defend the indefensible: JAGGED LITTLE PILL by alanis morrissette

I hated her xtra at the time due to flacks' habit of citing her alongside Tori Amos, Courtney Love, and PJ Harvey. Yeah, well fuck you, poseur. (I now understand that there's no point in blaming the artist for having good publicists.)

Now that I'm no longer expected to take her seriously I honestly enjoy a few of her post-big deal tracks.

But as it is, it's a Wilson Phillips rekkid WITH "You Oughta Know"! It's a good pop record, maybe even a MINOR CLASSIC. I like that she went down on him in a theater and put it on the radio, I like that she didn't know what ironic meant, I like that she's only on key about half the time and still sold more records than anyone else. Like we used to say back in the day, You go girl!

Aside from that, tough one.

1-'Cause the love that Dave Coulier gave that we made
Wasn't able to make it enough for Dave Coulier
To be open wide, No
And every time Dave Coulier speaks her name
Does she know how Dave Coulier told me
Dave Coulier would hold me until you died
Till Dave Coulier died, but Dave Coulier's still alive

And I'm here, to remind Dave Coulier
Of the mess Dave Coulier left when Dave Coulier went away
It's not fair, to deny me
Of the cross I bear that Dave Coulier gave to me
Dave Coulier, Dave Coulier, Dave Coulier oughta know

Dave Coulier seem svery well, things look peaceful
I'm not quite as well, I thought Dave Coulier should know
Did Dave Coulier forget about me, Mr. Duplicity?
I hate to bug Dave Coulier in the middle of dinner
It was a slap in the face
How quickly I was replaced
And is Dave Coulier thinking of me when Dave Coulier f...s her?

Ohh... aah... ahh... ahh...

'Cause the joke that Dave Coulier laid in the bed
That was me and I'm not gonna fade
As soon as Dave Coulier closes his eyes, and Dave Coulier knows it
And every time I scratch my nails
Down someone else's back I hope Dave Coulier feels it
Well, can Dave Coulier feel it?

And I'm here, to remind Dave Coulier
Of the mess Dave Coulier left when Dave Coulier went away
It's not fair, to deny me
Of the cross I bear that Dave Coulier gave to me
Dave Coulier, Dave Coulier, Dave Coulier oughta know

"All I Really Want" and "You Learn" are the ones I can almost rep for.

also, gyspy mothra OTM but that's an old point: when ILM says "pop" it tends to mean something sonically very specific I think

Yeah, and also I know that embracing pop in theory is no obligation to like everything under the big tent. I just think the record has a bunch of good tunes, and -- crucially, I guess -- I find her self-involvement endearing rather than obnoxious (or maybe endearingly obnoxious).

My thoughts at the time too. Now I can enjoy a couple of songs without feeling vile. But I still hate therapy-rock, whether it's John Lennon's or Alanis'.

Yes, but unlike anything on Alanis's diary, I mean record, "Since U Been Gone" exhibits the pop virtue of actually being catchy.

bn otm and i hated alanis then and havent heard any of these songs recently enough to know now...but i could guess

cough cough d'n'b cough

i was gonna say, "how much time do you have?" but john d. beat me to the punch!

Let's take this one off the table. Current Alanis seems quite sincere and decent irl.

ILM's poppism in revealed-as-largely-theoretical shockah

It's easier to appreciate pop when it doesn't demand to be taken seriously. It was the pretense that stuck in my craw at the time, not the tracks - or, more to the point, that the press seemed to seize on JLP as somethingimportant, to which Attention Must Be Paid. When it really was just a big slice of rocky-melodic Ballard goodness.

I still hate therapy-rock, whether it's John Lennon's or Alanis'

haha - it's therapy-Alanis that I've ended up liking. Post-Jagged stuff like "India," "Precious Illusions," "Kashmir" - er, "Uninvited," and (especially, especially, especially) "Unsent" which often says as much about love as anything in the Merritt songbook.

And speaking of, let's do the math:

Ne Plus Ultra of Lennon therapy rock: "Mother"
Arguably Finest Shelby Lynne Track, Given The Bio And All: "Mother"
Produced by: Glen Ballard
Producer of: Jagged Little Pill

Lennon to Alanis in four steps!

and lest we forget, the ass

point - though it's hardly a fair fight

Tell.

