History Music / AlanisMorissette

* CanadaEh

* GenreMashup: Starting with ''Junkie'', Alanis incorporated electronic and world influences into her music. Which is not to say ''Jagged Little Pill'' wasn't already pretty genre-fusiony, with its combination of lots of drumloops and electronics filched from Music/{{Beck}} with PostGrunge guitars.

* AccentUponTheWrongSyllable:

* SheCleansUpNicely: Just look at that page picture!

* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: Her early career as the Canadian Debbie Gibson.
* EightiesHair: Her early career as the Canadian Debbie Gibson. Perhaps even more so on ''You Can't Do That on Television'', on which she sported hairstyles that made her look much older than her 11 or 12 years.

-->--'''"Hand In My Pocket"'''

Alanis Nadine Morissette (born June 1, 1974 in Ottawa, Ontario) is a Canadian singer-songwriter and the winner of seven Grammy awards. She began her path to fame by being a cast member on the Canadian kids' sketch show ''Series/YouCantDoThatOnTelevision'', and then going to UsefulNotes/NewYorkCity to compete in ''Series/StarSearch''. Her first two albums consisted of teen dance-pop songs. She gained international fame with the NewSoundAlbum ''Jagged Little Pill'' and its follow-up ''Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie'', which introduced her SignatureStyle of catchy pop-rock combined with {{Motor Mouth}}y, really wordy introspective lyrics. Her most famous songs include "You Oughta Know", "Ironic" (which is about things the protagonist sees as "ironic") and "Head Over Feet" (which is credited with coining the term "friend with benefits").

She has had turns as an actress, for example she portrayed {{God}} in ''Film/{{Dogma}}''.

+ Music/{{Madonna}}, Music/SineadOConnor, Music/JeffBuckley, Music/LedZeppelin, Music/ThePretenders, Music/PattiSmith, Music/TracyChapman, Music/PatBenatar, Music/{{Bjork}}

->''Well, I'm here to remind you\\
Of the mess you left when you went away\\
It's not fair to deny me\\
Of the cross I bear that you gave to me\\
You, you, you oughta know''

* {{Irony}}: Some teachers have tried to use "Ironic" in an attempt to teach a class of kids the meaning of "irony" -- even though Alanis has claimed the song is about misunderstanding the term as being a synonym for "coincidental", "unlikely", or "unfortunate". Some of them do actually fit ("rain on your wedding day", at least from the perspective of the bride), but most of them don't. This leads to some very frustrated high-schoolers who are confused in their upper-level Lang courses when they don't understand irony properly.

** The line about 'transparent dangling carrots' is often cited as WordSalad, but does make sense. 'Dangling carrots' is a phrase meaning bribing somebody (like when you hang a carrot in front of a horse to make it trot after it, you know?), and 'transparent' means it's obvious to her they are trying to do this. Therefore, the line means 'Why do you think you can save a failing relationship by buying me things?'.

* {{Bowdlerise}}: "You Oughta Know" is a classic case of Bowdlerization not working. The song was very popular among teens, but of course, there's an F-bomb in it. At school dances and similar functions, the radio edit version would play where the offending word was simply muted. So what would happen when that spot in the song came up? Everyone in the room would shout out the offending word at the muted point.
** To be fair, most radio stations played it such that it went, "When you ffffff- her." Which actually sounded good too.
*** In ''VideoGame/RockBand 2'', the solution they came up with was echoing the "you" before the F-bomb while muting it. Not that players cannot sing "fuck" (since there's technically no lyrics in that space, there's also no penalty).

* BreakupSong: "You Oughta Know" is the most famous one, but there's also "Are You Still Mad" and "Hands Clean".

* NeoclassicalPunkZydecoRockabilly: Starting with ''Junkie'', Alanis incorporated electronic and world influences into her music. Which is not to say ''Jagged Little Pill'' wasn't already pretty genre-fusiony, with its combination of lots of drumloops and electronics filched from Music/{{Beck}} with PostGrunge guitars.

Alanis Nadine Morissette (born June 1, 1974 in Ottawa, Ontario) is a Canadian singer-songwriter and the winner of seven Grammy awards. She began her path to fame by being a cast member on the Canadian kids' sketch show ''Series/YouCantDoThatOnTelevision'', and then going to UsefulNotes/NewYorkCity to compete in ''Series/StarSearch''. Her first two albums consisted of teen dance-pop songs. She gained international fame with the NewSoundAlbum ''Jagged Little Pill'' and its follow-up ''Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie'', which introduced her SignatureStyle of catchy pop-rock combined with {{Motor Mouth}}y, really wordy introspective lyrics. Her most famous songs include "Ironic" (famous for many not getting the joke that it's about misunderstanding the meaning of the word "ironic") and "Head Over Feet" (which is credited with coining the term "friend with benefits").

