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Nobody could have predicted in 1993 that Alanis Morissette was on the verge of becoming the biggest selling rock artist of the decade, least of all Alanis herself. Although still only a teenager it seemed that the young Canadian’s dreams of stardom had died, but after a decade of hard work, disappointment and frustration she wasn’t about to give up. Instead she poured all of her anger into blistering performances that, just a couple of years later, would dominate global album charts and pave the way for a new generation of confident and assertive female artists following in this True Superhero’s wake.

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Finished at seventeen?

Alanis was born in 1974 in Ottawa to parents who were both educators; her father was a high school principal and her mother a teacher. They traveled around a lot during Alanis’s childhood as they frequently worked in schools on military bases, and even spent a few years in West Germany. From an early age Alanis was determined to become a musician, beginning piano lessons at six years old and writing her first songs when she was nine. The following year she won a talent show on the Canadian TV network CJOH-DT in 1984, and was signed up to appear on the popular children’s sketch comedy show You Can’t Do That On Television, but focus remained firmly on her music. That same year she plowed the proceeds from her television work straight back into her singing career, pressing 2000 copies of a single, Fate Stay With Me, through an independent record label set up by her parents. The backing track was clearly influenced by another strong female vocalist who was just beginning her domination of the charts in 1984, and would play an important role in the Alanis Morissette story a few years later.

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Alanis continued to pursue her dream, appearing on talent shows and writing songs. In 1988 she secured a publishing deal with the MCA record label, and two years later, aged just 16, she released her debut single, Too Hot. It was a minor hit in Canada, reaching the top 20 of the RPM chart, and two other singles from her debut album, Alanis, went top 40. Her success in Canada was enough to secure her a slot as the opening act for Vanilla Ice (she later claimed that she was instructed not to look him in the eye when backstage) but she was unable to make a mark outside of her home country. Although her musical style - and big hair - drew comparisons with two other huge teen pop stars of the era, Debbie Gibson and Tiffany, she was not able to replicate their global success. Despite selling over 100,000 copies the album Alanis was not released outside Canada. The same was true of her follow up, Now Is The Time, released the following year and touted as a more contemplative and mature record. It only sold 50,000 copies, and MCA chose not to renew her contract. It seemed that Alanis Morissette’s music career had ended when she was just seventeen. 

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Jagged Little Pill

Alanis had sacrificed an enormous amount of her childhood to pursue her dreams of musical stardom, and she had paid a heavy price. In later years she would tell journalists how “as a teen, I was both anorexic and bulimic. I was a young woman in the public eye, on the receiving end of a lot of attention, and I was trying to protect myself from men who were using their power in ways I was too young to know how to handle. Disappointment, sadness, and pain hit me hard, and I tried to numb those feelings through my relationship with food. For four to six months at a time, I would barely eat. I lived on a diet of Melba toast, carrots, and black coffee.” A friend intervened when she was 18 and helped her tackle her eating disorders, although they would continue to be an issue throughout her twenties. Meanwhile, her relationships with men would also continue to be problematic, and seemingly played a part in one of the most abrupt - and successful - artistic reinventions in popular music, as Alanis’s lyrical focus changed from upbeat songs about teenage love to scathingly honest depictions of toxic relationships and heartbreak. 

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In 1993 a supportive publisher at her former label introduced Alanis to Scott Welch, who was taken by her distinctive and powerful voice and became her manager. Alanis was still living with her parents at this time, but Welch encouraged her to move to Toronto (after graduating from high school) to broaden her horizons, and also introduced her to Glen Ballard, a producer and songwriter who had worked with Michael Jackson throughout the 1980s. Alanis and Ballard immediately hit it off and wrote Jagged Little Pill together throughout 1994. Ballard later recounted how although he and Alanis were sure they’d created a hit album, they struggled to get record labels interested with many seemingly deterred by Alanis’s unlikely transition from dance-pop teenybopper to feminist rocker. Ultimately only one record company was willing to back this unlikely reinvention; Maverick, the appropriately named label formed by Madonna in 1992. The biggest female star of the 1980s, who had such a clear influence on the sound of the ten year old Alanis, was now the only person willing to give the twenty year old Alanis a shot. The rewards for this decision were astronomical; Jagged Little Pill went on to sell 33 million records worldwide, making it one of the biggest selling albums of the decade and the most successful record by a female rock artist of all time. 

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Straightforward but godlike

While Jagged Little Pill’s incredible success was achieved in large part thanks to it being packed with great songs that appealed to men and women alike, there’s no question that Alanis‘s lyrics and powerful performances particularly resonated with female listeners. It is easy to forget when listening to Jagged Little Pill that Alanis was only 21 when it was released, but her confident, unashamed and angry expressions of female experience were instantly relatable to a broad swathe of women who saw their own issues reflected in Alanis’s lyrics. As Madonna put it at the time of the album’s release “She reminds me of me when I started out: slightly awkward but extremely self-possessed and straightforward.” Others saw a more ethereal side to her personality, including the film director Kevin Smith, who cast her in the role of God in his 1999 religious comedy Dogma. 

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Both sides of Alanis have been foregrounded throughout her later career, but one constant has been her dedication to women’s charities, and in particular the National Eating Disorder Association, who she has supported in a wide variety of ways up to and including running marathons for the cause. Other organizations that she enthusiastically supports include Equality Now, Girls Not Brides and Madre, and her continued advocacy for women’s rights worldwide reinforces her status as a True Superhero of both women and rock music.