was scrolling through her discography, searching for that same red album that had lived in my mom’s glovebox during my childhood. I turned on my speaker, cranked the volume, and pressed play. The nostalgia felt palpable on my tongue as the first song started, her unedited voice at once vulnerable and honest. The first song on her unplugged album is You Learn, named for the chorus: “ you live, you learn/you love, you learn/you cry, you learn/you lose, you learn/you bleed, you learn.” Her use of repetition makes for an entrancing chorus while emphasizing the song’s message: everything you do in life will teach you something, so embrace it. It’s at once a song of“ throwing caution to the wind,” as she says, and welcoming each fumble you make in life, but it also has a sadder undertone to it as seen in the last line of the chorus,“ you bleed, you learn.” I found the song immediately resonated with me, as an anxious perfectionist and someone going through a truly horrible time with my family.
The more I listened to this album, the more I fell back in love with Alanis’ singing and songwriting. She was what I had once labeled her — “angry lady music.” But I’m realizing now, what’s so bad about an angry woman? Wasn’t I, too, an angry woman? I spent so much of my life falling into the trap that society creates, feeding us lies that an angry woman is annoying, pathetic, and unjustified. Women are too emotional, too dramatic, too petty, too catty… it’s all been said before in a thousand and one different ways. They are the same insults my dad had thrown at me all my life and the ones I had carelessly thrown at Alanis. They’re the ones that had been thrown at my mom, too, when she decided to get a divorce.
When the album reached“ You Outta Know” and I once again sang along to lyrics I had learned twenty years ago, I felt more connected to my mom than maybe I ever had. I saw my mother, late 30’s, working overtime just to afford groceries, taking care of two kids all on her own, and balancing a legal battle ignited by my father. I was in a very different place — 25, single, living in an apartment with another roommate — but still, I saw her. I knew her. The anger, fear, and sadness she had felt at that time, fighting against my dad and feeling as though she were alone in it… I was familiar with it now. I knew why she allowed her four-year-old to join her in screaming Alanis Morissette’s music from the top of her lungs. I realized that as I now saw my mom for who she had been when I was a child, Alanis had seen her, too. Alanis was brave enough to sing with vulnerability, anger, and honesty, something I knew my mom needed at that time. She had gotten my mom through her divorce, and now she was getting me through my own metaphorical divorce. It’s incredible, the things that art can do for you.
A few weeks ago, I told my mom I was listening to Alanis Morissette again. She gave me a surprised look “ I haven’t listened to her in forever. She’s a bit too angry for me nowadays.”
I just smiled. It didn’t matter that my mom no longer listened to her. My mom is not who she was then, just as I will one day be different from who I am now. We grow, we change. We learn.
Thank you, Alanis.