What else was there in 1995 that was really THAT much better than this?

see above: Tori Amos, PJ Harvey, Live Through This, Sleater-Kinney s/t...

You mean nothing at all? *hides*

dude, it's DMB.

I think it never occurred to me to take her seriously. I mean, not serious seriously. Not any more seriously than, say, Dookie (which I also like, and is also full of post-adolescent angst).

Oh, that would take a while to go over again. (Also I'm biased in that I'm currently listening to and loving the hell out of Sparks' new song "Waterproof" which is as to Merritt's take on love as the Noize Board conceptually sees itself vis-a-vis ILE.)

The rest of it is perfectly fine angst-lite that has been dulled through hearing it over and over, and possibly because the songs seem so specific that it's the general, easily relatable ones that stack up best - I can't really get anything out of "Right Through You" or "Forgiven" or "Perfect".

Your hatred has made you blind.

I think company policy dictated that "Starbucks Radio" had to have been played as severely loud as it was through the speakers, there was a pained expression on the face of each employee and it wasn't terribly busy so I believe it was Canadian Morrisette's music that was causing all that suffering on the faces of those black people I saw that day. Worse yet, songs were interspersed with interview clips with Alanis in which she pontificated on the emotional catharsis invloved in her own songwriting process. Witnessing that suffering, needless to say, changed me.

I thought that was some wacky nickname!

not mentioned was the fact she has a better ass, too.

"Huge fuckin' crap then, huge fuckin' crap now"

That's really all that needs to be said.

Unlike the rest of the world, Canadians were already familiar with Alanis from her big hair, teen-pop, pre- "Jagged Little Pill" days. So for me, the angry young woman bit came across as pretty contrived. I even heard a rumour that Maverick prevented her old albums from being released in a lot of markets because it undermined her new image.

I don't hate Alanis, and I actually think that she comes across as a fairly kind and thoughtful young woman. When I hear her music though, it makes me want to kick holes in the wall, and not in the good Fugazi way.

And what it all comes down to my friends yea
Is that everything is just fine fine fine
'Cause I've got one hand in my pocket
And the other one's hailing a taxi cab

And what it all comes down to
Is that everything's gonna be quite alright
'Cause I've got one hand in my pocket
And the other one's flicking a cigarette

And what it all comes down to
Is that I haven't got it all figured out just yet
I've got one hand in my pocket
And the other one's giving the peace sign

None of 'em rhyme. But look: If she wanted to, she coulda simply rotated the last line of each and make two rhymes (fine/sign, yet/cigarette.) And additionally, if she'd only substituted "fab" for "alright", she could've made all three of 'em rhyme! Did she not notice this, or notice it and not care? Probably; but I like to imagine that it was INTENTIONAL, a bizarre linguistic experiment in the tradition of Love's "Maybe The People Would Be The Times or Between Clark And Hilldale" (leave out the final rhyme of every verse, only to use it as the first word in the NEXT verse) or the Buzzcocks' synaesthesic "Why Can't I Touch It?" ("And it tastes so real, I can hear it/And it sounds so real, I can see it" etc.) Or maybe (this is pure speculation) she originally wrote it in French and it rhymed, but lost the rhymes in translation to English? Who knows?

And finally, "You told me you'd hold me till you die/And you're still alive" is as great as any Elvis Costello line, if not better.

The record sounds tepid in comparison. Even Hilary Duff would be embarrassed if her records sounded that weak these days.

i find it hilarious that people are saying things like "she was a poseur version of tori amos", like tori amos gets any love on ilm at all either! in any case, she is not remotely similar to tori. their aesthetics are wildly, wildly diverging.

i suspect however that, like tori amos, she reminds a lot of guys of 'crazy' women they once dated (or haha maybe didn't get to date).

'you oughta know' sounds okay now, though.

minus the wit and the rhyme and the skillful use of meter, I presume you mean

-- gear (speed.to.roa...), October 26th, 2005.

ironic, dontcha think?

(the cosmos GROANS)

The problem is that it also has "Thank U", one of the worst singles of the 90s, and lots of really embarrassing sludgy rockers on it.

"You Oughta Know" is one of the best songs to come out of 1995 and the only song on the album that is genuinely irredeemable is "Perfect". The rest of it is good to outstanding and every Alanis album seems to have at least one total gem of absolute awesomeness on it.

