Jagged is a riveting reminder of Alanis Morissette’s power, charisma, and influence
This music-packed HBO documentary is a delightful ’90s time capsule that doubles as a sharp social and cultural analysis
TV Reviews Alanis Morissette
There’s a moment in the riveting documentary Jagged where Lisa Worden, the one-time program director of influential Los Angeles radio station KROQ, describes the first time she heard Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughta Know,” the “You’re So Vain” of the ’90s. Station employees tended to listen to music at top volume, she said, and the song was playing at the excited urging of Guy Oseary, who had just signed Morissette to Madonna’s label, Maverick Records.
Jagged then cuts to the song’s music video—featuring a long-haired, moody Morissette in a desert locale and then looking like a whirling dervish as she fronts a band—and allows the music to simmer and build up through the explosive first chorus. Any plot advancement or commentary pauses; instead, Morissette’s music grabs the spotlight and commands our attention.
It’s a rather excellent and true-to-life replication of how stunning it felt to hear “You Oughta Know” booming out of speakers back in 1995, and a welcome reminder of Morissette’s revelatory presence. Jagged, the second film released from the Music Box documentary series Bill Simmons is producing for HBO, does an admirable job capturing the musician’s rise to fame. Using archival concert and news footage, as well as vintage and new interviews, the film focuses on the creation and subsequent success of the multi-multi-multi-platinum 1995 debut album, Jagged Little Pill. The documentary ends up both a delightful ’90s time capsule and a sharp analysis of the social and cultural forces that shaped Morissette’s career—for better and worse.
Like many documentaries, Jagged adds positive supporting interviews from music industry executives, journalists, and collaborators; these include her Jagged Little Pill producer/co-writer Glen Ballard, Dogma director Kevin Smith and Garbage’s Shirley Manson. Ballard and Manson are especially insightful, with the former describing Morissette’s mindset after moving to Los Angeles in the early ’90s, her career as a teen pop idol in Canada over thanks to being dropped by her record label: “She was looking for someone to be an artist with.”
Smartly, director Alison Klayman amplifies this artistry by foregrounding Morissette’s voice and music. She incorporates plenty of inspiring footage filmed on the Jagged Little Pill tour that shows off the singer’s mesmerizing, cathartic stage charisma. Morissette herself also sits for frank and perceptive interviews about her life, music, and creative process. “His big question was, ‘Who are you? What do you want to write about?’ What’s going on for you?’” Morissette said of Ballard as they started working together. “And what a lovely prompt. Nobody’s asked me that—ever.” This nurturing creative environment led to Jagged Little Pill, a record that captured the complicated experience of being a strong young woman coming into her own: finding pockets of joy, mirth and ecstasy while processing trauma, recovering from negative relationships and pushing back against oppressive, male-driven systems.
The idea of power—who possesses it, who wields it responsibly, who abuses it—is one of Jagged’s compelling (if sobering) themes. Early on, it focuses on Morissette’s pre-Jagged Little Pill life in Canada, including a stint on the cult Nickelodeon TV show You Can’t Do That On Television and her career as an ’80s teen pop phenom. Like many child stars, she dealt with adults acting inappropriately—she recalls being hit on starting at around age 15—and developed an eating disorder after having her weight scrutinized. The matter-of-fact way Morissette describes being deprived of food is horrifying; at one point, she recalls sneak-eating cheese slices on a video shoot and being chided the next morning for the supposed indiscretion.
Much later, Jagged addresses the debauched and piggish road behavior of her Jagged Little Pill-era touring band, which included future Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins and current Jane’s Addiction bassist Chris Chaney. While the musicians were protective of Alanis, they didn’t necessarily always extend the same respect to her fans. In modern interviews, the two men confessed that the band had a dedicated room in venues for women who had backstage passes doled out by a guitar tech. “The hypocrisy of what her music and message was—and here you have us, like, scoundrels trying to get laid,” Chaney said. Morissette was unsurprisingly not happy when she found out about their callous shenanigans.
“It did feel disrespectful to me,” Morisette says. “Some of the behavior just didn’t match my mission or my value system at all. But I’d only grown up around men. So I just thought, ‘Okay, well, are you going to replace them with five other men that are going to do the exact same thing—and it won’t sound as great?’”
