Ask anyone to name an Alanis Morissette album and, unless they are wearing an Alanis Morissette T-shirt, they’ll say Jagged Little Pill. Why wouldn’t they? That 1995 classic shifted 33m copies globally, won five Grammys, redefined the word “ironic” and paved the way for a glut of copycat angst merchants (Meredith Brooks, where art thou?). But perhaps it is the album’s follow-up – the solipsistic, wellness-minded Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie, which turned 20 this month – that holds greater influence in 2018.
While its predecessor boiled with a rage that was relatable to a broader audience still reeling from grunge’s blood letting, Supposed ... turned the anger and confusion inwards and processed it via healing trips to India (lead single Thank U, essentially a four-minute prelude to Elizabeth Gilbert’s 2006 memoir Eat, Pray, Love); therapy (The Couch); and, on Unsent, which takes the form of a letter, an emotional purging. So far, so Goop. As with Ariana Grande’s current ode to her exes Thank U, Next, Unsent picks over specific relationships: not with anger, more with a “you live, you learn” (!) self-possession. While some names were changed (the opening “Dear Matthew” was thought to reference Dave Matthews, whom Alanis dated briefly in 1998), its frankness still feels like a bold statement of owning, and alchemising, one’s apparent failures.
When it came time for Katy Perry to follow up her multi-million-selling Teenage Dream album, she plumped for her own version of Supposed’s yoga-scented wellness. Prism (2013) mixed gap-year spiritualism with lyrics that could have come straight from Morissette’s diary (take Love Me’s “No concealing feelings, or changing seasonally”). Rather than just chucking out a facsimile of her commercial breakthrough, Morissette set a template for female artists to sidestep expectations and carve out more interesting careers as a result (see also Lana Del Rey’s Born to Die follow-up, Ultraviolence).
With Alanis tired of being pigeonholed as a man-hater, Supposed … did away with limitations altogether. While in 2018, it is de rigueur to draw an album out past the 70-minute mark, 20 years ago that was close to commercial suicide. Across 17 sprawling songs, only Thank U approached a radio-friendly hit. Even that album title – a nod to people assuming her songwriting stemmed from one broken relationship – foreshadowed the likes of Fiona Apple’s 90-word When the Pawn ... and the 1975’s gleefully pretentious I Like It When You Sleep, for You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware of It. So, next time you are in the mood for a dose of Alanis Morissette, crack out the healing crystals and luxuriate in Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie’s gloriously unfashionable, yet decidedly evergreen, navel gazing.