(x-post: No, it isn't)

And even if it doesn't sound as good today, back in 1995, I loved it, and those moments where it was the best thing ever can't be taken away. As it stands, it's still a good song.

that's the irony.

i always hated her music, even as an angst-ridden yoof.

"i... want... you... to know...
that i'm... ha... ppy... for you...
i... wish... no... thing but...
success... for... you both" (*looks around nervously*)

Bass line
The "oooohhh....waaaaaaohhhhhs" on the wordless bridge"
The abrupt ending

Unclassic parts:

Rest

-- Banana Nutrament


Wit's there. Rhyme & meter are the province of poetry, about which I know nothing.

rest of it drives me up a wall in a bad way, but that does in a good way.

too cool.

NO THEY ARE FUCKING NOT. THEY ARE BOTH EVIL, EVIL SONGS. The only song on that album even remotely defensible is "You Learn," and it would be much improved if someone else was singing it.

Whatever people think about it now, an AWFUL lot of people heard that on the radio in 1995, and having never heard anything similar, heard SOME WOMAN GOING ABSOLUTELY FUCKING MENTAL AT SOME GUY and it was a minor epiphany. Men are fucking pigs! It's really true, Alanis!

Well, see, here's the thing, I never heard that song and thought, "Men are pigs," I heard it and thought, "Women are psycho." Seriously, she doesn't come off as anything but a batshit stalker ex. Compare with "Since U Been Gone," or even better Avril's "My Happy Ending" which well and truly makes the guy in question look like a complete shithead.

Add into this the limited vocal range of the song and its simple primarily-stepwise motion and you've also got this poisonous little piece of bile that's insanely catchy and memorable; no one who hears that song more than once is ever going to forget it. Total fucking genius.

(xpost: hahahaha awesome)

She couldn't be unsettling if her dreadful little Canuck existence depended on it.

Yes, let's compare a song about a jilted lover with two completely different narratives. If you're suggesting that the right course of action when jilted is to go "Well, I'm over it" a la Kelly Clarkson, then, fine, but some people can't do that and the way they react is as valid a thing to base a song around as anything else.

(FWIW, I've never had my heart broken my some tosspot bloke, but I still identify with the vitriol).

Here's a shocking thought: "caterwaul" is not intrinsically bad or unacceptable.

PS Alex: How many genuinely unsettling (like, "OH MY GOD that person needs to be institutionalized before someone gets hurt" unsettling) acts have achieved mainstream American success? Not even Marilyn Manson is all that unsettling and unless you're a minority there's nothing particularly unsettling about Metallica's pre-grunge image, either.

Well, see, here's the thing, I never heard that song and thought, "Men are pigs," I heard it and thought, "Women are psycho." Seriously, she doesn't come off as anything but a batshit stalker ex. Compare with "Since U Been Gone," or even better Avril's "My Happy Ending" which well and truly makes the guy in question look like a complete shithead.

haha, amazing.

Something that surprised me is how damn short she is. She's like 4'9" or so. And the management team that she has built around her is one of the best in major label music. She gets to do whatever she wants without worrying about a damn thing.

Fine, maybe not Since U Been Gone but My Happy Ending is pretty damn similar to You Oughta Know, they're both a vicious telling-off of the guy who dumped them. I'm not saying that Alanis has no right to be feel the unhappiness or anger she does, but it's certainly not something I can listen to and say it makes me hate men, or even the guy in question. My Happy Ending accomplishes this, You Oughta Know doesn't. Avril sounds like she has every right in the world to tell this guy off; Alanis doesn't. You Oughta Know is an ugly song about ugly emotions and if people want to celebrate it on those terms, fine. But what it's not is a song of feminist righteousness, like many critics have claimed.

FWIW, the Avril song is a bit cartoonish, still great (written by guy from Marvellous 3, if I remember correctly), so as such is more of a kiss-off, but I think in narrative it's a lot lighter to begin with - the object of scorn wasn't making real promises for forever to someone young enough not to know better..

WTF???? Flea and Dave Navarro played on "You Oughta Know"????

Who cares about mainstream success? If you want "unsettling" music, I could cite volumes of stuff, but there's simply nothing "unsettling" about Alanis' jilted ire. YOU GOT DUMPED, BIG DEAL, GET OVER IT!

unless you're a minority there's nothing particularly unsettling about Metallica's pre-grunge image, either.