If anything, these enraging moments amplify why her music was so important—not just to the world at large, but also for her own comfort and solace. In Jagged, Morissette says as much: “The point in my writing these songs—I was not writing to punish I was writing to express and get it out of my body, because I didn’t want to get sick.” What follows soon after is a section once again referencing her teenage popstar days: Morissette broadly discusses having what she later came to understand was nonconsensual sexual encounters—and says nobody listened to her when she tried to tell them what happened. “Women don’t wait,” she says, addressing people who question why women don’t report sexual assaults right away. “Culture doesn’t listen.” It’s both heartbreaking and infuriating that what she describes is so familiar.
Jagged cuts deep when unpacking the hypocrisy and obstacles Morissette faced while making her voice heard. Her honest songwriting and unfettered stage presence inspired legions of young women—yet Jagged Little Pill was initially dismissed by labels for being “too in-your-face, too emotional.” Radio stations still wouldn’t play two songs in a row by female artists, and men dominated the journalistic writing around Morissette’s music and persona.
To underline this point, Jagged specifically highlights press quotes from the time that emphasize Morissette’s so-called anger, hold her pop music background against her, or insinuate that Glen Ballard was the real songwriting star. “It’s still an instinct to diminish any woman who isn’t willing to participate in the little box that’s been carved out for her in society,” Shirley Manson so succinctly puts it in the film.
As Jagged premiered at TIFF, Morissette distanced herself from the documentary, releasing a statement via her management saying the film “includes implications and facts that are simply not true” and noting, “While there is beauty and some elements of accuracy in this/my story to be sure—I ultimately won’t be supporting someone else’s reductive take on a story much too nuanced for them to ever grasp or tell.” It remains unclear what details are incorrect, leaving plenty of question marks as to what happened after filming wrapped.
Jagged does make it crystal clear that Morissette’s narrative is far more complex than many gave it credit for at the time. More important, the film argues successfully that she’s one of the most important songwriters of the last few decades, in no small part because she remains committed to cultivating her craft.
In fact, Jagged ends with Morissette performing a wisdom-packed new song, “Ablaze,” that’s directed toward her children. Jagged Little Pill cemented Morissette’s stardom, but she’s never forgotten that staying true to her inner self and vision remains her best creative compass. “There were a lot of women at that time,” Manson says about the ’90s, and name-checks Fiona Apple, Missy Elliott, and Courtney Love. “There were so many of us. But Alanis proved to the world—and the music business—that we were viable.”
66 Comments
But what did she do with all the spoons?
I saw her on the Jagged Little Pill tour. She was fantastic, the less flashy songs on the album were really elevated live. Oh, also, Radiohead were the opening act.
Wow, same here. Saw them in Philly. Great show. And I honestly don’t even remember the Radiohead portion.
Serious question: Does she get asked about who “You Oughta Know” is about? Because that was what that awesome song got reduced to in a lot of circles, and that is truly unfortunate.
She’s been cagey about it since the 70s but I think most clues point to it being Warren Beatty.
Believe it or not, it’s about a 14-year-old Jake Gyllenhaal.
Bravo, have a star.
In honor of her having been on You Can’t do that on Television she really should have made a video for You Oughta Now where she dances & then gets doused with green slime at the end like at the end of the video for Flashdance/ Maniac
I DON’T KNOW
It’s a fair observation that given her teenybopper background, a lot of people thought at the time Jagged Little Pill was basically a manufactured performance meant to make her look edgy and sell records. I haven’t really thought about her in quite a while other than the occasional Ironic joke, but it’s interesting to learn after all this time that she really was the driver of these songs.
She was the driver, AND the three passengers.
It’s a fair observation that given her teenybopper background, a lot of people thought at the time Jagged Little Pill was basically a manufactured performance meant to make her look edgy and sell records.True, but people also said that about damn near every female artist in the 90s. If it wasn’t Mariah Carey-style pop, they were phonies. In hindsight, it was astonishingly prevalent and vicious. Remember the endless shit-talking about Courtney Love?
