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).

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.