Alanis Morissette with Alicia Bognanno

With her 1996 best-selling album Jagged Little Pill, Alanis Morissette bet on herself, turned pain into pop poetry, and gave an entire generation a new emotional vocabulary. She also broke records and made space for an entire wave of worthy female musicians to be heard in her wake. And since then she’s continued to do what she does best - turn her experiences into gorgeous musical reflections on the psyche and the self. This week on Bandsplain, Alicia Bognanno of Bully joins Yasi to talk about the honesty, vulnerability and power behind one of the most defining voices of the ’90s. Episode Playlist Listen to the best of Alanis here CREDITS: Host: Yasi Salek @yasisalek Guest: Alicia Bognanno @bullythemusic Producer: Rob Sundermann Video Editor: Ashleigh Smith Audio Editor: Adrian Bridges Additional Production Supervision: Justin Sayles Theme Song: Bethany Cosentino Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Visible puts the ultimate wireless hack in the palm of your hand. With unlimited 5G wireless data and hotspot, designed to keep you connected. Powered by Verizon's 5G network. And, no contract holding you back. Plans start at $25 a month. Or get the premium Visible Plus Pro Plan and save $10 on your first month when you use promo code HACK. Make the switch at visible.com. Terms apply. See visible.com for details.

• 0:31Speaker 01

  Low energy, unfocused, foggy? You might be dehydrated. Whether it's hot yoga, over 100-degree weather, or too much sun. Gator Light, with a specialized blend of five electrolytes, was scientifically designed to help move fluids into the body faster for rapid rehydration. Shop now at retailers nationwide. Gator Light: hydrates faster than water. Is it in you? Symptoms noted are signs of mild to moderate dehydration. Consult a healthcare professional if symptoms persist.

• 1:00Speaker 02

  What's with this band, anyway? I don't get it, can you please explain? Wait, like, Bandplain? Never heard this band in my life. Oh, you haven't? I'd love that. Really? Why? Yeah, I love this song. Oh, I don't know that one. Bandplain, Bandplain, Bandplain. I really hate this band! Whatever, I'm their biggest fan. Bandplain, Bandplain, Bandplain, Bandplain. Bandplain!

• 1:39Yasi Salek?

  Hello and welcome to Bandplain. I am your host, Yasi Salek. This is a show where I invite an expert guest on to explain a cult band or iconic artist. Today's episode, you guys, is about Alanis Morissette. If you've never heard Alanis Morissette, honestly, you ought to know, babe. I'm sorry I had to, as there's low-hanging fruit.

• 2:04Yasi Salek?

  My guest today, I'm so excited to have you here. Alicia Bognanno, AKA the esteemed musician Bully. Arguably in the direct lineage of Alanis Morissette in my heart.

• 2:18Speaker 04

  I love that.

• 2:18Yasi Salek?

  Welcome to the show, Alicia.

• 2:20Speaker 04

  Thank you. Thank you for having me.

• 2:21Yasi Salek?

  Before we dive into everything, Alanis, Nadine Morissette, do you want to give me a little background on like your journey with Alanis? Like how you first came to find her, like why she was important to you?

• 2:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, I was thinking about this because I was like, I don't even really know how to like sum it up. But I feel like something I noticed the other day was that I think she's one of the only people from when I was a child that I still like at this point in my life can listen to and think it's equally as good, but like actually better now because I understand even more of it.

• 2:56Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:57Speaker 04

  And that's so rare, particularly for music. But I feel like there's little things like that she always I feel like is popping up in my life. Like she's like, she's the first person on my running playlist. So I listen to her all the time.

• 3:10Yasi Salek?

  What song babe? What song are we running to?

• 3:12Speaker 04

  All I Really Want.

• 3:13Yasi Salek?

  So good.

• 3:13Speaker 04

  Yeah. And then there's been like times like I remember when I was, there's a time when I was grieving a lot and for some reason, the only thing I could listen to was Hand in My Pocket. I don't know why, like I couldn't listen to anything else. And I put that on and I was like, and I would just listen to it over and over again. And I feel like anytime there's like a breakup or any, actually, I would say not even a breakup. I don't really give that, but like anytime I'm like kind of stressed or I put on, just Jagged Little Pill, it's just always been there and it stayed so good. And it's like, it feels like I, I feel like when I listen to it, I'm like coming home to myself a little bit. Like I just feel like at peace.

• 3:51Yasi Salek?

  I love that.

• 3:52Speaker 04

  I know.

• 3:52Yasi Salek?

  I feel like I'm going to get really emotional in this episode. I can just already tell the feminism has re-entered my body. I did recently watch the Little Fair documentary. Did you watch that?

• 4:03Speaker 04

  No, I can't wait to watch it.

• 4:05Yasi Salek?

  Alanis is not part of that, but.

• 4:07Speaker 04

  Oh, so she's really maybe staying at like, maybe after the thing with Jagged.

• 4:12Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 4:12Speaker 04

  She's probably just stepping back, I feel like.

• 4:15Yasi Salek?

  But wow, you should watch it.

• 4:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:17Yasi Salek?

  Just in general, I'm like really back in my, more my rock for choice right today. I'm just like full steam ahead.

• 4:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:23Yasi Salek?

  Um, all right, let's get started. Alanis Nadine Morissette, born June 1st, 1974, a Gemini. She was born at Riverside Hospital in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Have you ever been to Ottawa, Canada?

• 4:36Speaker 04

  No.

• 4:37Yasi Salek?

  Not a lot. You don't play shows there?

• 4:38Speaker 04

  No.

• 4:39Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 4:39Speaker 04

  I mean, I may have, and I just don't know.

• 4:41Yasi Salek?

  We gotta fix that. Come to Ottawa, believe. She's the daughter of Georgia and Alan Morissette. She's actually named after her dad. They were gonna name her Alanis. But then, thankfully, he saw the name Alanis in a book about Greece and changed it. Because like, Alanis Morissette?

• 4:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 5:00Yasi Salek?

  Can you imagine?

• 5:00Speaker 04

  No. Alanis is cool.

• 5:02Yasi Salek?

  It's so unique, like, Alanis Morissette? This is You Oughta Know by Alanis Morissette? It's not working for me. She described her parents as very free-spirited, curious people. And she also said, "My passion for words, sometimes too many words, comes from my father. We love the English language, but we can analyze things to the point of paralysis. He's extremely analytical. It aggravates me how hard he is on himself and how hard he can be on other people." And the interviewer was like, "You included?" And she was like, "Mm, yeah." "There was an underlying desire for him to feel he was perfect intellectually and emotionally, and he passed that on to me." She said that in 1998. Her parents were both teachers.

• 5:42Speaker 04

  Oh, I didn't know that.

• 5:43Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. She has an older brother named Chad and a twin brother named Wade.

• 5:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, the twin plot twist. I was happy to figure. I was excited to see that.

• 5:52Yasi Salek?

  Me too. Born 12 months-

• 5:53Speaker 04

  Who's Wade?

• 5:54Yasi Salek?

  Wade is just like not in the public eye, as far as I can tell.

• 5:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 5:58Yasi Salek?

  Also so interesting to be a Gemini that's a twin.

• 6:00Speaker 04

  Yeah. Well, why? You have to tell me. I'm bad at horoscopes.

• 6:03Yasi Salek?

  The Gemini is the twins. The sign of Gemini is the twins. You know, so...

• 6:07Speaker 04

  That's great. I love that.

• 6:09Yasi Salek?

  Oh, yeah, I forgot. You're not an astrology girlie?

• 6:11Speaker 04

  No. Like, I like, all my friends are, so I like hearing about it.

• 6:13Yasi Salek?

  Are you a Scorpio?

• 6:14Speaker 04

  I'm Pisces.

• 6:15Yasi Salek?

  Pisces.

• 6:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 6:16Yasi Salek?

  Also absolutely checks out.

• 6:17Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 6:18Yasi Salek?

  Emotional.

• 6:18Speaker 04

  Most artists.

• 6:19Yasi Salek?

  Emotional. Kurt Cobain. So, one, she was very little. The family moved to West Germany because her parents were teaching on Canadian Air Command bases. I bring this up just to point a little factoid out that when she was three years old, her dad took her to see the film Grease and she became obsessed.

• 6:40Speaker 04

  I love this, yeah.

• 6:41Yasi Salek?

  Amongst us, babe.

• 6:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 6:42Yasi Salek?

  And she learned every single song, all the words. She's three years old.

• 6:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 6:45Yasi Salek?

  And was just singing them into a nail polish around the house.

• 6:49Speaker 04

  Nail polish.

• 6:50Yasi Salek?

  Because she's three, she's so small, it's not even hairbrush.

• 6:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, I was gonna say, nail polish.

• 6:53Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 6:54Speaker 04

  She's tiny.

• 6:55Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. They come back to Ottawa and she starts taking dance lessons. She's like really involved in like, you know, she's like a bit of a theater kid, I believe. You know, I don't want to cast aspersions with that word, but I think she was involved in, she played Annie in a school play.

• 7:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 7:11Yasi Salek?

  Her parents, I didn't learn a lot about music that was around the house, except there was one line that her parents were really into Bob Dylan and used to play it around the house all the time, which actually really makes sense.

• 7:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, I thought that, when I, I thought that was very interesting when I saw that. Just because she's such an incredible lyricist, like off the bat, kind of. I know the earlier stuff, whatever, but when I, I was, it makes sense.

• 7:32Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I thought so too.

• 7:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 7:33Yasi Salek?

  So she was always a perfectionist, which you and I can absolutely not relate to at all. We won't get into that, but she said, "As a kid, I was this overachiever who was taught that I would only be loved if I was perfect. So get A pluses, look perfect, act perfect, smile when you're angry, don't cry." This impossible persona of what? Something that isn't sustainable. So my challenge was to unravel because I was wound pretty tight.

• 8:00Speaker 04

  I know.

• 8:02Yasi Salek?

  It's just like three hours of therapy for us right now.

• 8:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, really.

• 8:06Yasi Salek?

  Okay, so in 1980, her parents take her to see their family friends, Lindsay and Jackie Morgan, who were a local Ottawa folk duo. They're in showbiz, babe. And Alanis is like, wow. I think she said something to the effect of like, seeing them perform, and it was like in a cafe or a restaurant or something, made her be like, oh, I could do that too, you know?

• 8:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 8:27Yasi Salek?

  She later sent them a tape of her singing her own composition.

• 8:33Yasi Salek?

  She was like six.

• 8:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 8:34Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Um, I guess, I mean, eight, I'm not sure, but Lindsay, the husband, was impressed. And like sometime around 1983, she was nine, um, he comes over and he works with her on the piano to like, ma- like flesh this song out.

• 8:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 8:50Yasi Salek?

  And it's the song Fate Stay With Me.

• 8:59Speaker 04

  That title kills me.

• 9:00Yasi Salek?

  Oh, you're nine.

• 9:01Speaker 04

  Yeah. When I saw that, I was like crying. I was like, what? What nine-year-old does like Fate Stay With Me? Not even Stay With Me Fate, just Fate Stay With Me.

• 9:12Yasi Salek?

  Do you ever though, like, have you, did you keep journals when you were a kid?

• 9:16Speaker 04

  No, but I, I would write lyrics and form little songs.

• 9:21Yasi Salek?

  Did you ever look, do you ever look back at them now?

• 9:23Speaker 04

  No, I don't have any of my childhoods.

• 9:26Yasi Salek?

  I don't anymore either, Tiny My Line, but when I did, I would look, I would look them over sometimes and I'd be like, who the fuck is this bitch? Like, the, the like melodrama that I was like infusing my, my diary entries with, I'm like, you're 10. Like what, like it was like, you know?

• 9:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 9:44Yasi Salek?

  It was just really, so I kind of, I kind of relate.

• 9:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 9:46Yasi Salek?

  Um.

• 9:47Speaker 04

  It's perfect. It's like such a great title for her, for her first song.

• 9:51Yasi Salek?

  She had also written the words and some music to the song Find The Right Man. Again, she's nine. Here are some of the words. You found the right man in the right place. Once in a while, you meet him face to face. It was love at first sight. Honey, you've got to fight for his love.

• 10:08Speaker 04

  So cute.

• 10:09Yasi Salek?

  He's like, don't let him pass you by or something.

• 10:11Speaker 04

  She said later, she was like doing creative writing, this is just like, this is what I saw in movies and stuff, you know?

• 10:16Yasi Salek?

  For sure.

• 10:17Speaker 04

  Um.

• 10:18Yasi Salek?

  These songs will obviously pop up later. Um, she was raised Catholic.