The Courtney Love stuff was a bunch of obvious sexist bullshit. People would point to how completely different Pretty on the Inside and Live Through This were. As though it’s shocking that an album produced by Kim Gordon would be markedly different from one done by Sean Slade. Love has been very forthright about intentionally trying to make a more radio friendly album with Live Through This and actually trying to compete with Cobain in a way. Which is why she didn’t want him directly involved. She also pointed out the obvious, if Cobain had actually written a song on Live Through This they would’ve made sure everyone knew as that would’ve made it a surefire hit. Literally every biographer of Cobain and the grunge scene, who have all talked to everyone involved, have confirmed Live Through This was written by Love and Erlanson.Was everyone in that scene influencing everybody else? Particularly Love and Cobain? Of course. Cobain biographers often highlight the opposite though, that Cobain actually adopted more of Love’s more direct lyrical style for In Utero.
Robin Daggers, baby!
If this documentary doesn’t include the routine from Ed Byrne where he breaks down how unironic Ironic is (way before anyone else) then it’s a clear missed opportunity.
I think Party Down did it best:For guys of a certain age, Alanis Morrisette’s use of the word ironic was the first step toward a larger world of churlish nitpicking.
It’s interesting that she’s Canadian, because the US didn’t discover irony till the Strokes.
I just stumbled onto Party Down recently (holy shit, what a cast!) and I’m amazed how prescient Roman’s angry toxic geek character is.
“(way before anyone else)“
So he did this routine before the song was released? Because THE DAY the song was released people were talking about it.
Are you talking about the routine that starts with “does anyone remember her song Ironic”? When you’re ASKING people if they remember a song, you’re not the first to mention it.
“Way before anyone else”? Fuck off. You think Ed is going to befriend you because you pretended he was the first?
Actually, the things she lists in the song technically do fall under one of the definitions of ironic, if you look in any reasonably sized dictionary. It’s just not the definition most people think of.
“Irony” is one of those words that has such a high level of subjectivity built into the definition that there is almost no way to write a song full of examples that someone won’t complain about.
Here’s dictionary.com:
“an outcome of events contrary to what was, or might have been, expected.”
So, for example, most people don’t imagine it raining when they picture their wedding day. Does that count as an expectation? Similarly, we don’t expect flies to be in Chardonnay most of the time, but everyone’s had a bug in their drink once or twice, so where does that fall?
This definition seems to suggest that any unexpected event counts as irony, but since we all have a more or less unique set of expectations for life, appropriate use arguably varies from person to person.
Having 10,000 spoons and only needing a knife is absolutely ironic.
LOL @ you using that short Dictionary.com definition as evidence that the song is perhaps not misusing the word ironic when you see the following if you scroll down:LEARN MORE ABOUT IRONICIs Ironic The Most Abused Word In English?Is it actually ironic to need a fork when you’re surrounded by ten thousand spoons? We propose that “ironic” is among the most misused words in English.
Sure if you want to get technical about it. 😀
Not sure about his singing though
As for the routine in question, ignore the somewhat misogynistic opening bit and enjoy a pretty funny takedown.
The Jagged Little Pill Broadway musical actually commented on it, so she’s clearly a good sport about it.
Then it should include this also:
She never really did another song like You Oughta Know. Everything after was much poppier.
This album was a monumental 90’s album. My favorite song on that album is actually Right Through You. Anyways, the anger (at least what I perceived as anger) she had on the song You Oughta Know was very riveting and new. I then heard her sing it unplugged on Howard Stern and it’s just a different song. There is still some anger behind it, but it’s a more mature anger, if that makes any sense. Kind of gravitated towards pity towards whoever it was written about, which is rumored to be Dave Coulier.
I always thought Felix Potvin, but also because I hated Felix Potvin (and still have an Eric Lindros jersey).
Yes- You Oughta Know was the first time I heard a woman being just angry on the radio. I’d heard Heart, Janis Joplin, Joan Jett- I’d heard women yelling their hearts out but never before one that was just a hurt, angry, howling, raw person. She was angry but vulnerable and it didn’t feel like a “I’m a rock star” schtick but her actual truth. I don’t know if I would have dug deeper to find riot grrrl and girl-led punk music if it hadn’t been for listening to Jagged Little Pill and craving more of that type of uninhibited songwriting.
it’s cliche to claim that music from one’s teenage years was the best ever but gosh, the 90s were quite the era for women artists.
Thanks Clear Channel!
