The Classic Albums Retrospect (Part One)

Alanis Morissette, Jagged Little Pill, 1995

This album changed my life. Dramatic? Maybe. The truth, defiantly. Before JLP my music taste was confined to euro dance music such as 2 Unlimited, Whigfield and Corona. I had heard Hand In My Pocket and thought it was OK but then Ironic and Head Over Feet were released and I loved them. I remember vividly going into Virgin Megastore in Walsall, the album was number one, there was a massive buzz about it. I had some wages from my paper round, I think possibly just enough. If I brought this album I’d be skint for a week but I brought it anyway. I couldn’t wait to get it home so I could play it. The art work captivated me as did the liner notes and song lyrics as I read them on the bus.

After the first listen I didn’t think much of it but by the third listen I was hooked. Never before had song lyrics affected me and sung to me in that way and never before had I purchased an album that I didn’t need to skip.

From the opening chords of All I Really Want to the final whisper of hidden track ‘Your House, you are transcended into her world and allowed to learn some of her darkest secrets. You Oughta Know is THE breakup song and I have always felt sorry for the person that was written about, You Learn is pure pop brilliance and the theme tune to everyone’s life, Perfect and Forgiven are deeply personal, Ironic is, for all its bashing at the time, a great radio pop tune and Wake Up is a pure sing along classic and the perfect way to end (almost) the album.

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 more than 250,000 copies.

It debuted at number 117 on the U.S. Billboard 200 albums chart.

Things quickly changed when a Los Angeles DJ from the influential radio station KROQ began playing "You Oughta Know", the album's first single.

The song instantly garnered attention, and a subsequent music video went into heavy rotation on MTV. The subject of the song (long suspected to be ex-boyfriend Dave Coulier of television's Full House, whose relationship with Morissette had soured shortly before the song was recorded, 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. "Hand in My Pocket" was released as the second single, and then "Ironic", which became Morissette's biggest hit. "You Learn" and "Head over Feet", the next two singles, kept Jagged Little Pill in the top twenty on the Billboard 200 for over a year. Outside the U.S., "All I Really Want" was released in 1997 as the album's last single, and in Europe "You Learn" was released before "Ironic".

As of 2009, it has sold thirty-three million copies worldwide and in the UK it is ranked as the 12^th bestselling album of all time. 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 and reached nineteen on March 7. It took nine weeks for it to depart the chart again, on May 2.

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.

Track Listing;

"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

Through all its commercial success none of her later albums have matched the sales of JLP. What it did do was allow her a devote worldwide following that has enabled her to continue writing and recording for over a decade.

To me this is my favourite album of all time simply because to this day, fifteen years after its initial release, I can still sit and listen to it all the way through without skipping a single track and there aren’t many albums I can say that about.

So whether it sold 33 million copies or 3 I don’t care to me it will remain a modern rock masterpiece, my favourite album and possibly the greatest debut in music history.