• 10:23Yasi Salek?

  She went to a Catholic school, um, for, I guess, a lot of her life. Um, they went to church weekly.

• 10:33Speaker 04

  Oh, they were, okay.

• 10:35Yasi Salek?

  I think they were like practicing Catholics.

• 10:39Yasi Salek?

  In 1985, this will come into play, obviously, and some of her lyrics later. 1985, uh, Lindsay Morgan helped her make a tape and a promotional package to apply to Factor, which is an organization that offers grants for Canadian musicians. Canada is, you know, famously supporting.

• 10:55Speaker 04

  I know.

• 10:55Yasi Salek?

  The arts in a way that.

• 10:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, even, yeah.

• 10:58Yasi Salek?

  The United States of America is like, good luck, bitch. She won $3,000.

• 11:05Yasi Salek?

  Nine years old.

• 11:05Speaker 04

  And that's to make a good little demo.

• 11:07Yasi Salek?

  Well, once you pool it together with her next bag that she's secured by being on the television program, you can't do that on television. Alanis, you must have a good idea?

• 11:19Speaker 05

  I don't know.

• 11:24Speaker 05

  Alster, you did that on purpose.

• 11:26Yasi Salek?

  Did you? You're a little bit younger than me.

• 11:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 11:29Yasi Salek?

  I watched that as a kid.

• 11:31Speaker 04

  I think when I was reading about the slime stuff, I think I actually do remember seeing that.

• 11:37Yasi Salek?

  Well, it's really crazy because, this is such a tangent, but welcome to Band Swing. This show was made by a local Ottawa station and then was acquired by Nickelodeon. And then they loved the slime part, which was part of the show so much, they made it part of Nickelodeon's whole brand.

• 11:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, okay, yeah.

• 11:56Yasi Salek?

  And it would be at the awards and all the things. And it was like on, but it was all, it originated in this Canadian, which I thought was kind of for my Nickelodeon heads, my Nick at Night heads. She had an extreme short haircut. It was like Lady Diana. And she would get hate mail because she played the girlfriend of the hot guys.

• 12:16Yasi Salek?

  But she got money.

• 12:17Speaker 04

  How old was she at this time, like 13, 12?

• 12:19Yasi Salek?

  Not even, I don't think. I think she's like 10 or 11.

• 12:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, okay.

• 12:25Yasi Salek?

  I might be wrong, but that seems right in the timeline. Maybe she was 12. She started writing poems and songs, kind of like you, as a very young child. After she has this money, she has these kind of songs. She goes, this is what ends up funding her demo. But first, her mom got, interestingly, involved in helping along her career, which was very cool. It's like, not really like stage mom, but Ottawa sounds like kind of a small place. So basically, her mom was out at some like... Event at like, I don't know, a store, a mall or something. And she met Stephen Clovan, who was a former figure skating champion. He was in the Ice Cupades.

• 13:08Yasi Salek?

  And was in Ottawa, like, producing seasonal festival shows and events. And she was like, you need to know about my daughter. You know, she's an incredible singer and dancer and performer. And he was like, okay, well, I'm auditioning children for an upcoming, like, whatever seasonal production. And he came to the house to meet Alanis Ann Wade, who at the time was doing singing and stuff. In this book that's now out of print, it's a 1998 book by Paul Canton. He quotes Stephen Clovan and he says, "She looked just like a nice, fresh girl. She had a nice aura about her. Even from that day, I realized she was more comfortable around older people." He then showed them some simple dance steps and asked them each to perform a cartwheel.

• 13:50Yasi Salek?

  Alanis leveled her gaze and sternly proclaimed, "I don't know if I want to do a cartwheel." And Clovan said, "Listen, sweetie, if you want to be in the show, you'll do a cartwheel." This chilled me to my fucking core when I read this.

• 14:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 14:06Yasi Salek?

  Just like, it's such like a small thing and it, the whole time I was reading this book, I was like, wow, like,

• 14:13Yasi Salek?

  it's written about, like, it's so harmless, but like,

• 14:16Speaker 04

  It's not.

• 14:16Yasi Salek?

  You're already like, this is a child. She's 13 years old.

• 14:20Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 14:20Yasi Salek?

  And you're already being like, you have to do what it takes. You have to go against what you want to do, you know? And I'm sure it was kind of harmless on the part of Clovan, you know? But like, it's just like, it felt like a microcosm of like, what's about to unfold.

• 14:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 14:37Yasi Salek?

  In her life, you know?

• 14:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 14:39Yasi Salek?

  This, the other part too, which we talked about, like, that he would put her in front of a mirror and videotape her singing so she could study her mistakes.

• 14:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, that I was super unsettling.

• 14:50Yasi Salek?

  And I was like, I, I mean, I guess it's like an athlete type thing to do, but I'm like, she's 13, you know? I don't know.

• 14:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, just like relax.

• 14:56Yasi Salek?

  And she already has perfectionist tendencies.

• 14:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, like she already probably knows and feels bad about it, so like, let's not make her study it.

• 15:02Yasi Salek?

  Imagine someone put, I'm, I'm just picturing myself like, okay, we're gonna put you in front of the mirror. You need a podcast and we're gonna point out every time you say something stupid. That would die.

• 15:11Speaker 04

  And yeah, then watch yourself.

• 15:12Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I might get a different job. Then, her mom comes back in, help out again. She's at a restaurant and she overhears someone mention the name Leslie Howe, who was an Ottawa musician in a synth pop duo called One to One. And apparently, in the book, they also say that Alanis had met the woman in the duo at church and then gone up to her and been like, "I want to do what you do."

• 15:35Speaker 04

  Oh, interesting.

• 15:36Yasi Salek?

  But I don't know, this was like kind of separate. So she gets, the mom gets Leslie Howe's number and like arranges to send him a tape too, which involved Alanis singing Bette Midler's "The Rose." So cute. And Clovan, who's like now kind of managing Alanis, basically has taken over her career, is like, "Okay, we should get," you know, I'm a literal ice skater. I don't know how to make demos or music. We should get this guy who like has a studio.

• 16:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 16:02Yasi Salek?

  So they make this demo. Clovan's working on a TV special for the 1988 World Cup of Figure Skating and he like talks them into letting Alanis record a pumped up rock version of "O Canada," the national anthem.

• 16:18Yasi Salek?

  And she ends up, this becomes like her thing. Like she, it's popular and she ends up being hired to sing the pumped up rock version of "O Canada," like the opening of a fucking paper bag, do you know what I mean? Like all over Canada. And actually, it's so bad. It becomes her thing so much that in high school, they start playing it every day over the P A. Her version, like, illegal.

• 16:42Speaker 04

  Can you imagine?

• 16:43Yasi Salek?

  The humiliation.

• 16:44Speaker 04

  Can you actually imagine?

• 16:45Yasi Salek?

  No. I would drop out.

• 16:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, me too.

• 16:47Yasi Salek?

  Who allowed that?

• 16:48Speaker 04

  They asked her permission?

• 16:49Yasi Salek?

  No.

• 16:50Speaker 04

  Oh, that's crazy. I'm like, "Did your principal hate you?"

• 16:53Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 16:53Speaker 04

  Like, "What the fuck shit is this?"

• 16:54Yasi Salek?

  Just do that at literally any other school. In that same book, the Canton book, she sings this "O Canada" on board a military ship loaded with sailors. Okay. And Clovan says, oh, this is Canton writing, "And judging by their leering reaction, Clovan recognized his client was becoming a beautiful young woman."

• 17:17Yasi Salek?

  This is now Clovone talking. The guys had been out to sea too long. She looked beautiful. I remember coming on deck with her and it was like Gina Lola Bridget had just walked on board. Yet Alanis was completely comfortable drawing stairs. That's canton. And I'm like, okay, number one, how did you know that? Did she tell you that?

• 17:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, cuz generally that's very uncomfortable. Particularly if you're 14 years old.

• 17:40Yasi Salek?

  A bunch of grown sailors?

• 17:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

• 17:44Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 17:45Speaker 04

  No.

• 17:46Yasi Salek?

  She, she auditions for Star Search. She doesn't get it, but then she eventually gets it. She like, she goes on in 1990. There's, I think there's a clip on the internet, but she doesn't win. So they make this demo. It's her second demo she's made in 89. They're sending it around. So far, nothing's really happening. So they decide, Clovone and Howe, they're like, we need to make a music video, obviously. And that's the next step, in Paris.

• 18:13Speaker 04

  Why in Paris? That's what, I didn't get that. Like, that seems...

• 18:18Yasi Salek?

  I mean, Clovone said in that canton book, we felt we had to give Alanis an international street smart look, as if she was this hot rock chick who had been around the block a few times.

• 18:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, that...

• 18:28Yasi Salek?

  Once again, she is 14 years old.

• 18:30Speaker 04

  14. And why? Why did you need, why did they need to do that?

• 18:33Yasi Salek?

  I guess they're like... They're trying to get her signed as a pop star. I'm not saying excuse, it's a psychotic approach to it.

• 18:40Speaker 04

  How uncomfortable, though, going to Paris? Because her parents weren't there, right?

• 18:44Yasi Salek?

  No, she just went with, at first with Howe and the director, Dennis Beauchamp. And then Clovone arrived and apparently, things were not going well. This is according to the canton book. And she was like so relieved when he arrived. And this is in the book, it just like unsettled me. She said, he said, Alanis, who looked up to Clovone as a big brother, asked to stay in his room on the first night there. Then again, it's like, who knows what their relationship was and, you know? I don't, I don't...

• 19:14Speaker 04

  Yeah. That just feels so stressful to do, like, go to Paris with three men.

• 19:21Yasi Salek?

  When you're 14.

• 19:21Speaker 04

  When you're 14, like, that's just, that makes my chest feel heavy. When I read that, I was like, this.

• 19:27Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Again, I think like, this is, all, all I will say is the things that have been publicly confirmed, which is that...

• 19:41Yasi Salek?

  Olanus has said publicly that she experienced statutory rape at 14 at the hands of someone older in power. So, we don't know who it is, she's never publicly said it, but this is around that time.

• 19:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 19:56Yasi Salek?

  She also, like, earlier on, like, in the 90s, like, right after Jagged Little Pill, told Billboard, "I was active and physically doing the things that were sexual when I was younger. There was one side of me that was crazy and deviant, doing things ahead of my time, and another side of me that was very held back, wanting to remain virginal for the sake of being the good Catholic girl."

• 20:15Yasi Salek?

  I just, like, it really fucking kills me. Because I'm just like, I mean, and we'll, I think we can get more into it when we talk about the music, because the music's a really good lens to, like, look at this kind of stuff through. But I'm just like, a 14-year-old girl in 1989, like, you don't have the mind or the agency to make decisions like that. Whether or not you were quote-unquote "willing" is not even, like, part of the equation.

• 20:46Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm, yeah.

• 20:47Yasi Salek?

  You know?

• 20:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, I got really sick of, like, reading over and over again, "Well, she seemed so much older than her years, but coming from these men." And I'm like, it almost feels like a bit of an excuse.

• 20:57Yasi Salek?

  100%.

• 20:58Speaker 04

  Like, they're just like, "Well, she was, she wanted to do it."

• 21:01Yasi Salek?

  She was down, and you're like, "Well..."

• 21:01Speaker 04

  And it's like, well, sometimes children aren't comfortable saying no, particularly if they're in another country with other parents, like, what that is...

• 21:09Yasi Salek?

  They can't get a tattoo, they can't vote, they can't drink, but they can make this...

• 21:12Speaker 04

  They can't even drive at 14.

• 21:13Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, you can't drive, but this decision is totally...

• 21:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's, it doesn't add up.

• 21:18Yasi Salek?

  Doesn't add up, mm. Okay, so in 1990, sorry not to just gloss over that, but again, we'll talk about it more when we get to Jagged Little Pill. In 1990, she was briefly in a rock band, you guys, so all the haters who were like, she had no rock background. No, she did, she was in a rock band with some musicians she met in passing,

• 21:37Yasi Salek?

  through the Distortion Studios, which was Leslie House Studio where she was recording. They called themselves the New York Fries.

• 21:43Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 21:43Yasi Salek?

  And they did covers of songs by Pat Benatar, Blondie, Cheap Trick, and the B-52s.

• 21:48Speaker 04

  There you go.

• 21:49Yasi Salek?

  So... So she gets signed to MCA in Canada. It's a bit convoluted, but it's basically John Alexander, who is the head of ANR for MCA in Canada, had heard her demo when she was nine, but was kinda like, this is great, but like, what the fuck am I gonna do with a nine-year-old? Absolutely fair.