Apparently you didn’t have alternative rock stations in your area. I did back then, WBRU in Providence, but it has since been sold. Long before Morrissette, women performers like PJ Harvey, Tori Amos, Hole, Throwing Muses, Sonic Youth, Elastica, etc. were in rotation. If you hadn’t heard a woman being a “hurt, angry, howling, raw person,” then you weren’t listening to to the available music at the time, let alone before then.‘You Oughta Know’ was extremely radio friendly compared to what other women were singing about in the late 80s, early 90s.
“Here’s my personal reminiscence about hearing Alanis Morissette and the impact it had on me.” “Well here’s MY personal reminiscence about an indie radio station in Providence, and I’d like to point out that YOUR personal reminiscence about Alanis Morissette is uninformed.”
Yeah, reading my post again it did come off that way, which wasn’t my intention. Coincidentally, it turns out Pink Everlasting lived in roughly the same area and is familiar with WBRU. They’re just a good bit younger than me.
noooo, not everyone had alternative radio. you can argue that MTV had these bands in rotation, but not everyone had cable either.
so yes, alanis was the intro/gateway into “angry woman music” for a lot of folks, and that’s fine.
The only radio station I could get in my hometown was country along with a CBC talk station (I actually think that is still the case). I found Alanis Morrissette when I slept over at my cousin’s house and saw her on MuchMusic (they had satellite TV). Thanks CanCon!
I mean, I was 12! I’d heard what my parents had listened to or what was played on the top 40 stations. No, I wasn’t plugged into the hip and alternative. As I said, this was my intro. I didn’t start listening to WBRU (I’m from near Worcester) until high school! If you really need to accuse 12 year old me of being uncool and clueless- yeah. I was. Thanks!
Lol! Rereading my post I realize it came off as snippy. That wasn’t my intention, sorry. It sucks BRU is gone. It’s friggin contemporary Christian music now. Apparently the original lives on as an internet radio station though, from what I just looked up. Their shows after 9PM were the best because they basically just gave whatever student who wanted to do it free reign over the playlist. Weekly shows dedicated to underground rap, indie folk, even death metal.
Yeah, same with WFNX in Boston. It’s very sad to have the indie and alternative stations gone, but then again, I don’t listen to the radio anymore.
IIRC, Alanis has denied that the song is about Dave Coulier so you can cut it out with that rumor.
Dave sure thought it was. He tells a story about cruising down the road with the radio blaring and suddenly this new song came on, and this woman started screaming and yelling, and Dave thought “wow, she’s really angry! I wonder what that’s about—————-ooooooooohhhhhhhh.”
1:23 “Alanis Morissette is the worst human being I have ever met in my entire life” – Frank Darabont. I’m not going to argue with you Mr. Darabont although apparently Alison Klayman has met Margot Robbie Selena Gomez and Billie Eilish and they’re worse. 0:01 Jim Morrison Charles Manson 0:03 Nero Matt Damon Kate Mara Rhona Mitra Jennifer Lawrence 0:04 kill shot Evangeline Lilly 0:04 Elle Macpherson Cindy Crawford 0:07 Roman Polanski Squeaky Fromme the little blind girl in the television advertisement they use to mock Emma Stone there’s a photograph of Katy Perry except it’s not quite her the same photographer someone at a film awards in Hollywood 0:08 Drew Barrymore Ione Skye Winona Ryder Joey Ramone Phil Spector killer Jesse Eisenberg the werewolf in Dog Soldiers 0:10 Rooney Mara Nicole Scherzinger the girl with the black hair in The Pussycat Dolls 0:11 Shakira Michael Hutchence 0:16 Glenda Jackson Jamie Lee Curtis Keira Knightley the girl in Aguirre the Wrath of God 0:19 Hailee Steinfeld Russian Romanov Sigourney Weaver Veronica Cartwright 0:22 Fiona Apple Elkie Brooks Lars Ulrich Kristen Stewart 0:23 Sigrid blonde hair 0:34 Grace Slick Janis Joplin 0:40 Mortenson A History of Violence Marg Helgenberger Summer Glau red hair Mia Sara 0:43 Juliette Lewis 0:57 Season Hubley Annie Leibovitz’s youngest daughter 1:23 Nurse Ratched the hospital parking lot full of corpses in The Walking Dead Margot Robbie in Suicide Squad is anyone else seeing this I’m off my meds Alanis Morissette was recruited by the same person who picked Selena Gomez
“As a singer and a songwriter, Alanis Morissette has one of the most distinctive voices in rock ’n’ roll” – latimes.com Sep, 16, 2022 4:39 PM PT the writer of this sentence wrote “As a singer and a songwriter, Alanis Morissette was one of the most distinctive voices in rock ’n’ roll” then they changed “was” to “has”
“It remains unclear what details are incorrect, leaving plenty of question marks as to what happened after filming wrapped.”