Fuck is that supposed to mean?

It's not unsettling. And it's not Caterwaul. This is Caterwaul.

http://www.lostartsmusic.com/caterpic.jpg

And despite also being Canadian, they were WAY BETTER that Alanis' tepid, sanctimonious piffle.

Metallica's pre-grunge visual image was one of idiot heshers who looked very comfortable with the idea of beating minorties to death with bats and chains on the weekend.

ps, there are few ways for a guy to seem like more of a chump than to call girls "psycho." at least where i live.

You didn't know that? Heh, I thought that was supposed to be one of the big selling points of the song. (Now imagine Perry singing those lyrics.)

Nice stereotyping there.

"Now imagine Perry singing those lyrics."

That might actually be pretty interesting.

Then you live in an area where girls are called psycho without justification more often than where I'm from, apparently. I see nothing inherently wrong with it.

And that guy I was arguing with argeed that Alanis was going "mental." Call him out, why don't ya.

haha this was EXACTLY MY POINT! alanis reminds men of girls they have dated and been unable to cope with.

in 90% of 'batshit stalker ex' cases that i have witnessed, the problem is less that the girl is crazy and more that the boy is emotionally retarded.

i don't see where the 'since u been gone' comparisons are coming from at all. and fwiw, even though i tend to assume that most pop singers lie about their emotions in the exact way miccio says kelly does, i believe kelly entirely. 'since u been gone' sounds like the exact moment when, having insisted that you're over him for 4 months without it ever being true, you suddenly realise that you are over him. and it's so liberating that you need to shout it to the skies, after which his name never crosses your mind again.

"Sounds Chouice!"

Come and get me, Davey boy!

Cite your sources, please.

I'm not saying Hetfield was, is, or ever will be a fucking saint, but condemining "pre-Grunge" Metallica (and, incidentally, at the height of Grunge, Metallica looked like what they'd ALWAYS looked like. Their makeover didn't happen until `96, at which point Kurt was already in the cold, cold ground) as "idiot heshers who looked very comfortable with the idea of beating minorties to death with bats and chains on the weekend" is just as slippery a statement as me saying, say, EPMD looked like a pair of guys who'd want to mug me and rape my sister.

the bit which confirms that she has moved on is the fleeting moment when she contemplates giving in - the two bars or so of the 'maps' riff - and the answer is a definitive no, so the chorus bursts back in and then the song ends.

also lars ullrich reckons he could beat up morrissey fans well me and mah latino heat crew are ready to beat his white ass up good

yup, that's what i was trying to say upthread.

The depth of commentary on this thread is beginning to rival Alanis's lyrics.

You called it "the Grunge makeover," I didn't. Last time I checked, the typical "grunge look" involved long hair. They gave themselves a makeover `cos they rightly realized they were in need of a change.

Don't flatter yourself. You brand of non-logic doesn't make my blood boil, it just makes me pity you.

Well, I am one of those zillion people. I have absolutely no qualms with admitting to liking the album at the time. I don't even consider it a guilty pleasur. I still think it's a great pop record. Of course if you compare it to, say, Tori Amos or whatever, it's not even close to being Greer lite feminism. I never listened to it with *depth*, trying to untangle something, scratch away and find some meaning in the lyrics/sounds. I just thought it was a very catchy well-produced record. Of course after that record she began to take herself seriously and you just cringe when she sings about "transparent dangling carrots."

I like Alanis' debut record. I fucking hate Patti Smith and all the shite she produced.

Hahahaha you're so cute when you do that.

(PS regarding short hair & REAL GRUNGE: Alex, please see one Superunknown SG photoshoot.)

I know that whatever say will come across as some lame-ass defense attempt which I would hate. I genuinely think it's a nice record. I wouldn't even want to hear it again. But that's just the case with some pop music: you play it for a week on repeat and then the love affair is over. A bit like Robyn or Kelly Clarkson.

"Real Grunge" style was already defined (and tired) well before Soundgarden attempted to shrug off that very stigma. HAIRSTYLES DON'T AFFECT THE MUSIC, PEOPLE!, so please see one middle finger from me.

Ah yes,....cuban cigars, garish animal-print shirts and white wine....yeah, ya really don't get more "grunge" than that, do ya!!!