* {{Irony}}: Some teachers have tried to use "Ironic" in an attempt to teach a class of kids the meaning of "irony" -- even though the song is about misunderstanding the term as being a synonym for "coincidental", "unlikely", or "unfortunate". Some of them do actually fit ("rain on your wedding day", at least from the perspective of the bride), but most of them don't. This leads to some very frustrated high-schoolers who are confused in their upper-level Lang courses when they don't understand irony properly.

Alanis Nadine Morissette (born June 1, 1974 in Ottawa, Ontario) is a Canadian singer-songwriter and the winner of seven Grammy awards. She began her path to fame by being a cast member on the Canadian kids' sketch show ''Series/YouCantDoThatOnTelevision'', and then going to UsefulNotes/NewYorkCity to compete in ''Series/StarSearch''. Her first two albums consisted of poorly produced dance-pop with uninspired lyrics. [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking She was the opening act for Vanilla Ice, too.]] She gained international fame with the NewSoundAlbum ''Jagged Little Pill'' and its follow-up ''Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie'', which were considered [[SurprisinglyImprovedSequel improvements]] over her previous material and introduced her SignatureStyle of catchy pop-rock combined with {{Motor Mouth}}y, really wordy introspective lyrics.

She also invented (for her song "Head Over Feet") the term for a sexual relationship that is either an upgrade to a more committed relationship from a one-night-stand or a downgrade from boyfriend/girlfriend to "friend with benefits."

She portrayed {{God}} in ''Film/{{Dogma}}''.

Also, [[NeverLiveItDown she doesn't understand]] the meaning of the word [[{{Irony}} "ironic."]] Even if irony was simply any "amusing coincidence" (which is overly generous), most of the lines in the song are not - each one is either tragic, annoying, or inconvenient, but not ironic. The Irish comedian Ed Byrne did once describe [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT1TVSTkAXg some qualifiers which would MAKE certain lines ironic]] (such as the line about rain on your wedding day -- ironic if you're marrying a weatherman and he set the date). As American comedian Creator/GeorgeCarlin put this in one of his books:

->"If a diabetic, on his way to buy insulin, is hit and killed by a truck, that is an accident. If the truck was carrying sugar, then he is the victim of an oddly poetic coincidence. But if the truck that hit him was carrying insulin, ''then'' he is the victim of irony."

The real irony, of course, is that ''none'' of the situations in the song are actually ironic.[[note]]at least, not if taken at face value. For example, the verse about the man with a phobia of planes getting killed by facing his fears ''could'' be ironic depending on the audience's expectations... it's both complicated and a massive Natter magnet.[[/note]] Which would mean that the song ''[[ParodyRetcon was]]'' [[AuthorsSavingThrow about irony after all]].

Or at least, until she released a [[RearrangeTheSong piano]]-[[LyricalDissonance ballad]] {{cover|Version}} of Music/TheBlackEyedPeas song [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRmYfVCH2UA "My Humps"]], thus proving once and for all that she ''did'' understand it.

* InTheStyleOf: Music/TheBlackEyedPeas' "My Humps" [[RearrangeTheSong as a]] [[LyricalDissonance slow ballad]].
* {{Irony}}: It is extremely amusing (that is to say, annoying) when a teacher tries to use her below-mentioned song in an attempt to teach a class of kids the meaning of "irony". By having them listen to a song that uses "ironic" as a synonym for "coincidental", "unlikely", or "unfortunate" -- it isn't. Some of them do actually fit ("rain on your wedding day", at least from the perspective of the bride), but most of them don't. This leads to some very frustrated high-schoolers who are confused in their upper-level Lang courses when they don't understand irony properly. Granted, having a song about a number of unironic things and then naming that song "Ironic" is an example of irony.
** These days, when she sings "Ironic" live, she changes a line to "It's meeting the man of my dreams, then meeting his beautiful Husband"... which, is kinda... ironic?

* ContinuityCavalcade: The video for "Eight Easy Steps" is made up of clips from all of Alanis's other music videos... including a few from her teenybopper phase... and a clip from Series/YouCantDoThatOnTelevision... [[UpToEleven and some home videos of Alanis as a little kid]].

** The line about 'transparent dangling carrots' is often cited as WordSalad, but does make sense. 'Dangling carrots' is a phrase meaning bribing somebody, and 'transparent' means it's obvious to her they are trying to do this. Therefore, the line means 'Why do you think you can save a failing relationship by buying me things?'.

Also, [[NeverLiveItDown she doesn't understand]] the [[YouKeepUsingThatWord meaning]] of the word [[{{Irony}} "ironic."]] Even if irony was simply any "amusing coincidence" (which is overly generous), most of the lines in the song are not - each one is either tragic, annoying, or inconvenient, but not ironic. The Irish comedian Ed Byrne did once describe [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT1TVSTkAXg some qualifiers which would MAKE certain lines ironic]] (such as the line about rain on your wedding day -- ironic if you're marrying a weatherman and he set the date). As American comedian Creator/GeorgeCarlin put this in one of his books: