Alanis Morissette became an overnight sensation when her megahit album Jagged Little Pill was released in June 1995. At the time, she was only 21 years old.
It’s been 30 years since that album shook up the ’90s, bringing raw, unfiltered emotion and confessional songwriting to the mainstream, opening doors for women in music.
In an interview with The Guardian, Morissette admits that when her album dropped, making her a household name almost immediately, it was a “rough time” to be a woman in music.
She went on to explain, “There was no one to hide behind. What I found in terms of the lovely patriarchy, was that at that time if men couldn’t f–‘ me, they didn’t know what to do with me.”
Her fans knew what to do, though, purchasing over 33 million copies of Jagged Little Pill, making it one of the best-selling albums of all time.
Morissette admitted that she noticed women who were “secure in their loudness, à la Courtney Love. That seemed to be valued. I was like, ‘OK, I’m going to pretend to be an extrovert for the next 25 years.’ So, tequila – anything that allowed me to be the life of the party – or if I was doing a talk, Xanax. Anything that would help me pretend I’m not me.”
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Now, the “Ironic” singer is living her truth. She said, “And that’s why perimenopause is so great, because now there’s zero desire to present as something that I’m not. I spent 25 years trying to be someone who didn’t have this temperament. At 51, I feel this is just what it is like.”
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Morissette went on to criticize the return of “size zero” and declared that “the hyper-sexualization thing is so boring.”