What a dishonest take.It’s VERY f*cking clear what she wasn’t happy with, based on what topics she delved deeper into and what one she clearly wasn’t going to do so with.
I mean hell, pretend that this is a documentary about an album and then figure out which things were touched on but not dug into FFS.
*Alanis Morissette has distanced herself from this review.
She was really after my time (I got furious to Bjork’s vocals with the Sugar Cubes and Siouxsie’s great Peepshow record, and then ended up in Drum & Bass), but I think Jagged Little Pill holds up nevertheless. You can tell it’s her record because of what’s on it; whatever nitpicks of the patriarchy, there is definitely a female voice creating that record. I’m glad she’s getting her moment.
I fully admit that the appeal of Jagged Little Pill was, and is, wholly lost on me. In fact I found most of the album revolting and it soured me on anything she produced for a decade afterward. Not fair, I know. But it wasn’t the apparent anger or vulnerability that bothered me. (I was a huge Tori Amos, Suzanne Vega, and Nine Inch Nails fan at the time for example.) It was the abdication of both agency and responsibility in the lyrics. So much of it sums up to the screamed declaration, “IT’S YOUR FAULT, I’M A HAPLESS VICTIM, YOU WON’T GIVE ME ANY POWER, I’M INNOCENT, YOU’RE A MONSTER.”And, well, I’d never suspect that she was putting on any kind of act. What she sang was truly how she felt, and I’m sure she had a thousand reasons for it. But frankly, that declaration made me sick. It didn’t feel like empowerment at all. The statements I resonated with were not “I don’t have power because you’re an asshole and won’t give it to me”, they were more like “I don’t have power and so I’m determined to take it for myself, you asshole.”I’m certain that Alanis has evolved a great deal as a person and a songwriter since that album. You can’t sing “You Oughta Know” a thousand times on a stage and not get some perspective on it.
It’s fascinating that she’s distancing herself from a documentary where I’ve seen nothing but a positive reception towards her and what she reportedly expresses in the documentary.
Also, after the last 6 years, the “X is wrong/distorted/false, but I’m not gonna offer any specifics” denial doesn’t cut it anymore, sorry. Especially after the innumerable times it comes out that no, X was accurate the whole time.
It’s indeed strange. I have to watch it later tonight, because I don’t get it either. Every review is laudatory and mentions nothing would be akin to the exploitive or underhanded tabloid style documentaries that are common today.
I watched the documentary last night and I cannot figure out what she is objecting to at all.
I watched the documentary last night and thought it portrayed her as smart, funny and immensely talented. The narrative itself focused on the impact of the album. So I’m not sure what she has a problem with. Maybe she wanted the film to go deeper in certain areas and felt it was too shallow. But there’s only so much you can do in 90 minutes.