• 22:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 22:07Yasi Salek?

  And she's not singing children's music.

• 22:08Speaker 04

  Right.

• 22:09Yasi Salek?

  You know, she's singing pop songs.

• 22:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 22:10Yasi Salek?

  But then, they had this music video in Paris. Then they sent the video, and now she's fourteen, and he's like, well, I could tell she was very focused and passionate, and...

• 22:24Yasi Salek?

  This is probably not that important, but it's like, I'm not really sure if they just signed her outright, or kind of did a publishing deal. I do know it went through Leslie How's company, Ghetto Vale. Bizarre name, and why would you call your Ottawa, Canada, honey?

• 22:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 22:41Yasi Salek?

  So he had a deal with Alanis, which was not a good deal. This was, again, I'm not a lawyer, and like, this is just me speculating, and me, you know, opining, but...

• 22:53Yasi Salek?

  According in that book, their family friend lawyer had looked it over, and had been like, you, like, should renegotiate this, cuz it was very, like, on the side of Ghetto Vale, and more importantly, there was a five-album option.

• 23:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's crazy.

• 23:11Yasi Salek?

  Again, I don't know, I haven't seen the whole thing. And that was never renegotiated, so... It was really interesting, cuz according to that first lawyer, the first lawyer was like, well, she could've, when she turned eighteen, cuz she was fourteen years old, and she said it's not right. She could've, when she was eighteen, before, like, the minute she turned eighteen, put it aside. But if you live under the terms of the contract for any amount of time as an adult, it becomes binding.

• 23:32Speaker 04

  Interesting.

• 23:33Yasi Salek?

  I don't know, I'm, again, not a lawyer. But spoiler alert, she did not do that, if that was a thing.

• 23:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 23:40Yasi Salek?

  We'll get into that. It's nineteen ninety-one. This is the time of Nirvana, Nevermind, Pearl Jam, Ten, Red Hot Chili Peppers. Music is changing. Alanis is putting out her first pop album, simply titled Alanis. Did really well in Canada, certified platinum in Canada.

• 23:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's what I thought. It's interesting, so many things are like, failed pops, it's like, it's over a hundred thousand copies, right?

• 24:05Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 24:06Speaker 04

  That's...

• 24:08Speaker 04

  Huge.

• 24:08Yasi Salek?

  In the micro, I think in Canada.

• 24:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 24:10Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 24:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 24:11Yasi Salek?

  Um, they started calling her the Debbie Gibson of Canada. Did you spend any time listening to this on YouTube perchance?

• 24:17Speaker 04

  I did. I did.

• 24:19Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's very-

• 24:20Speaker 04

  Good dancer.

• 24:21Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, great dancer. It's very of the time.

• 24:24Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 24:25Yasi Salek?

  Um, it's giving like Janet Jackson, you know, shoulder pads.

• 24:29Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 24:30Yasi Salek?

  Um, the video for Walk Away does feature a young Matt LeBlanc.

• 24:34Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 24:35Yasi Salek?

  She's 14, he's like 26 or something.

• 24:38Speaker 05

  So what's it gonna be, Matt? Combination shot off the eight, two banks, hand pocket? Well, I think maybe three banks in the side.

• 24:46Yasi Salek?

  Here's, this was, I thought this was interesting, so the making of this album. Serge Coate, who was the keyboardist and arranger that worked on the first two albums, he said that Leslie How's, quote, "intense approach would have been difficult for many musicians, musicians to withstand for sustained periods of time." He knows what he wants and he won't hold back. He also said, "What was amazing about her was she was always, always in a good mood." And then this woman who's writing for Haslit about this said, "Okay, she was 16 and she was always happy."

• 25:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 25:19Yasi Salek?

  That's not really how teenagers work. Like, this feels a little, um, off. And she herself told the New York Times later, like, "I was always trying to please everyone."

• 25:30Speaker 04

  Yeah. He doesn't know how she, like, no.

• 25:33Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 25:33Speaker 04

  No.

• 25:34Yasi Salek?

  Well, I mean, like, you, you put yourself in the shoes of like, "My dream is gonna happen and these people are facilitating it."

• 25:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 25:41Yasi Salek?

  And I'm a perfectionist, like, of course I'm not gonna like, show you a bad mood-

• 25:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 25:46Yasi Salek?

  Or have a bad attitude or whatever.

• 25:49Speaker 04

  Um, interesting to me that, so, cause he's, so it's interesting that he has the deal with her, but he's also like the producer and making the music. That's, yeah.

• 25:59Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, cause it's, it's released like via his, I guess, like imprint?

• 26:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's weird.

• 26:06Yasi Salek?

  So, she's doing great in Canada, babe. She opens for Vanilla Ice. She was the first of four, but still a big deal. That's Ice Ice Baby time. He's huge.

• 26:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 26:15Yasi Salek?

  She opens for CNC Music Factory, Pump Up the Jam.

• 26:17Speaker 04

  There you go.

• 26:18Yasi Salek?

  Wait, that's TechnoTronic. Which one's she in? Oh, gonna be mad? Anyways, we don't, let's not worry about that. Um, she said, "People are already saying to me, 'So you're the next Tiffany.' Well, I'm not," she told the Ottawa Citizen in 91.

• 26:35Yasi Salek?

  She doesn't want to be the next Tiffany. Yeah, she doesn't. She's already a little pushing back. And John Alexander admitted to that Haslett piece that

• 26:46Yasi Salek?

  Alanis's present herself as a bubbly dance puppet with soul, but in reality, she was just as much of a puppet as Tiffany. She was kind of following orders. We were kind of controlling her career at that point. Because she's a child. Because she's a child. She's a child. Yeah. She's nominated for three Junos. That's the Canadian Grammys. Wow. She wins most promising female. And then, this is in 1992, at some point, she sings at an NHL All-Star game. Oh, Canada, Pumped Up Rock version. That's where she... That's right. And that's where she first meets Dave Coulier. A Full House fan. Yeah, yeah. You already know we're gonna open that bag of chips. Yeah.

• 27:26Yasi Salek?

  1992. How old are we in 1992? She's like 18, right? 18. And I believe he was... 33. 30. High school. I think she's still in her senior year of high school. Yeah. Listen. Is it better than the 14? Yeah.

• 27:43Yasi Salek?

  I guess.

• 27:48Yasi Salek?

  It's not funny. We're laughing because we're uncomfortable. No, yeah, that's... Yeah. Just so you guys know, it's not funny. Yes. We are uncomfortable and we are women and we have had Yeah. a lifetime of bullshit that is sitting right here.

• 28:01Yasi Salek?

  Okay, so she puts out her second album in 92. It's called Now Is the Time. This one didn't do as well. It's gold, 50,000, so they kind of consider it a flop, I guess. Did you watch Jagged, the documentary? Yeah, I did. Do you remember the part where they're like, I think it's around this time where they start being like, "Why are you gaining weight?" Yeah.

• 28:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 28:29Yasi Salek?

  I want to die.

• 28:29Speaker 04

  I know, it's.

• 28:31Yasi Salek?

  But the part where like, she said that the producer would count the slices of cheese in the fridge in the morning to be like, you ate three slices of cheese during the night?

• 28:42Speaker 04

  That's insane, that's insane. When you say to the producer, we're talking about Leslie, right?

• 28:48Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I believe so. She doesn't say his name, but I'm assuming that's who it was. This is a bad time for her, okay, so well, it's, you know, she is listening to Oh Canada every day over the P A system, like, cool. She has this like, double life. She said, there was a split, a split between my high school self, the part of me that would go to parties and spend times with friends my age, and the part of me that was in the entertainment industry with a lot of adults, staying in the studio till two in the morning. It required me to be very much an adult, and while emotionally, I was still very much a child.

• 29:17Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 29:18Yasi Salek?

  And then, like I said, they, M C A, the producers are like,

• 29:25Yasi Salek?

  you're getting fat, bitch.

• 29:26Speaker 04

  This is crazy. Yeah, this is, yeah.

• 29:28Yasi Salek?

  That's not a direct quote, but however you say it, that's how it sounds. And she devolved an eating disorder.

• 29:34Speaker 04

  Of, of, yes.

• 29:35Yasi Salek?

  Of course. In the Canton book, again, it's so interesting, I'm just like, the hoops people will jump through to be like, this is fine. In that book, he says, Alanis felt pressured to maintain a sleek physique and to be overly strict with her diet. So she began to run ten kilometers, cycle for thirty minutes, and swim every day.

• 29:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's, yeah, triathlon training. She also heard being in the studio till three A M, also being in what the, school, I mean.

• 30:03Yasi Salek?

  When are you, when are you running a ten K and swimming for thirty minutes? And he said, Clovan was concerned about Alanis and her dieting, which I was like, alright, Clovan, come through. But Canton writes, but the dieting never got out of hand.

• 30:16Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 30:16Yasi Salek?

  Yes, it fucking did, bitch.

• 30:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, it did.

• 30:18Yasi Salek?

  Created a lifelong eating disorder, honey.

• 30:20Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 30:21Yasi Salek?

  What are you talking about?

• 30:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, what are you talking about?

• 30:23Yasi Salek?

  It's so, I think the reason that Alanis's story and the music is so important to women in particular, and young women, is like, I don't know any women who don't have a story like this.

• 30:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 30:39Yasi Salek?

  You know, like, like, I can remember like it was yesterday, the first time I felt fat.

• 30:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 30:46Yasi Salek?

  I remember exactly, I remember what I was wearing, I remember how old I was, it was a bikini, I was at a pool, I was like thirteen. I remember it, like, all of a sudden, I felt shame about my body. And it's like, I don't know, it just like, it's crazy to me that like,

• 31:04Yasi Salek?

  this is so pervasive, you know? And I, I hope it's different now, I don't think it is, but, as we have Ozempic to show us that people were just kidding about body positivity. But anyways, I just, I just can't imagine it being tied up, like, young girls are gonna feel bad about their bodies, just like,

• 31:27Speaker 04

  Right.

• 31:27Yasi Salek?

  That's just the standard, let alone if it's tied to like, your dream and your career and a bunch of adults in power telling you

• 31:34Speaker 04

  I know.

• 31:35Yasi Salek?

  to lose weight, you know?

• 31:36Speaker 04

  Yeah. It's horrific.

• 31:39Yasi Salek?

  She said that they basically called her into the studio to be like, we wanted to redo your vocals, and then she comes, she's like, okay, and they're like, I know, I called you to redo your vocals, but I actually wanted to talk to you about your weight, you can't be successful if you're fat.

• 31:55Yasi Salek?

  I know.

• 31:56Speaker 04

  Just thinking of, I just feel like how isolating that would be. I feel like being a teenager is already so isolating.

• 32:01Yasi Salek?

  Right, and then you're the teenager with like, a real job.

• 32:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 32:06Yasi Salek?

  And all this pressure, and people are partying.

• 32:09Speaker 04

  And you're alone in it, or like, she's like, constantly just around these men who are like, yeah, it's just...

• 32:14Yasi Salek?

  She's told Rolling Stone in 1995, "From the time I was 10, I was working with all these people trying to control me and tell me what they thought I should be and what I should look like. And I tried to control myself to be what they wanted me to be." So, she said in that HBO doc, so this is, I'm just trying to paint a picture of like, this, these, this like, stretch of teenage years, like, 13 to 18 or whatever. In the HBO documentary, she said, "I just thought it was my fault, because almost every single person that I would work with, there would be some turning point where the camera would go Dutch angle." Drama. And I would just wait for it, like, okay, this won't happen in the first week for this one, but it will happen. The shift would either end the relationship, or there'd just be some big secret we'd keep forever.

• 32:57Yasi Salek?

  And then she says something that I thought was so, it's so good and so profound. She said, there's a lot of shame around having any kind of victimization. It took me years in therapy to even admit there had been any kind of victimization on my part. I would always say, you know, I was consenting and then I'd be reminded, hey, you were 15.

• 33:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 33:14Yasi Salek?

  You're not consenting at 15. And now I'm like, oh yeah, they're all pedophiles, the statutory rate. We're gonna get into this, I just wanted to bring that up because there is a, there's some press later that is like, also it's a woman writing it, who's like, why is she so whiny and unhappy? Nothing actually bad has happened to her.

• 33:33Speaker 04

  I know, it is really crazy how she kind of like lived a life of, lifetime of trauma before even Jagged Little Bull.

• 33:39Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 33:40Speaker 04

  Before LA.

• 33:40Yasi Salek?

  Well, I think that's probably where Jagged Little Bull comes from.

