Jagged Little Pill — Love Without Irony
Let me caution you that this album review largely mimics the emotional intensity of Morisette's debut, and that it similarly fails to compensate with gentleness, pacing, or an even minutely measured approach. So please don't read it before going to sleep, and probably good to follow it with some sort of vigorous activity.
A female housemate of mine used to play this album when I was 23, and that was when I first started to appreciate it. About a year later I listened to it over and over and really became familiar. It has become an old friend for me, and firing it up after a few years without listening in full inspired me to write this.
Truly "Ironic" that the most well known song is beyond insipid, silly and childish, when this album contains such passion, such heart, and yes such honest and raw expressions of deep rage and pain. And "You Oughta Know" that I am comforted by the fact that the second most well known song is the album's best representative of these facets.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again, this album absolutely deserves to be the best-selling "debut album by a female artist in the U.S., and the highest selling debut album worldwide, selling 30 million units." (Conditioned by years of academic training to footnote website here.) Debut album.Great, not because it is a work of particular craft (though she is a good singer and it is generally tasteful at a musical level) but because she is willing to bare her soul with such chutzpah.
Anyone who can make a self-respecting wordsmith like me grin with lines like "I've got one hand in my pocket and the other one's hailin' a taxicab" displays true force of personality. And to be fair, when she starts to really emote, her lyrics improve dramatically: "I confessed my darkest deeds to an envious man; My brothers, they never went blind for what they did, but I might as well have; in the name of the father, the skeptic and the son, I have one more stupid question…"
There is even a love/infatuation song on the album that conveys genuine affection, even if it is over the top.
Not sure what else to say. This album is music at its best, able to capture me and fill me up with passion for life, and leave me drained and wanting more.
Think I'm going to turn Alanis off now, because I am going through a bout of insomnia and she is not helping me relax.
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