I was going through an ugly post-breakup period right around the time this song came out. Judging by my own personal experience, I'd say the song matches miccio's description. It's a genuine high, but it's also a very fragile one and doesn't last too long. You just don't feel that elated when you're genuinely over someone.

Speaking of that ugly post-breakup period, I also did the "You Oughta Know" deal where I lost my shit at her over the phone. I'm the only person I can think of, male or female, that actually did that. Not proud of it. It's not quite the same 'cause I wasn't screaming at her for dumping me, it was because I'd found out she'd been cheating on me for months.

The only time I'd say I saw a girl "go psycho" at someone is this one time a buddy's ex started beating the shit out of him at a party. As far as I can tell, his only crime was dumping her and finding a new girlfriend, and from what I saw he was entirely justified in dumping her. They just got engaged yesterday. Funny world.

yeah lucky about that or...

http://image.allmusic.com/00/amg/pic200/drP000/P077/P07785G2VFO.jpg
use da comb jaz!!

http://afropunk.com/community/viewtopic.php?t=2160&sid=02ea84fe8d090e67b55142fa1290cbcd

What a shocker: Blount being a nasty son of a bitch.

I never made a reference to an article citing EPMD as racists, but Dan didn't originally cite an article that claimed Metallica were racists. He merely made the sweeping generalization that they looked like racist bat-wielders, which -- to my mind -- is the same thing as saying EPMD looked like muggers/rapists.

Saying white boys with long hair are racist minority-beaters is the same thing as saying black boys wearing hooded sweatshirts are muggers/rapists. GET IT? THEY'RE BOTH WRONG!

Ignore definition 1.

Okay, yeah: I do suck. Sorry.

Hessians.

http://archives.thedaily.washington.edu/2001/020201/N3HEAV.1.jpg

Heshers

I think Caterwaul were from Arizona.

http://ixpoz.com/Hershey%20480.jpg

?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/1/1a/Alanis1991cover.gif/200px-Alanis1991cover.gif

I agree that "big hair, teen-pop," girls never grow up to be "angry young woman".

I DID buy it. I was 13. I hadn't really found my taste yet

i am totally otm here!

and also here:

in 90% of 'batshit stalker ex' cases that i have witnessed, the problem is less that the girl is crazy and more that the boy is emotionally retarded.

I fucking LOVE the harmonies she does with herself, I think they're absolutely beautiful

see:
2:30-2:55 of "Wake Up" ("To you, to you")
the choruses of "Right Through You" (how many different parts is she singing??)
3:29-3:38 of "Mary Jane" ("Keep trying")

i just got a tooth pulled, and while they were working on me, while i was shot full of novocaine, "head over feet" came on the muzak. god i love that song. still do.

even while they're ripping a tooth out of my bloody face for 90 minutes. that was a sweet moment.

I think it's a really quality album, and that it's more than just sentimentality talking.

How to sing like a Canadian
"theater" = "theatre". Pronounced "theatrrrr"

see also: Joni Mitchell, Jann Arden, Jane Siberry

Ðee-ah-drrrr

i just got a tooth pulled, and while they were working on me, while i was shot full of novocaine, "head over feet" came on the muzak. god i love that song. still do.

i'm pretty cool on the rest of this album, but 'head over feet' is wonderful.

Old but still funny.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT1TVSTkAXg

Jagged Little Pill isn't an album I throw on very often - the more confessional-y bits about Catholic school or whatever always dragged for me, and it really starts to lose direction halfway through (although "Not the Doctor" is great). But I don't think it deserves the hate - I am always terribly glad to hear You Learn, One Hand In My Pocket, and Ironic on the radio, and I would be ecstatic to hear All I Really Want. You Oughta Know I could take or leave really, although singing it at karaoke once did get me laid after a fashion. So it's a record with a bit of over-dramatic fat on it but a way-above-average supply of solid hooks. Alanis's voice, whatever its technical flaws, is unique and it sells the songs well as being idiosyncratic personal pieces, even though the lyrics tend to be vague and open-ended enough that tons of people can relate to them some way or another. What else was there in 1995 that was really THAT much better than this? Green Day's "Brain Stew"?