• 33:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, I know, yeah.

• 33:44Yasi Salek?

  So, okay, so the, the second album is a commercial failure, quote unquote.

• 33:50Yasi Salek?

  She's done with the two album deal with MCA anyway, so she doesn't have a contract. They kind of keep her on, I think, on a publishing deal. She also, the publisher, Leeds Levy, introduces her to her new manager, this guy Scott Welch, who was part of a company with Robert Cavallo. On this podcast, we love Rob Cavallo, producer of Jawbreaker and Green Day and.

• 34:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, we were talking about him in the studio the other day.

• 34:14Yasi Salek?

  Absolute king.

• 34:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 34:16Yasi Salek?

  So they sign her, Scott Welch in particular. She graduates high school and she's like, okay, I'm gonna move to Toronto, to the big city. I want to write music, I want to like, do my own thing, find my voice. The publisher kind of like pays her some money to do this, so she stays in like, a small apartment, like eats mac and cheese and like spends every single day doing writing sessions, basically. She wrote like 80 songs during this time, because they're all kind of like filed with the, you know.

• 34:41Speaker 04

  Yeah. So she was. Oh, was the publisher, yeah.

• 34:44Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so she was really, and just like finding herself, I think, like going to shows, like meeting people, like being the proper. Age of, you know, experiencing what it is to be actually 18 or 19 in Toronto.

• 34:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 35:00Yasi Salek?

  Instead of having to be like a full-time pop musician.

• 35:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 35:03Yasi Salek?

  In 94, she briefly hosts a TV show on CBC called Music Works. But then she moves, that gets cancelled and she moves to Los Angeles. She said, "It was kind of a blessing that it was over." Was talking about MCA. "Because I wanted to start out with a clean slate, not only personally, but career-wise too. It left me sort of naked. Leaving Toronto to go to LA gave me a severe dose of disillusionment that was really necessary. I was finally in a position where things weren't working out and it was good for me. It made me realize that certain people I had blindly trusted let me down. My intuition was saying, 'Don't trust these people, don't work with these people,' and I went against it." I can't help but read everything now through the lens of like, like, reading into it of how, how much more that means, you know?

• 35:47Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 35:48Yasi Salek?

  So she moves, she moves to LA.

• 35:52Yasi Salek?

  She gets held up at gunpoint, like, pretty much right away.

• 35:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 35:56Yasi Salek?

  Called it baptism by fire. But she felt like really happy and after like being set up a couple of times with different writing people and partners or whatever, she's set up with Glenn Ballard.

• 36:10Speaker 04

  We love Glenn Ballard. We love him.

• 36:13Yasi Salek?

  Glenn Ballard, by the way, babe, he wrote Man in the Mirror.

• 36:16Speaker 04

  He did, yeah, he did.

• 36:18Yasi Salek?

  King, legend. I mean, he did come from a pop background and then people obviously like glommed on to that. He also co-wrote Hold On by Wilson Phillips, one of the fucking biggest bangers of all time.

• 36:28Speaker 04

  Big thing before Alanis, right? Well, I guess, I mean, Michael Jackson.

• 36:31Yasi Salek?

  Kind of a bigger, but yeah, but that was like right before.

• 36:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 36:34Yasi Salek?

  And they just like, apparently from what I heard, just really hit it off, like, he said, "I had no idea what she wanted to do and I had no idea what we should do and it was like spontaneous combustion." Have you ever had that happen, like, when you're doing like a writing session or you're like paired up with someone to write or a producer or something? Where you're just like, wow, this is like, we're like... I don't know you, but we're like musical soulmates.

• 36:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, I've never written with anybody else.

• 36:59Yasi Salek?

  Oh, of course.

• 37:00Speaker 04

  But I, like, definitely the first few times, I was thinking about this the other night, because I was like, I've really lucked out with the first, since the first few records, I kind of did on my own four reasons of not being comfortable around men.

• 37:12Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 37:12Speaker 04

  As like a younger person.

• 37:13Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 37:14Speaker 04

  So I was like, I'll just do it myself. But I've definitely worked with producers where we're just like, definitely on the same page. And it's normally around nerding out about like tone stuff, but where you just have that kind of understanding where it's like, okay, you actually respect this as much as I do, and you want the best for it, and you're not trying to manipulate it to a version of you, but to just like accentuate the part that you really like about it.

• 37:36Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 37:36Speaker 04

  And that's like a really, it just feels kind of like safe. It feels secure.

• 37:39Yasi Salek?

  It feels safe, yeah.

• 37:40Speaker 04

  Good intentions, you know?

• 37:42Yasi Salek?

  Also, you're, you're also a music producer, so it's like you have a extra layer of like kind of understanding when you're going into it.

• 37:48Speaker 04

  Yeah. But it, but it is a massive difference being in a room with somebody who you do feel like you can be open with versus not. And it's particularly like a creative environment, so I could see if that's like, Glenn's kind of the first person that she's sitting down with being like, well, first of all, this guy's not telling me to like lose weight or force me to do something. I mean, it was like,

• 38:06Yasi Salek?

  Or trying to like craft the music to be more commercial or whatever it was.

• 38:10Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah, she always talks about how he just feels like, yeah, just like kindred spirits, I feel like.

• 38:15Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. It sounds really beautiful, because they went to his studio, which from what I read was like just gorgeous, had these like huge windows, there's like trees everywhere outside. He said, Glenn Ballard, what struck me about Alanis was that she was so incredibly self-possessed. I just connected with her as a person. And almost parenthetically, it was like, wow, you're 19. She was so intelligent and ready to take a chance on doing something that might have no commercial application. Although there was some question about what she wanted to do musically, she knew what she didn't want to do, which was anything that wasn't authentic and from her heart.

• 38:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, this gives me goosebumps.

• 38:47Yasi Salek?

  Oh, it's so nice. It's also like,

• 38:51Yasi Salek?

  The, it's such a double edged sword. I just kept thinking this when I was reading her story, like, to be mature.

• 38:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 38:59Yasi Salek?

  To be perceived

• 39:00Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 39:01Yasi Salek?

  as mature and having it together and like, an old soul. Like I remember being called an old soul when I was younger, you know, like, and how that's like, A, that's probably a defense mechanism, but B, like, you're not.

• 39:15Speaker 04

  No, you're not. And it makes you feel like you have this responsibility

• 39:19Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 39:19Speaker 04

  to be that.

• 39:20Yasi Salek?

  And it makes people treat you or like, hold you sort of to the standard of a thing that you're not.

• 39:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 39:27Yasi Salek?

  So the first song they write together is,

• 39:31Yasi Salek?

  a song called "The Bottom Line." Glenn Ballard says, "She didn't really want me to play anything. I usually write on the piano, but I pulled out the acoustic guitar and I said, 'You ever been to a club called The Bottom Line in New York?' She hadn't, so I gave her a little history of The Bottom Line and how all these great artists worked there. And I said, 'Let's write a song about the metaphorical Bottom Line and the real Bottom Line.'" I immediately could see she was conceptual in the way she approached it.

• 40:01Yasi Salek?

  So that was the first song they wrote. Respectfully, that is not, there's a reason that's not on Drag a Little Pill, but it's a cute little story.

• 40:10Yasi Salek?

  Every song on Drag a Little Pill then was written and recorded in a single day.

• 40:13Speaker 04

  This is so crazy, yeah.

• 40:15Yasi Salek?

  Not all of them, like each song took a day, not like we were all on one day.

• 40:19Speaker 04

  The vocal takes?

• 40:21Yasi Salek?

  She would only do one.

• 40:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 40:22Yasi Salek?

  Or maybe two. Yeah. She was very like big on that. She like didn't, she said it in, I think something I was watching where like, they, or maybe I read it and just no longer remember anything, but that they would make her do so many vocal takes and so much doubling and so much harmonies that she was like, now like, I will not do one single fucking extra vocal take.

• 40:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 40:45Yasi Salek?

  Um, and obviously you shouldn't need to, that fucking voice.

• 40:47Speaker 04

  No. And also, I feel like that is such a huge moment when you're creating for often, and if you're, one of your goals is within yourself to remain super authentic, that is such a good way of doing it, of being like,

• 41:03Speaker 04

  I don't need to get into it, but there's definitely times I've recorded where it's like my pitch is off and I'm like, just leave it. I'm pitchy. I'm like a human. It's important to me.

• 41:12Yasi Salek?

  It's like radical self-acceptance.

• 41:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, this is like, and I felt like when she's talking about a lot of Jagged Little Pill, it's like daily diary entries almost. It makes a lot of sense to me why she's like, we're keeping it. We're gonna keep it, cuz this is, that's kinda like the most authentic you can get.

• 41:28Yasi Salek?

  Right. Like I want, this is like a snapshot of exactly me in this time.

• 41:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 41:32Yasi Salek?

  Lana said, "It was the most spiritual experience either of us had ever had with music. The whole thing was very accelerated and streaming of consciousness."

• 41:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 41:39Yasi Salek?

  That was so sweet. Someone asked her, which I thought this was interesting, given that she had like, had such a, well, I don't wanna put words in her mouth, whatever, from my perspective, a bad experience with the prior collaborators.

• 41:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 41:55Yasi Salek?

  In Mojo in 1986, they asked her, like, "Why did you feel the need for a collaborator? Like, when you came to LA, why did you wanna work with somebody?" And she said, "Part of it was I had faith in the synergy you can get by creating with someone else. Part of it may have been that when I was younger, I worked with people 20 years older than me, who I felt emotionally inferior to, who told me what I should do and always led me to believe that I was incapable of doing it alone, that alone I would be nothing, I would fall on my face."

• 42:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 42:25Yasi Salek?

  So it's like, that was still with her. She was always like, "Well, they said I can't do it alone."

• 42:30Speaker 04

  But that's a massive thing. I feel like players, when we've been kinda sometimes, it's like, "Good luck, good luck without me," and you're like, "Well, it's actually gonna be fine."

• 42:37Yasi Salek?

  I'm gonna thrive. Yeah, like, "I don't need you." Joe Satriani, Jr., "I'm good. We don't need this."

• 42:45Speaker 04

  I do feel like with that Jagged Little Pill, it's kinda seems like she just like, that was the album she waited her whole life to make, and I feel like you can hear it.

• 42:52Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 42:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 42:54Yasi Salek?

  Now we have almost all, I think all the songs. And they're like, "All right, we gotta get a label, babe. This is magic. We made magic."

• 43:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 43:02Yasi Salek?

  And I guess almost every single label passed on it. Which, so I guess they don't have every song because "Right Through You" is about being rejected by labels.

• 43:16Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 43:16Yasi Salek?

  Enter Guy O'Seary. So Guy O'Seary and Alanis had the same lawyer. And that's who was like, well, maybe you should take this demo over to Maverick. Maverick Records, Madonna's label, it was fairly new, it was founded in 1992. So we're in 1994-ish right now. The first releases for Maverick, iconic, were Madonna's 1992 Coffee Table Publication Sex, which I now own, thank you to my beloved listener. And erotica, the album that came along with it. Fantastic album. And then also a little band called Candlebox. Little Seattle. Little Seattle band that could. Oh, you. I was trying, someone was like, how does Candlebox go? And I was trying really hard to sing "you" to them, but they were like, were not grasping.

• 44:01Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 44:07Yasi Salek?

  It goes really hard. It had, I had the cinghale of it, and it's an X-ray of a middle finger. Really? When I was 11 years old, they was like, this is so cool.

• 44:17Yasi Salek?

  Okay, so Guy O'Seary said, Madonna and her manager Freddie Demand were going to start a record label. And I think I was 17 or 18 years old. I came in and I was managing a few artists and doing a few odd jobs. It wasn't even really a hire. It was just, we'll give you an office and we'll see what happens. The first artist I tried to sign was Hole. That didn't happen. Insane. Yeah. Then I tried to sign Rage Against the Machine and just missed them. I was down to the wire on both bands. And luckily, my third try at it, I landed Candlebox, and that was really the start of Maverick. Would have been so cool if he signed, if it was like, Hole went to Madonna's label. I know. What are different, do you think we live in such an alternate timeline right now? Maybe. Like, you know how they, that meme, it's where like, it's utopia? Yeah. Like, we'd be in utopia right now?

• 45:03Yasi Salek?

  So Candlebox was actually very successful. So he said, if Candlebox put us on the map, Alanis put us on planet Pluto. Basically, so the lawyer makes him listen to the demo, but he sends Alanis and Glenn there to make sure he listens with them in the room. Because he was like, they're not gonna, he's gonna listen to her for five minutes and throw her to the side. So I want to make sure they're there, so at least he has to tell them to their face.