I was sixteen when JLP came out. And almost immediately my Very Catholic Scottish High School banned it. I don’t think it was the reasonably-rude lyrics of You Oughta Know that pissed them off, but I know it was the fact that it was a woman laying into an ex-lover that scared them. And I remember the newspaper columns dissecting JLP over the years, especially the snide little efforts from some right-wing newspapers here in the UK – always written by a female journalist, done in the style of a wounded best friend or concerned Yummy Mummy (god, that trope needs to die) talking in flowery circles how worrying and concerning Morissette’s behaviour/language/appearance was. After all, she was apparently more mainstream than other artists like say, Courtney Love (who the Daily Mail genuinely loathe. It’s always funny when they take a shot at her).Oh yeah, her appearance was a major factor for some to loathe/fear her. Female music artists at the time were either blonde and pretty, dark and mysterious, redheaded and kooky (can you guess who I’m referring to with that?) – but women were never, ever allowed to be edgy or dangerous. Christ, we saw that with Madonna and one woman sticking a middle finger up to the musical establishment was enough for one generation. And here’s Alanis, dressed, well, dressed pretty much like every single teenage girl I knew at the time, long hair left unstyled/minimally styled, not really giving a fuck. She appealed to a lot of young women because she was singing about shit that they themselves had probably experienced or knew someone who had been through the sort of shit she was singing about. The real gem that I noticed – and I still bring it up whenever someone I know critiques or mocks this album – is that a lot of men love this album. Contrary to popular bloggista opinion, JLP isn’t seen as some hairy-legged feminist album – quite a few male music journalists will say that it was refreshing to hear a woman literally roar her anger and frustration and disappointment, especially during the saccharine-sweet mid-1990s. I don’t know how many of you were around back then, but I remember that pop music in the mid-1990s was shite. We’re talking monumentally shite. (For bubblegum context – the Spice Girls would platform-trainer their way onto the world stage a year after JLP came out) JLP was a breath of fresh air for nearly everyone who heard it.The best description I’ve heard about JLP though came from Rolling Stone when they did their 100 Best Albums of the 90s. JLP came in at 45 (yes, I looked it up) and one thing said about the album struck me as oh so damningly true: “In fact, it’s damn near flawless, from the hello-it’s-me phone rage of “You Oughta Know” to the sisterly “You Learn.” And right, Sherlock, “Ironic” isn’t ironic — it’s just Alanis speaking her piece about the perils of being a girl in a fickle-as-fuck world, singing like an acoustic guitar. Jagged Little Pill is like a Nineties version of Carole King’s Tapestry: a woman using her plain soft-rock voice to sift through the emotional wreckage of her youth, with enough heart and songcraft to make countless listeners feel the earth move.”That last bit is so damned true. Tapestry was game-changing back in 1971. There are very, very few albums that do this. For all of it’s faults and flaws, JLP is a game-changer.
There was something in the Christian water about that album. I spent my teen years hiding metal albums from my devoutly Catholic mom, but it literally didn’t occur to me that she would find Alanis Morissette objectionable until she saw a copy sitting out in my room. She made me “return it” to the “friend” who “leant” it to me that very afternoon.
Female music artists at the time were either blonde and pretty, dark and mysterious, redheaded and kooky (can you guess who I’m referring to with that?) – but women were never, ever allowed to be edgy or dangerous.What? Uh, Tori Amos was far edgier than Morrisette. Not to mention, you lived in the UK and PJ Harvey’s Rid of Me, a seminal album, was earlier, popular in the UK (as far as sales) and waaay edgier and dangerous than JLP. I mean, maybe it’s just an age thing, or whatever was getting radio play where you lived, but JLP wasn’t some musically ground breaking album. It was pretty intentionally tuned to be radio friendly. The early 90’s were a groundswell of amazing female artist albums before JLP. Rid of Me, Little Earthquakes, Under the Pink, Exile in Guyville, Debut, pretty much every Throwing Muses album, same with every Ani Difranco album, etc.Not begrudging you liking JPL, I enjoy it, but it’s neither edgy nor dangerous. It’s poppy as hell compared to the work of female artists prior to it,concurrent and after. It just got a shit ton of radio play because it was poppy and radio ready.
Fun fact: Tori Amos only became really commercially viable on UK radio when someone remixed Professional Widow. Up until that point if you asked who Tori Amos was the answer would have been “who?” And she’s still seen as being “kooky” and “quirky”. As in – appeals to a narrow band of hipster followers who listen to 6 Music and drink lattes out of an avocado husk.
While I can understand why she would be frustrated at music journos attributing a lot of her success to her cowriter and her band, it seems significant that she had one great album with them followed by zero great albums without them.
She’s great. Smart and talented.
I have to say, an hour and a half of warm 1995 nostalgia sounds pretty good right now
I absolutely remember everything about the first time I heard “You Oughta Know” on the radio. That song was huge in every imaginable way.
I was a travel nurse working in San Diego at the time and remember my friends and I riding along the beach trail on bikes and hearing her music—one group after another–everyone was sitting on the beach with their cassette player blasting songs from JLP.
Tragic Kingdom > Jagged Little Pill
Rich Juzwiak thoroughly shat all over this doc in his review, which wasn’t in the least surprising. He’s like a bitchy 15 year old girl when he encounters real talent.