― Doctor Casino, Tuesday, 25 October 2005 22:48 Bookmark

One of my very earliest ILX posts, I think? I'm really not sure how "Brain Stew" got into the picture here - I might have been trying to say "what else was there ON TV in 1995" but who knows. I've since worked at an office where this was one of the couple dozen CDs in regular rotation, and thus heard it way more times than I ever did just listening to my own copy, but the above basically still stands: the "album tracks" just get more boring, while the uptempo numbers punch just as hard out of the speaker every time. Jesus, "You Learn," what a high to sing along to. This isn't a classic record but there sure are some classic songs on it.

SMH @ Lex throughout this thread tbh

"Enough about me, let's talk about you for a minute
Enough about you, let's talk about life for a while"

This has been stuck in my head for the last couple days. I can't really defend it except on the grounds that it cracks me up.

sort of want to know what john d. thinks of this album

Why are you so petrified of silence?
Here, can you handle THIS?

When I was seven and first listened to this record, that bit blew my damn mind.

Twenty years old!

http://thewalrus.ca/an-older-version-of-me/

"The riot grrrl copes by grabbing this truth by the nutsack and shouting at it, fighting loud. She has with her an army, a scene, a support system. Morissette had no such community. She struggled to be an artist, and a man twice her age took advantage of her; she became one of the most popular musicians of her time only to face critics who called her derivative. Each time she had her back against the wall, she ran. She escaped. She went somewhere new and began again."

I don't even particularly care for Alanis's music but this is great

Listening to Sinead O'Connor's I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got again this weekend for the 1990 poll, I'm struck by how, for as much as people claim(ed) that JLP was watered down PJ, Liz, riot grrrl, etc. Sinead's album feels like the strongest influence on Alanis's. Hell, they both even end with an a capella track.

Ooh there's the link. Loved the excerpt Katherine tumblr'd but couldn't figure out where it was from.

Twenty years old!

fuuuuuuuucckkkkkk

One of the first albums I bought with my own money

this one is pretty good too
and i really found JLP (or the radio singles, i've never heard the whole thing!) irritating when it came out but this is a pretty solid defense, if such a thing is still needed
http://thetalkhouse.com/music/talks/elizabeth-morris-allo-darlin-talks-female-erasure-and-reclaiming-alanis-morissette/

Its funny,

I've heard "You oughta know" how many times over the years, it was only a couple of months ago it struck me the lame rhyme they didn't use.

"I hate to bug you in the middle of dinner
.. And are you thinking of me when you're in her"

I'm sure they had that and searched for something better.

And I doubt it was anyone but Alanis who thought of it.

Hey, I wanna know...

The engineering on this record sucks.

Its funny,

I've heard "You oughta know" how many times over the years, it was only a couple of months ago it struck me the lame rhyme they didn't use.

"I hate to bug you in the middle of dinner
.. And are you thinking of me when you're in her"

I'm sure they had that and searched for something better.

And I doubt it was anyone but Alanis who thought of it.

― Mark G, Monday, June 15, 2015 1:40 PM (47 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

..............................

today I learned something

wow I went down an Ani DiFranco linkhole for a second there

isn't there a double entendre in the line "life has a funny way of helping you out?" that's literally a form of irony. like on one hand she's saying the cosmos deliberately drops banana peels in your path for you to slip on just to fuck with you (rain, flies, traffic jams), in which case "helping you out" means "not very helpful at all," but on the other hand she lists three examples or untimely or unfortunate deaths, so "helping you out" also means "assisting your departure out of this life" in the most sadistically pointed manner possible.

her examples don't meet the necessary conditions for situational irony as everyone has pointed out for 20 years but she's going for cosmic irony, i assume? if this is an example of the common misuse of "irony" then there needs to be a term for what people really means other than "no, that's just a bummer or bad luck" because that doesn't convey the sense of "the world is fucking with me even if there's no actual agent fucking with me" that people are trying to convey.

also, jesus christ, the projection in this thread

^

"I think part of that may be that most girls at my high school needed a seed of self-delusion to allow themselves to succumb to getting fucked" might be the single worst sentence I have read on ilx

as a teenage boy i wasn't supposed to like alanis but secretly did. this girl in our neighborhood played 'you oughta know' at a religious dance and everyone was so scandalized. i hope she's still awesome.

"You Oughtta Know" is dope cause it sounds like an angry Michael Jackson song

As far as I can tell, this shit *is* indefensible.

fuck you Austin

Okay.

I took an anti-hater pledge recently so this album is awesome and doesn't sound at all horrible and awful

Good for you.