• 45:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, smart.

• 45:26Yasi Salek?

  It's so smart.

• 45:26Speaker 04

  Actually, like, yeah.

• 45:28Yasi Salek?

  Guy O'Shea was like, so Alanis walks in with this guy, and I thought it was her and Glenn Ballard, which is actually a very funny image, if you know what Glenn Ballard looks like, and he's like 20 years, 11 years, 12 years older than her. She's like, I thought they were in a band together, like a coffee shop duo. He said, "They played me a song called 'Perfect', and within the first 30 seconds, I was in. In 30 seconds, I knew I wanted to work with her. I didn't grow up on Dylan or Joni Mitchell, that wasn't my era. This was the first time I heard anyone tell stories that way and express themselves in such a manner." Alanis basically says it's like, it was crazy because he was my, basically my age. Like, she was 19, and he's like 18 or 19, you know? So it's like, it's someone who like, after like, going probably to meetings with many 30-year-old or 40-year-old men,

• 46:13Yasi Salek?

  it's your peer, you know, who gets it because they're your peer.

• 46:17Speaker 04

  Yeah. He was young to be like, running a label.

• 46:20Yasi Salek?

  He wasn't running it, he was just an A&R.

• 46:21Speaker 04

  Oh, he was just an A&R, okay, okay.

• 46:23Yasi Salek?

  Like, he just...

• 46:23Speaker 04

  For some reason, I thought he like, moved to, I thought that he, yeah, was more involved in that.

• 46:29Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I think he just become... Yeah, well, he has some successes.

• 46:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 46:33Yasi Salek?

  I don't know, I don't know Guy O'Shea's exact LinkedIn, if he was running the label, my apologies. No, there was, there was a lady who ran the label, who is in the oral history, who's respectfully, her name I can't remember right now.

• 47:15Speaker 06

  Low energy, unfocused, foggy? You might be dehydrated. Gatorade Zero powders have been scientifically designed to help improve hydration balance in the body. With a clinically proven electrolyte blend and no artificial colors or flavors. Great tasting hydration, no matter where you're going. Shop now online or at retailers nationwide. Gatorade: Hydrates Better Than Water. Is it in you? Symptoms noted are signs of mild to moderate dehydration. Consult a healthcare professional if symptoms persist.

• 47:45Speaker 07

  With Truvia sweeteners, it's simple to make sweetness part of your routine. From sweetening your creamy morning matcha to freshly baked blueberry scones. Truvia sweeteners make it easy to enjoy the flavors you love with less sugar per serving. From everyday drinks to homemade favorites, they're made to fit right in. Because with Truvia, every moment tastes better. Find Truvia at your favorite local grocery retailer and bring better sweetness home.

• 48:13Yasi Salek?

  So they asked Madonna, they were like, "What initially drew you to Alanis Morissette's music?" And she said, "Her honesty, her pain, her hopefulness."

• 48:20Speaker 04

  Beautiful words to choose.

• 48:21Yasi Salek?

  I know. She said another quote, which I actually didn't write down, but it was something about how like, she was really sick of hopeless music. And she was like, what really stood out to her about Alanis' music is that, yeah, it was angry and yes, it had like, of course, expression of negativity, but it had a through line of hope.

• 48:36Speaker 04

  Yeah. And I think appreciation.

• 48:39Yasi Salek?

  Totally apt, you know? Let's fucking go, bitch. It's June 13th, 1995. I just want to point out, some stuff has happened, obviously. Since her two pop records. Nirvana has hit number one. The landscape of music has changed. MTV has changed. We just talked about Candlewalks being very successful. Hole lived through this as 94. So, there's, you know, the radio, the alternative radio is now pretty rife with like, music.

• 49:11Yasi Salek?

  That's post Nirvana.

• 49:14Yasi Salek?

  Tragic Kingdom also comes out in 1995.

• 49:17Speaker 04

  Wow, I did not think of it as early on.

• 49:19Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Seventeen times platinum.

• 49:22Speaker 04

  It's crazy.

• 49:24Yasi Salek?

  Highest selling artist by a female, by a female musi-, highest selling album by a female musician, second highest after Shania Twain's Come On Over.

• 49:32Speaker 04

  Which was right around that time, right?

• 49:33Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, thirty-three million copies, I think, worldwide.

• 49:36Speaker 04

  I cannot even, I, when I read that, I was like, I don't know what thirty-three million even looks, you know what I'm saying? Like, it's like crazy even.

• 49:44Yasi Salek?

  They were saying that, like, at the time, one in four people owned the CD in America.

• 49:47Speaker 04

  That is wild.

• 49:48Yasi Salek?

  I know, I know. It's like, still in the top twenty of bestselling albums of all time. That and Houdini, my beloved Houdini and the Blowfish Factory review.

• 50:01Yasi Salek?

  Okay, well, let's talk about it. So she's, I'm gonna give you a little top line of some stuff she said about it, and then we'll get into, like, the making of, and then we'll, like, go track by track. So Lana said, "This record is my story. I think of the album as running over the different facets of my personality, one of them being my sexual self. To isolate You Wanna Know is a misrepresentation of the whole story. By no means is this record just a sexual angry record. That song wasn't written for the sake of revenge, it was written for the sake of release. I'm actually a pretty rational, calm person." I wanted to read this because I do think that, like, the way the story of Dragged Little Pill got told in the press was, like, squarely focused on You Wanna Know, and like,

• 50:42Yasi Salek?

  it's really interesting because there's anger on this album, but it's actually like, I think Hanif said this in the documentary, like, "You throw a dart and you're gonna hit a hopeful song more likely than you're gonna hit an angry song." Like, this is not actually representative of the whole album. But that's what became the story. She wasn't listening to music during the time. She did say, like, maybe prior she had listened to Tori Amos and Sinead O'Connor, which I think are very important precedents.

• 51:16Yasi Salek?

  She said, "In general, I just wasn't listening to music." So Glenn had a perspective and I really didn't.

• 51:22Yasi Salek?

  About like how this record was gonna be perceived. Okay, this is my favorite. She said, "When I handed in the record, Freddie, Madonna's manager, was like, 'This record is a little too caustic. It's too intense.'" And I said, "I'm 20 years old." And I told him, "If he wanted a record by Dan Steely, he should hire Dan Steely." And Glenn was like, "It's Steely Dan." And I was like, "Whatever."

• 51:44Speaker 04

  Dan Steely.

• 51:45Yasi Salek?

  I love that. She was like, "You want Dan Steely, bitch? Go sign Dan Steely." I'm not Dan Steely.

• 51:50Speaker 04

  I also love that she's in a position where she's gonna be like, "Yeah, no, I'm not."

• 51:54Yasi Salek?

  I know. She was like, "I'm not." "I'm not changing a hair on the head of this album. Thank fucking god."

• 51:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 51:59Yasi Salek?

  And to your point earlier, Glenn said she never changed one vocal. "You oughta know" was one take, and I barely got it on tape, and it's kind of distorted.

• 52:07Speaker 04

  Incredible.

• 52:08Yasi Salek?

  All right, let's take it from the top. "All I really want."

• 52:18Speaker 04

  I know. They're here. They're not going anywhere.

• 52:21Yasi Salek?

  Goosebumps. You guys, if you're listening to audio only. "Do I stress you out?" The fact that this album starts with the lyric, "Do I stress you out?"

• 52:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 52:29Yasi Salek?

  "My sweater is on backwards and inside out." Apparently she did actually come to the studio one day with her sweater on backwards and inside out. The thing, the lyric that gets me every time on this one is, "All I really want is intellectual intercourse."

• 52:43Speaker 04

  Oh, I did not even know that, but I missed it.

• 52:46Yasi Salek?

  What? I'm like, "Amen, sister."

• 52:55Speaker 04

  I always think the brief seconds of silence is like...

• 52:59Yasi Salek?

  I know.

• 53:00Speaker 04

  I mean, when else does that happen? It's insane.

• 53:02Yasi Salek?

  "Did you think about your bills?" Yeah. I don't actually remember exactly what she says, but when she does it live, she holds the silence much longer.

• 53:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's cool.

• 53:11Yasi Salek?

  It's so fucking cool.

• 53:12Speaker 04

  So cool. It's so cool that she did that.

• 53:15Yasi Salek?

  Why are you so petrified of songs?

• 53:16Speaker 04

  "Here, can you handle this?" There you go.

• 53:18Yasi Salek?

  That's so cool. It's really fucking cool. Oh, "All I need now is intellectual intercourse." Sorry, I love it. Love it. So good. The song is fucking, to start off?

• 53:28Speaker 04

  Insane.

• 53:29Yasi Salek?

  A-plus bang?

• 53:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 53:30Yasi Salek?

  And then, "You oughta know."

• 53:41Yasi Salek?

  I was talking to a friend about this the other day and she said something interesting that I don't relate to, but it does speak to how big "Oh, Yes" was. She was like, "That song is like wallpaper to me." Like, I don't even hear it anymore because it was on so much. And I don't feel that way. Like, I feel emotionally jarred every time I hear it. It doesn't matter if it's like the 12 millionth time. But it was really prominent. It was on the radio like 20 times a day.

• 54:06Speaker 04

  As it should be.

• 54:07Yasi Salek?

  Which I'll say that is part of the story is that they took the song over to K-Rock, my beloved K-Rock. And at the time, Kevin Weatherly was the music, the head of programming, and the music director was a woman named Lisa Warden. There was my queen, the iconic DJ Tammy Heidi. These people raised me. And they heard the song and they were just like, "Yes." And apparently Abby Conowich, that was the name of the general manager of Maverick, was like, "I was driving away from the meeting and it came on the radio." Like, they loved it that much.

• 54:42Speaker 04

  I love that.

• 54:43Yasi Salek?

  I know. And like, and that broke it. Like, that's like, K-Rock was so influential at the time.

• 54:48Speaker 04

  Did somebody like slide it in someone's office and they're like, "Here, just play this." And it was like, then instantly they waterfall effect with their other singles.

• 54:55Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I think that's what happened. Because then they started playing all the other singles and it was just like, as Tammy Heidi said, she's like, "I think this is the modern equivalent to Taylor Swift." Like, if you want to put it in that. And they said that people, the phones were going crazy. Like, they're like, "Who is this? Who is this?" You know, and they played it. The lyrics of this song,

• 55:16Yasi Salek?

  they go so fucking crazy. I know everyone like focuses on an older version of "Me, As She Perverted Like Me, Would She Go Down On You?" in a theater.

• 55:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 55:25Yasi Salek?

  Because people have no imagination or are boring and they're just like, "Oh, my God, a sexual innuendo."

• 55:30Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 55:31Yasi Salek?

  It's not even an innuendo, it's just sort of a direct. But for me, it's the, it's the part where she's like...

• 55:38Yasi Salek?

  Does she know you told me, you'd hold me until you died, till you died?

• 55:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, you're still alive.

• 55:44Yasi Salek?

  Oh my god.

• 55:46Speaker 04

  It honestly was interesting reading about how much they focused on those lyrics. I mean, obviously, like, it makes sense, because everyone's just, especially at that time, there's just so much sexism. But like, for me, I was like, every time I scratch my nails down someone else's back, I hope you feel it. I was like, that is incredible.

• 56:05Yasi Salek?

  It's incredible.

• 56:07Speaker 04

  It's so good.

• 56:09Yasi Salek?

  It's one of the greatest breakup songs of all time.

• 56:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 56:12Yasi Salek?

  It's very difficult for me to think of something.

• 56:20Yasi Salek?

  I mean, there's so many I don't want to like, but like, from the perspective of a woman, and it's just like, ah, gets me every time, because I'm like, oh, you're not allowed to talk like this.

• 56:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 56:32Yasi Salek?

  Oh, that bitch is crazy.

• 56:34Speaker 04

  It's, yeah.

• 56:35Yasi Salek?

  You're supposed to go through a breakup and be like, I'm fine.

• 56:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's insane. Yeah, yeah.

• 56:40Yasi Salek?

  Like, you're not supposed, and especially then when you put it through the lens, again, she's never confirmed who this is about. I think we could, I mean, I'll get into the, obviously, the urban legend of it. But no matter what, it's obviously, it's pretty obvious to me that it's about a much older man. I think we can agree.

• 56:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 57:00Yasi Salek?

  And this is what really struck me when I was listening back as now a 43-year-old, right? I first heard this album at 13, okay? And I was like, wow. The power of this album, to me, is that like, the way that she's able to like imbue the songs with the emotion on top of the lyrics, like, at 13, you might not understand what she's talking about.

