Happy birthday to Alanis Morissette, who turned 42 today. Over the course of her very successful 32 year career as a musician and actress, she won seven Grammys, including the coveted "Album of the Year" award with her album "Jagged Little Pill" in 1996. She was also inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame back in 2015. To celebrate and commemorate her birthday, we are counting down our top five favorite Alanis songs.
5. "Mary Jane"
The ninth song off of her Grammy winning album "Jagged Little Pill," despite its name, is actually not about drugs. Instead, it's about a heartbreakingly beautiful alternative rock ballad about trying to cheer up a depressed girl who seemingly has lost the enthusiasm to live. The song is absolutely cathartic and, despite its sober subject, just begs to be belted out in the car, despite its sober subject.
4. "Everything"
"Everything" is a more mature song than her early alternative rock but is just as beautiful without losing any of its force. Released on her 2004 album, "So-Called Chaos," "Everything" is more restrained than some of her early work and talks about love and how amazing it is to find someone that loves you, even if you are full of negative attributes and contradictions.
3. "Ironic"
Oh, "Ironic," the song that accidentally redefined the use of a literary device from which the English language has still not fully recovered. The third single "Jagged Little Pill" is all about how life is funny in that not really humorous way. Without this song, we would not have such memorable, but slightly moronic, phrases such as, “It’s like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife.”
2. "Hand in My Pocket"
A foot-tapping song that all about how life is going to work out. It even has a harmonica section that is slightly reminiscent of Bob Dylan. This song seems to encompass the contradictory lives of teenagers, and how despite the fact that things are not looking very good and we may not be headed in a good direction, we just know that things are going to work out fine.
1. "You Oughta Know"
This was the song that kickstarted the most successful second coming of a musician. Never before has a musician been able to change their identity and type of music so drastically and go from being only nationally famous to internationally famous so successfully. It was the song that ended her pop career with a quick cut and put her on the path to become the queen of alternative music. It is a fantastic, angry, alternative song that is catch and easy to sing along to.