Shit's horrible in reality though.

is this real? I really want this to be real

http://40.media.tumblr.com/GZbqLZ3AXoq7jxpwBUo8Hkw6o1_400.png

I googled and there does seem to be a person of that name involved in a literary community center based in Kansas City, so maybe it is?

Aaaannnnddd. . . indefensible.

Yo this isn't "Call the indefensible 'indefensible'" but you may have misread the thread title.

sounds like someone needs to take an alanis morissette appreciation class xp

"you oughta know" is pretty undeniable, especially the chorus.

how about those guitar effects?

i owned and fucking loved this record when i was...eight? think my dad liked it even more than i did

anyway i'm listening to it for the first time in years and "all i really want" still kicks

very expensive sounding rock record but that could be the 1000000 effects on everything

i never owned this because i think it had the explicit lyrics label and i was 9 or so and not allowed, but i went to my neighbor's house down the street and his older sister had this and we turned that shit up

i involuntarily think about the "wine dine 69" lyric like once a month

very expensive sounding rock record

I disagree with this entirely. It's a set of rough home studio recordings (albeit recorded using decent equipment) that have been polished up as much as possible. There are engineering flaws all over this record: weird clicks, buzzing of faulty cables, even stuff that on an "expensive rock record" would have been taken out at the mixing stage... an obvious one would be the faint sound of Alanis' lip smacking/saliva swallowing combo on the intro to 'Hand In My Pocket'.

...and fucking hell, is that high vocal at the end of 'All I Really Want' some real nails-on-a-chalkboard shit. There's some proper Dolores O'Riordan screeching in places on this record.

oh it's possible i have no idea what an expensive sounding rock record is. the guitars just sound real shiny

An expensive sounding rock record to me would be something like Hysteria, or New Jersey even.

well, yeah

i guess my '90s example of an expensive sounding rock record is third eye blind's blue and that idea is entirely localized in guitar fx

anyway for a bunch of home recordings imo this record sounds gr8 2 me albeit i am listening to it v quietly at midnight rn

Heh, I'd forgotten how much synth bass there was on this album.

Also: Taylor Hawkins was in Alanis' touring band for Jagged Little Pill, wasn't he?

https://media0.giphy.com/media/QlvwJVplfOwFi/200_s.gif

i think this record sounds pretty good despite the flaws. Vocals may be a bit too jacked but they're not overly distracting. First song sounds so good.

the bass is kinda farty on You Oughta Know tho

The engineering on this record sucks.

― You’re being too simplistic and you’re insulting my poor heart (Turrican), Monday, June 15, 2015 12:56 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this. and the horrible drum programming (those awful loops) that seemed to be a huge part of mainstream radio rock/pop of this period.

I kinda love drum-loop 90s stuff because it dated so instantly. one minute it was the thing and the next it meant you were playing county fairs

fucking hell, is that high vocal at the end of 'All I Really Want' some real nails-on-a-chalkboard shit. There's some proper Dolores O'Riordan screeching in places on this record.

― You’re being too simplistic and you’re insulting my poor heart (Turrican)

never owned or even listened to this, but watching the Trip to Italy recently has me kind of wanting to pick it up (without actually picking it up)

the vocal production on this record always struck me as perfect

it was my favorite record when I was abt 10 yrs old, found the lyrics to Ironic no less than genius

Slightly OT but "Trip to Italy" is great, and "Jagged Little Pill" is used brilliantly in it.

NEW DEVELOPMENTS IN LITERARY SEMIOTICS:

I married two weeks ago. We were expecting thunderstorms the weekend of, but were not terribly fussed about that possibility as it was an indoor ceremony. We were hoping guests would be able to walk the couple of blocks to the reception, but the event was small enough that we could pay for some Ubers if need be.

On the day itself, the rain held off all morning and most of afternoon. We left the reception around 3:30, hopped in my car and got on the highway to drive to our fancy hotel suite. Within minutes, we were caught in one of those torrential, zero visibility summer downpours. I drove slowly and put my hazard lights on and wanted very badly to keep my wife and myself safe from harm. The storm relented, we made it to the hotel, exhausted.

As many times as I had heard the song, this particular variety of "rain on your wedding day" was something I never could have imagined.

Congratulations! Glad it turned out okay.

ILM's obsession with writing "rekkid" in the mid '00s was worse than JLP.