• 57:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 57:29Yasi Salek?

  But you get it, like. Like, I was thirteen and I had a science teacher who, I won't name him, but like, who made me his like, did you ever have this? Like, it was like, um, you're like, teacher assistant? Teachers hated me. And you're like, no, I was not invited. Um, well, it was like TA, teacher's assistant. Yeah. But he had me in a, in a period that there was no class.

• 57:59Yasi Salek?

  And of course, like, here's, here's what I'm trying to get at, like, the, the messy and complicated part about when we talk about

• 58:09Yasi Salek?

  young women, very young women, teenage women, and this like

• 58:17Yasi Salek?

  predatory, I don't, you know, there's a lot of words that you can use for it. Yeah. Is that like, of course, and this is what she put in her music, but like, of course, there's nothing more,

• 58:29Yasi Salek?

  there's nothing more inconsequential than being a teenage girl. That's how it feels, right? Yeah. You have no power. Yeah. Nobody takes you seriously. Mm-hmm. You're, you're jailed by your youth. Yeah. But at the same time, you are so young. So then when an older person pays attention to you and sees you as a person, of course, you are like sucking it in. Yeah. It's wonderful for you. Yeah. That doesn't mean that you know what it is. Yeah. It doesn't mean that you're able to make appropriate decisions around it. And that's why it's so insidious, you know, like, because you can't help but like, be like, oh, all I want is for someone to see me as an adult, as a person, as someone with agency. Yeah.

• 59:13Yasi Salek?

  And that, I feel like, is all in her music, because it's, it's much cleaner if you just talk about it as like a victim and a predator or whatever, and like, I'm using big words, but like, but it's more complicated than that, right? And again, again, all I'm saying is like, there was definitely something off feeling about that teacher wanting to like, just chat with me about my life. Yeah. You know, every day at whatever sixth period where there was no one else around. Nothing happened, like, that's not what I'm saying, but even that, you're like, but thirteen-year-old me. Yeah. Old soul was like, oh, me, I think the guy was probably twenty-eight, you know, like, Yeah. It's, it's just like, It's so complicated.

• 59:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, I particularly do like, I feel like with her hypersensitivity stuff.

• 1:00:02Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:02Speaker 04

  When you're at the, I relate to that in a massive way, but her also always feeling just like either being too much or she has to be just right. The moment somebody is like, oh, you're just hungry for acceptance.

• 1:00:17Yasi Salek?

  For validation, for acceptance.

• 1:00:18Speaker 04

  You're like, oh, my God, is this the first time someone's been OK with me the way that I am?

• 1:00:22Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's like having the sunshine on you.

• 1:00:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, of course, you're gonna be like, wow, thank you. Like, it's gonna feel like you're seen just because.

• 1:00:30Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 1:00:31Speaker 04

  Usually you're making yourself small just to like, you know, not get in trouble or.

• 1:00:36Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:00:37Speaker 04

  Have big emotions.

• 1:00:38Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:38Speaker 04

  And with her, I mean particularly, it's like massive emotions.

• 1:00:42Yasi Salek?

  Big feelings.

• 1:00:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's love, yeah.

• 1:00:45Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's just, it's, you know, we grew up in a culture that tells us that like, the only approval that matters is an older man.

• 1:00:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:00:52Yasi Salek?

  Really, especially at that time, you know, so like when you do get it, that's why it's so complicated, right? That's why this song is so amazing because she's not, she's not, she's not mad at him for taking advantage of her. She's mad at him for leaving her.

• 1:01:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:01:09Yasi Salek?

  You're still alive.

• 1:01:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:01:11Yasi Salek?

  But it's because when you're fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, you, you don't understand what you're entering into.

• 1:01:19Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:01:19Yasi Salek?

  You know, like, it's not fair.

• 1:01:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:01:22Yasi Salek?

  It isn't fair.

• 1:01:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:01:24Yasi Salek?

  It's not fair.

• 1:01:27Speaker 04

  It's so good.

• 1:01:28Yasi Salek?

  Cross that I bear that you gave to me.

• 1:01:31Speaker 04

  This is like so cool that that was the single. I mean, because they really just went in with that. They could have, you know.

• 1:01:38Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:38Speaker 04

  Tried to go with something softer at first, but the, it's, they kind of doubled down in that way.

• 1:01:43Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I've heard a couple of stories. I mean, Alanis, and I believe her, I believe Alanis always, says that that was her choice. I've also heard that some involvement.

• 1:01:53Speaker 04

  I can see that.

• 1:01:54Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, from Terry Amzaldo, uncle of.

• 1:01:58Yasi Salek?

  Famed guitarist of the band Ceremony, Anthony Anzaldo, friend of the pod, who worked at Maverick, also chose it as the single, so there was support around it.

• 1:02:06Speaker 04

  Cool.

• 1:02:07Yasi Salek?

  But yeah, it's crazy. And also, they wouldn't, I think they had, they obviously, they wouldn't change the lyrics. They had to bleep it on the radio.

• 1:02:14Speaker 04

  Yeah. The Letterman performance of that is absolutely jaw, jaw dropping. And they bleeped it in that.

• 1:02:21Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:22Speaker 04

  It's crazy.

• 1:02:23Yasi Salek?

  They asked her if she is like an actor where she has to like revisit

• 1:02:30Yasi Salek?

  the experience to channel the emotion. She said yes. So it's like, all those things that, times you're seeing her perform it, she's like reliving it.

• 1:02:37Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:02:38Yasi Salek?

  And I think she said that too. She was like, I thought I would, I thought I would put it here and it would be gone. And she's like, but it's not.

• 1:02:44Speaker 04

  Yeah. And that's her release. Like, that's how she was saying she was getting through these things. So probably, usually, writing something that that being able to perform it is so cathartic.

• 1:02:55Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 1:02:55Speaker 04

  I, I feel like, dude, that was one thing that stuck with me through the performances I was watching is it just really feels like it was for her.

• 1:03:02Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:02Speaker 04

  In a way that you could really connect to. It didn't feel like, it just did, it screamed authenticity. I mean, I obviously don't know her personally, but.

• 1:03:11Yasi Salek?

  Like when you were watching the, the performances from that era?

• 1:03:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, or like the Shaggy Little Pill, like world tour, that like hour long thing that they made. It was just like goosebumps. Cause she was just, I don't know, there's just something about it. The rawness, I guess, is the thing. They also did something really cool that I noticed when she was playing live was, because you know how they would keep her vocals on that record like super clean, not a lot of reverb? When she did it live, they would use the reverb to like accentuate important parts. And it was so cool. Like, I noticed that and I was like, I have never seen anybody do that. It's so cool. It makes it sound just massive when it happens.

• 1:03:49Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:50Speaker 04

  Also, Dave Navarro and Flea are on that one, right?

• 1:03:53Yasi Salek?

  David Navarro, babe. We didn't even talk about David Navarro and Flea, who were, I guess, friends of Gaius' series, maybe, who were recruited into playing on the song. So apparently, they had a little to do with the musicality of it. Dave Navarro said that, "We got some of the demo tape, and it was really aggressive and real and raw. And lyrically, she was talking about things we weren't used to hearing at the time. It was already a written song, and I don't want to say we remixed it, but we deconstructed it and then reconstructed it musically."

• 1:04:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:04:23Yasi Salek?

  But then he's like, very like, he's so laudatory. He's like, "The fact of the matter is with an artist like her, her performance carries the tune, regardless of what's happening on it musically. You know what I'm saying? It could have been a string quartet, or a punk band, or a blues band, or what have you, and it would still have the same impact."

• 1:04:37Speaker 04

  I loved that. I feel like usually you see people just trying to take as much credit they can. Particularly like, in their position, and reading about how they kind of were immediately just like, the lyrics were crazy, or like, not crazy, I mean, like, so good, so raw, something they hadn't heard before, and that they were just like, "We just made, you know, we just like, put the correct music behind it."

• 1:04:59Yasi Salek?

  That's not part of the live moss spiritual practice, to take credit.

• 1:05:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:05:04Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. When you live moss, there's enough for everybody.

• 1:05:07Speaker 04

  I just thought it was so sweet.

• 1:05:10Yasi Salek?

  I thought it was very sweet, too.

• 1:05:11Speaker 04

  And they're right.

• 1:05:12Yasi Salek?

  And they're totally right. Also, Ben Montench of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers played the Hammond organ on here.

• 1:05:18Speaker 04

  Nice.

• 1:05:19Yasi Salek?

  Okay, let's get into the Dave Coulier of it all. Obviously, we have to, everyone's waiting for it. We wouldn't be good journalists if we didn't. All right, so like we talked about. They dated in 1992, she was 18 and he was 33. Alanis said, this is in the oral history of Jack Littlepole, which I think was like 10 years later, or 15 years later. "There were a handful of people around the planet who I dated over the years, and they were all coming out saying you ought to know it was about them. Dave Coulier was the most public declaration about it. I will never say who it is or isn't about, but it was interesting to note that people were falling over themselves to take credit for it." You know you don't sound like the greatest guy in the world, right? I keep coming back to this line. "I didn't write it to get back." Everyone called it the perfect revenge song. But that's not what it was.

• 1:06:04Yasi Salek?

  I wrote it so I wouldn't get sick. It was the humble beginnings of my love addiction. The withdrawal from love addiction is probably the most excruciating pain. Having had many addictions in my life, that withdrawal is the most horrifying. So that song captures that searing pain. That's it. It's a devastated song. And in order to pull out of that despondency, being angry is lovely. I think the movement of anger can pull us out of things. Fifty-five people can take credit for that song. And I'm always curious why they're doing it. But Dave is the most public about it. And he is.

• 1:06:36Speaker 04

  He really is.

• 1:06:37Yasi Salek?

  In 2008, he told the Calgary Sun it was about him. He said, wow, this girl is angry when he first heard the song while driving. And then I said, oh, man, I think it's Alanis. I listened to the song over and over again. And I said, I think I have really hurt this person. Not living moss. This article is crazy because it also lists all the other men it could be about. So she's like really a proto Taylor Swift where they're like, here, allow us to shame this woman.

• 1:07:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, right.

• 1:07:04Yasi Salek?

  Um, then in 2013, Dave Coulier, Uncle Joey, comes right back to tell HuffPost Live.

• 1:07:10Speaker 04

  Uncle Joey.

• 1:07:11Yasi Salek?

  That's right. He said, there was a lot of familiar stuff. But the one that got me was, I hate to bug you in the middle of dinner. We had already broken up. She called and I said, hey, you know, I'm right in the middle of dinner. Can I just call you right back? And so I remembered that line when I heard you, I don't know. And it was more like, uh-oh.

• 1:07:28Speaker 04

  Cool story.

• 1:07:28Yasi Salek?

  Then in 2014, he was like, no, actually, it's not about me. He told BuzzFeed. Um, he said, I think it's become this urban legend. But then on 2022, three smooth years ago, he went on Jim Norton's Sirius XM show and again said it was about him. But he also said, and this, I'm glad I listened to this and we talked, we shared it. But he also said, when his sister was dying of cancer years later in Detroit, Alanis drove there from Toronto and sat with her and brought her guitar and sang to her in the hospital.

• 1:07:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:07:59Yasi Salek?

  Beautiful.

• 1:07:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's so sweet.

• 1:08:01Yasi Salek?

  So if it is about you and she would still do that for you, you know?

• 1:08:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, and also just, I feel like when he was like, what do I say? And she's like, you can say whatever you want. I was, she just handles the whole thing with so much grace.

• 1:08:13Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:13Speaker 04

  In a way that I just, I don't know, it's.

• 1:08:17Yasi Salek?

  Here's an insane little tidbit also, Bob Saget. Yeah, don't worry, we're all, everyone's here.

• 1:08:23Yasi Salek?

  Said on What Happens Live with Andy Cohen. Yeah, I was at his house. Uncle Joe's. And he said Alanis just hung up on me and said, sorry for calling you during dinner. I was at his house when she said that to him. And then John Stamos got involved and he said, no. I really still wasn't convinced. But then he bumped into Alanis. He said, I ran into Alanis recently. I said, that song wasn't really about him, was it? And she said, yeah, it was. Sounds like a total made up story. But again, I don't know. I don't want to besmirch John Stamos's Greek name. But the documentary, Alanis is like, absolutely, it's not about him. But you guys can think whatever you want.

• 1:09:05Speaker 04

  She's like, who cares?

• 1:09:06Yasi Salek?

  It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter who it's about, what's wrong with you guys.

• 1:09:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:09:13Speaker 04

  It's so funny to me how he's like, no, I was there. I was there when he got that call. It's like, okay, you guys, relax.

• 1:09:18Yasi Salek?

  There is another tidbit in the Paul Canton book, which could also totally be made up because it's after the fact of the lyrics. But he quotes an unnamed friend, which I'm like, okay, cite your sources, who said that Alanis told her they broke up because he wanted to have children and she didn't. And if that's the case, then it kind of informs the, I bet she'll make a really excellent mother. But also that could be retroactively written because of that lyric.

• 1:09:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:09:43Yasi Salek?

  Damn, that's a really good lyric. I think she'll make a really excellent mother.

• 1:09:49Yasi Salek?

  It was a slap in the face. How quickly I was replaced.

• 1:09:51Speaker 04

  And I hear you thinking to me.

• 1:09:52Yasi Salek?

  When you fuck her.

• 1:10:05Yasi Salek?

  The video burned into my brain, watched it a thousand times, just like in the desert. This 90s reminds me a lot of desert videos with women, like Fade Into You is a desert video, right? Hope's Hannibal.

• 1:10:18Yasi Salek?

  Her suitcase with the glittery cat head stickers. Those glittery cat heads, babe. I had them on everything. I need to get them again. I think you can still get them.

• 1:10:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm sure you can.

• 1:10:27Yasi Salek?

  Her white, the whole white outfit, she's changing all the clothes, her hair.

• 1:10:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:10:31Yasi Salek?

  So fucking cool.

• 1:10:32Speaker 04

  Death Valley, right?

• 1:10:33Yasi Salek?

  I believe so. I believe so. Perfect. The song that made me go, Siri, drop everything 30 seconds in.

• 1:10:46Yasi Salek?

  This song fucks me the fuck up. It did then and it does now. Just like, as like, you know, again, just speaking directly to my heart and soul, but like, as an overachiever child, or as like, I'm an anybody, right?

• 1:11:03Yasi Salek?

  The lyrics are so crazy, like,

• 1:11:07Yasi Salek?

  "If you're flawless, you'll win my love."

• 1:11:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, so sad.

• 1:11:11Yasi Salek?

  "Be a good boy, try a little harder." It's like, there's so much also, like, to the point of the vocal takes, like, there's so much

• 1:11:19Yasi Salek?

  crackling emotion here too.

• 1:11:26Yasi Salek?

  "What's the problem? Why are you crying?"

• 1:11:30Yasi Salek?

  They wrote this song in 60 minutes. One hour.

• 1:11:35Yasi Salek?

  Ballard said it was truly delivered just right out of her brain into the microphone.

• 1:11:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, she just was like,

• 1:11:40Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, she-

• 1:11:41Speaker 04

  She had to get this out.

• 1:11:42Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I was like, I really feel like it's like an exorcism.

• 1:11:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:11:45Yasi Salek?

  They asked her in Mojo, "Is it about your relationship with your parents?" And she said, "And society, the pressures. No one ever says those things, but they're intimated everywhere. Unless you're extremely successful, you're nothing." I was able to put it into words, what I felt. It was cathartic. That was the turning point.

• 1:12:05Yasi Salek?

  "Will love you just the way you are. If you're perfect." I can't get over that. It's like, because that really is the like, core belief-

• 1:12:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:12:11Yasi Salek?

  -that you have when that's the feeling you have for the world. And it's, it causes you to do a lot of things that you wouldn't-

• 1:12:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:12:19Yasi Salek?

  -do because you wanted to.

• 1:12:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:12:23Speaker 04

  It brings me back to when they're like, "Oh, she was always in a good mood."

• 1:12:26Yasi Salek?

  Exactly.

• 1:12:27Speaker 04

  It's like-

• 1:12:29Yasi Salek?

  Sure, she was.

• 1:12:30Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:12:30Yasi Salek?

  She was hadn't eaten in five days, and she hadn't run a 10K and swam 30 minutes, and she had been at the studio till 2 AM, but she was in a great mood. She felt awesome. They're blasting "Oh, Canada" every morning at her school.

• 1:12:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's too much. Her vocal delivery, kind of like you said during that, is pretty incredible too.

• 1:12:50Yasi Salek?

  It's really incredible.

• 1:12:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:12:52Yasi Salek?

  She has such, like, a vocally evocative, like, you really can hear her emotion in it.

• 1:13:06Yasi Salek?

  Hand in my pocket?

• 1:13:11Yasi Salek?

  That's your song, babe?

• 1:13:12Speaker 04

  That is my song.

• 1:13:14Yasi Salek?

  What is it? Is it the harmonica?

• 1:13:16Speaker 04

  I don't know.

• 1:13:18Yasi Salek?

  I love the harmonica.

• 1:13:19Speaker 04

  No, I think it's just her voice against that music. Something about it just lifts me. It's like my chest opens up. Like, it just feels like, I'm like, it's gonna be okay.

• 1:13:29Yasi Salek?

  To Madonna's point about there being the through line of hope here.

• 1:13:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:13:34Yasi Salek?

  It's really here, you know? Like, she even said, "I'm lost, but I'm hopeful, baby."

• 1:13:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:13:40Yasi Salek?

  And everything's gonna be fine, fine.

• 1:13:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:13:43Yasi Salek?

  Can you die from too much goosebumps?

• 1:13:45Speaker 04

  I don't know, because I have this entire time.

• 1:13:48Yasi Salek?

  Do I have a medical condition? Again, the lyric on here, I'm obviously a lyric girlie that gets me, is, "I'm sick, but I'm pretty."

• 1:13:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:13:57Yasi Salek?

  Especially if you think about it through the context of an eating disorder.

• 1:14:00Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:14:01Yasi Salek?

  "I'm sick, but I'm pretty."

• 1:14:02Speaker 04

  Yeah. You know?

• 1:14:07Speaker 04

  It's incredible, though, that she even, through writing a song about, and especially with, because I think this is like, you know, also, she, this was, when she was held up at gunpoint.

• 1:14:19Yasi Salek?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 1:14:20Speaker 04

  This was like, kind of like, I felt like I read something saying that it was, she has a couple of lines about that, but I was just like, it's kind of incredible that she's even able to find any sort of optimism through writing about these traumas and stuff. She's like, well, there's still lessons to be learned here.

• 1:14:41Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:41Speaker 04

  She's kind of like, it's, she's just, yeah, I don't know.

• 1:14:44Yasi Salek?

  I mean, I just, I keep coming back to what she said about how much these lyrics were stream of consciousness.

• 1:14:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:14:52Yasi Salek?

  Because this is gonna sound so lame when I talk about my craft of podcasting. That's right, that's my art. This is my paintbrush.

• 1:15:04Yasi Salek?

  No, but I, like, after a couple, like, after doing this for like, a year, and I would get so hung up on like, did I say the right thing? I better say the right thing, you know? Like, it's real trial by fire if you want, you know, then you have the people being like, she's this, and she's annoying, and she's stupid.

• 1:15:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:15:19Yasi Salek?

  But I started to get into a practice of just saying the first fucking thing that came to my mind.

• 1:15:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:15:26Yasi Salek?

  And it almost always is the truest thing.

• 1:15:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:15:29Yasi Salek?

  It's the most meaningful and truest thing, and...

• 1:15:33Yasi Salek?

  You know, perhaps bands playing episodes not be as enduring as Jagged Little Pill. But I do feel like, I'm like, oh, that, like, all that wisdom is just like beyond the self. You know, like, you're tapped into something greater than yourself.

• 1:15:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:15:46Yasi Salek?

  And I can say that about Alanis, because I know she's a fellow woo-woo girly. She's up on her godship.

• 1:15:51Speaker 04

  I think, yeah, there is too, something about Jagged Little Pill, how it is so, it's so like sweet how this was the first time that I felt like she was, she was really able to be herself and being herself. And then in her fully being herself worked. Like, it was like, spoke to so many, like-

• 1:16:12Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, like, the reinforcement of like, so many years of being like, if you're yourself, they're gonna hate you. It's gonna be bad, you're not perfect. And then letting yourself be completely yourself and having it be like, biggest selling artist of the decade. It's a dream, but also a nightmare, and we'll get into all that. Right through you, we talked about-

• 1:16:39Yasi Salek?

  It was written, I think, about, you know, being rejected by these label bosses. And also, you know, there's other stuff in there about like, taking a good, long, hard look at my ass and then, you know-

• 1:16:51Speaker 04

  Go play golf?

• 1:16:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, going and playing golf for a while. Feeling like a piece of meat, feeling, uh, objectified. But the prophetic, I'm like, again, this, this is god-bam, I'm sorry. Now that I'm Miss Thing, now that I'm a zillionaire, you scan the credits for your name and wonder why it's not there?

• 1:17:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:17:10Yasi Salek?

  There was no, not even an inkling that this would be a big album.

• 1:17:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:17:15Yasi Salek?

  Like, nothing, you know? And it's exactly what happened. She did become Miss Thing and a zillionaire, and they did probably scan the credits and be like, we should sign that bitch.

• 1:17:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:17:26Yasi Salek?

  It's very good. It's very good. The next song is "Forgiven."

• 1:17:39Yasi Salek?

  You know how us Catholic girls can be? We make up for so much time a little too late. I Never Forgot It, confusing as it was. No fun with no guilt feelings. The sinners, the saviors, the loverless priests. I'll see you next Sunday.

• 1:17:54Yasi Salek?

  She had a lot going on.

• 1:17:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, there was a lot going on.

• 1:17:59Yasi Salek?

  A lot going on. She said later she rejected the entire concept of organized religion. But now when I'm on stage, it's very spiritual. I feel very close to God when I'm up there. I love her.

• 1:18:11Speaker 04

  I know. I loved when I read that she plays God in a movie.

• 1:18:15Yasi Salek?

  Dogma, one of the best. We're gonna get into that. One of the best movies of all time. She, I, I, I love how unabashed she is talking about spirituality, about psychology, about God. People really hate when you say the word God. I've been clocking that as I move through the world because I'm just like, it's just a word.

• 1:18:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:18:37Yasi Salek?

  But then I, you know, I have compassion. You know, people have religious trauma and like, I'm sure that gets tied into that. But like, it's like, we're so secular now that if like you say God, people are like, you fucking crazy weirdo. And you're like, it's just a concept.

• 1:18:51Speaker 04

  Well, yeah, I mean particularly the way that she sees it where it's not like a, you know, it's like anything can be God. It's not like a, she's not.

• 1:18:59Yasi Salek?

  Not the old white man up in the sky who's mad at you for masturbating.

• 1:19:06Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, that's a, you love, you learn.

• 1:19:18Speaker 04

  I love that one.

• 1:19:21Speaker 04

  It's so good. It is so crazy how many good songs are on this record. It is insane to me.

• 1:19:27Yasi Salek?

  We haven't even talked about the videos.

• 1:19:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:19:28Yasi Salek?

  And we talked about, we talked about You I Don't Know.

• 1:19:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:19:33Yasi Salek?

  But it had so many iconic videos.

• 1:19:35Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm. Ironic was a good video. I mean, I don't know if we'll get there, but it's like great.

• 1:19:40Yasi Salek?

  I did the hair.

• 1:19:43Speaker 04

  Did you do the hair?

• 1:19:44Yasi Salek?

  Because I had the long hair like that and I absolutely did it to go to school. Yeah, you, I mean, You Learn is just.

• 1:19:53Yasi Salek?

  Another great example of like, how framing this album as like, angry white woman album is like, kind of missing the mark in so many ways.

• 1:20:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's really reductive.

• 1:20:06Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:07Speaker 04

  And totally dismissing the one thing, I mean, even Madonna said it after listening one time through, that the hopefulness, that's everywhere.

• 1:20:18Yasi Salek?

  Oh bitch. Head over feet?

• 1:20:31Yasi Salek?

  I don't even know what to say.

• 1:20:33Speaker 04

  I don't even know what to say about that.

• 1:20:34Yasi Salek?

  Like how formative this song was, how much I was like, it's gonna be like that one day.

• 1:20:40Yasi Salek?

  You already won me over. In spite of me.

• 1:20:46Speaker 04

  You couldn't help it, it's all your fault.

• 1:20:52Speaker 04

  Something about that one kind of gives me the same, it gives me a similar feeling to Hand in My Pocket. There's something about her voice against the instrumentation that just feels like very cathartic.

• 1:21:04Yasi Salek?

  It's like a swelling of hope, you know? Like, these are...

• 1:21:10Yasi Salek?

  Hand in My Pocket is a hopeful song. This is a hopeful song. These are, You Hauled Your Breath And The Door For Me?

• 1:21:16Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:21:16Yasi Salek?

  And I think maybe because both Hand and, was it Hand in My Pocket? And Head Over Feet have that hope up against the backdrop of disappointment. You know, and I think that's the, like, that tension makes it so hit.

• 1:21:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, there's a lot of acceptance in it.

• 1:21:37Yasi Salek?

  I've never felt this healthy before. I've never wanted something rational. I am aware now.

• 1:21:45Speaker 04

  I know.

• 1:21:49Yasi Salek?

  Fucking enduring lifelong banger of a jam. Mary Jane is also really good. Mary Jane kind of playing on the same, I think, themes is perfect.

• 1:22:09Yasi Salek?

  But like, I hear you're losing weight again, Mary Jane. Do you ever wonder who you're losing it for?

• 1:22:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:22:24Yasi Salek?

  She, I mean, I think it's no surprise, you know, again, we had a lot to work with as teen girls, I did anyways, at this time. Like, there was a very, like, rich palette of, like, Hole, Alanis, Tori, Fiona. You know, there was like, there was so much, and they all sort of embodied different aspects of, like, the female experience. And it's like, fuck, imagine not having that.

• 1:22:59Speaker 04

  I know, yeah. I was thinking about that the other day, I was like, I'm so, because I didn't ever listen to it, like, I was just always listening to what was on the radio, and I was like, I'm so glad that I got just the tail end of that, where even if it was like, you know, the bigger Liz Phair stuff.

• 1:23:14Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, Liz Phair, absolutely.

• 1:23:17Speaker 04

  I have a memory, listening, I think maybe I was like, seven or something, when Sarah McLachlan came on the radio, and I was just crying in the back of the car, and I was like, please, just turn it off, and my mom was like, no, and I was like, I just can't handle it.

• 1:23:29Yasi Salek?

  You can't, emotionally overwhelmed.

• 1:23:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, like, I was so just, yeah, overwhelmed, but it was crazy that it could just, it resonates that hard, kind of, like, regardless, like, it was just so powerful.

• 1:23:39Yasi Salek?

  It's, it's really important, and I don't-

• 1:23:42Speaker 04

  Good lyrical content.

• 1:23:44Yasi Salek?

  Good lyrical content, amazing emotional content. Speaking sort of directly to these really specific experiences of young women.

• 1:23:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:23:55Yasi Salek?

  I really have my Lilith Fair hat on now, Lilith Fair dresser hat. Yeah, I, I like, it was actually when I listened to Hands Clean, but we'll, we'll talk about Hands Clean when we get there. I, I started crying in my car yesterday, because I was like, I just, I just like, couldn't stop thinking about how these artists, like-

• 1:24:17Yasi Salek?

  Mind their like intense personal pain and trauma to like create this music, which obviously it's, you know, that's their art and their craft and it's for, it was not for me specifically. But I was just so grateful. I was just like, I, I couldn't have existed, you know, like how I'm gonna, I'm really gonna get emotional because I'm just like, how hard it must have been for them to go there over and over again. But how like fucking important it was for like entire generations of, you know, young people. I don't want to, I mean, anybody can feel this, you know,

• 1:25:01Yasi Salek?

  that's going the fuck through it to have that to like, hold on to for like, me to be 13 years old and be able to hear that on the radio and put on, hold on to it like a fucking life raft. To try to make sense of like what you're going through, just.

• 1:25:16Speaker 04

  I think it's like kind of undeniable when an artist is genuinely using it as an outlet. And you can just, it kind of speaks for itself. It's like, you can really tell.

• 1:25:25Yasi Salek?

  I mean, you do that with your music, not to.

• 1:25:28Speaker 04

  It is an outlet, for sure. But it is, I feel like, you know, just even with, we already talked about her vocal delivery, but it's like, that's a part of it being just so moving. It's just.

• 1:25:39Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, you guys heard Atom Bomb?

• 1:25:40Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:25:44Yasi Salek?

  No, but this bitch sent me a fucking voice memo. Do you remember this?

• 1:25:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, I do.

• 1:25:49Yasi Salek?

  And I was going, I was also going, don't worry, 43 years old, still 30 years later, still going the fuck through it, apparently. And I was like, oh, cool, new bully song. This is so nice. I'm gonna hear it. And then I was like.

• 1:26:01Speaker 04

  Cry it.

• 1:26:02Yasi Salek?

  I know, it's so dramatic. Especially that because it was like a demo. So you were just like so like

• 1:26:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:26:07Yasi Salek?

  in your like

• 1:26:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:26:08Yasi Salek?

  raw, like, and I was like.

• 1:26:10Speaker 04

  I was raw. I was literally at the end of some incredibly traumatic experiences and I was just like, but that it was fully just like a release, like, and it, and every time I do it live, it's, it is a release all over again.

• 1:26:23Yasi Salek?

  It's one of the greatest songs of the decade.

• 1:26:25Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 1:26:26Yasi Salek?

  Put it on you guys. Feel like Atlantis. You'll love Bully's Atom Bomb.

• 1:26:41Yasi Salek?

  Also the whole bully oeuvre, if you will. All right, let's talk about ironic.

• 1:26:51Yasi Salek?

  This is the song that Alanis didn't want on the record.

• 1:26:56Speaker 04

  It's crazy.

• 1:26:56Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:57Speaker 04

  I, I, it's crazy to me.

• 1:26:59Yasi Salek?

  And Glenn Ballard was like, honey, what are we?

• 1:27:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:27:03Yasi Salek?

  What are you talking about? We're putting this on the record. This is fantastic.

• 1:27:06Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:27:06Yasi Salek?

  It is her number one, it is her number one streamed album, uh, song. It's her number one streamed song.

• 1:27:11Speaker 04

  It's always.

• 1:27:12Yasi Salek?

  By almost double, you ought to know.

• 1:27:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:27:16Yasi Salek?

  That's, this is the biggest Alanis song. What do you think it is about ironic that's like, makes it so broadly appealing?

• 1:27:24Speaker 04

  I don't know. I mean, I think like, it, it like, well, I feel like almost everybody could relate to it in some capacity.

• 1:27:33Yasi Salek?

  Right, cuz it's about expectation versus disappointment. Obviously, she's been dragged to fucking hell and back about it not being real irony. Leave us alone.

• 1:27:41Speaker 04

  Okay, that was, yeah, the people who are like, it's not, I was like, what is, are you, that is.

• 1:27:46Yasi Salek?

  Okay, Shakespeare, fucking pack it up, right?

• 1:27:48Speaker 04

  That's like a tattletale in school or something. You're like, what are you talking about? You guys are really gonna like spend time about how you're like, that's not real irony. It's like, okay, come, this is.

• 1:27:56Yasi Salek?

  I mean, it's fine, whatever. Some of us care more about semantics than emotional evocation.

• 1:28:06Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I do, I think that even, it is like another form of her kind of doing what she does best, which is like finding a silver lining, like still being able to sing about that in kind of an uplifting way, but talking about all these situations that happen that are super unideal, that would normally ruin your day. This is, but she can, you know, go on about it and is kind of laughing. It's just like, nice, it's humanizing. I feel like it's relatable.

• 1:28:33Yasi Salek?

  It, it's surrender.

• 1:28:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:28:35Yasi Salek?

  Right? It's like a song about surrender.

• 1:28:37Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:28:37Yasi Salek?

  It's like, okay, well, don't you think?

• 1:28:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:28:41Yasi Salek?

  You know, let it go. And I think maybe the other reason that people love it so much, it just, it has the chorus that you can belt.

• 1:28:50Speaker 04

  You, the.

• 1:28:50Yasi Salek?

  A beltable chorus.

• 1:28:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:28:52Yasi Salek?

  That'll get everyone every time.

• 1:28:54Speaker 04

  And the explosive, I mean, it's, yeah, the, the dynamic range of it all is.

• 1:28:59Yasi Salek?

  10,000 spoons, when all you need is a knife.

• 1:29:03Yasi Salek?

  It's like meeting the man of my dreams.

• 1:29:05Speaker 04

  It is beautiful.

• 1:29:05Yasi Salek?

  And then meeting his beautiful.

• 1:29:07Speaker 04

  And then she does her little laugh.

• 1:29:09Yasi Salek?

  I know.

• 1:29:11Yasi Salek?

  Isn't that funny? Want to kill myself. Yeah, it's absolutely.

• 1:29:18Yasi Salek?

  It's absolutely a fucking banger. It's really, it's really great. She said, she said later that there was like these sweet New Yorkers would be like, is ironic actually ironic? Because there's not a lot of ironies in it. And she was like, if you say so.

• 1:29:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:29:32Yasi Salek?

  That wasn't my grand plan or whatever. Another thing I want to say, because ironic is definitely a good place to say it, is that like,

• 1:29:43Yasi Salek?

  it's not surprising to me that this album was so massive. Because I brought up Pudding and the Blowfish before, hear me up. A lot of this album is coffee shop type music. In the best way, I'm, this is laudatory, you know? I, I live and die for a blues traveler, okay? I will lay down my life for Gin Blossoms. And there's a through line of that kind of music here. Ironic is, there is harmonica on here. Like, this is not Holes Live Through This.

• 1:30:13Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:30:13Yasi Salek?

  You know? Which, as we know, I think is the number one best album of all time. For me personally. But it's not going to be as broad, they're not going to fucking put Live Through This on in the Starbucks.

• 1:30:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:30:25Yasi Salek?

  You know?

• 1:30:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:30:26Yasi Salek?

  But they'll put this on in the Starbucks. That doesn't diminish it.

• 1:30:28Speaker 04

  This is like, this would be considered good Starbucks music. I feel like 2025 Starbucks music is very safe.

• 1:30:34Yasi Salek?

  Yes, this is, I don't know if they're going to talk about going down on you in a theater in the Starbucks.

• 1:30:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:30:40Yasi Salek?

  Maybe now, I don't know. I don't know.

• 1:30:45Yasi Salek?

  Okay, Wake Up is the next song. I don't have a lot of memories about this song.

• 1:30:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, me either.

• 1:30:49Yasi Salek?

  Not a bad song, just I don't remember it too much. And then that's ostensibly the last song, but then the secret track. Your House. Do you remember that song?

• 1:30:58Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:30:59Yasi Salek?

  Oh, maybe because you didn't have the CD.

• 1:31:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, I didn't have it.

• 1:31:02Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:12Speaker 04

  Oh, I've heard this.

• 1:31:13Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's like this insane, just purely a cappella.

• 1:31:17Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:31:18Yasi Salek?

  Woo.

• 1:31:19Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm. And the only one that she was saying she kind of used a little bit of her imagination with.

• 1:31:25Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, she said it's not 100% true.

• 1:31:27Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:31:27Yasi Salek?

  Um, that song gets the fuck out of me.

• 1:31:30Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:31:31Yasi Salek?

  There's something about hearing her naked vocals that's so.

• 1:31:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's so cool. After watching her do this, because when she does it live, I was like, I want to just sing Adam.

• 1:31:41Yasi Salek?

  You should.

• 1:31:43Speaker 04

  You should.

• 1:31:44Yasi Salek?

  It's such a good release. All right, let's talk about the reviews. David Brown and Entertainment Weekly gave it a C+. Imagine being this wrong.

• 1:31:50Speaker 04

  I know, can you even?

• 1:31:52Yasi Salek?

  "Spiteful and seething, Alanis Morissette's You Out or No turns jealous bile into something worth hearing. Over a throbbing gristle beat that grabs your collar and rips it off, the Canadian newcomer unleashes her rage at a lover who dumped her for another, threatening to disrupt dinner and taunting him. Every time I scratch my nails down someone else's back, I hope you feel it." The rest of Morissette's debut album, Jagged Little Pill, is much harder to swallow. What sounds arresting on a single grows weary on a full album. Producer, co-songwriter Glenn Ballard's arrangements are clunky mixtures of alternative mood music and hammy arena rock, and the 21-year-old Morissette tends to wildly over-sing every other line. That is a feature, bitch, not a bug.

• 1:32:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:32:37Yasi Salek?

  Okay, incorrect. Um, otherwise, I think it got pretty good reviews. The LA Times gave it three and a half stars. Um, Steve Hockman, he also, uh, made some comparisons to Bob Dylan, Positively Fourth Street, and John Lennon's How Do You Sleep? Um, there's two reviews? This is such a thing, and it wasn't just with women, but they, it was a very, like, big thing to put two records together. But with women, they always did it, just with other women. And this was Alanis Morissette, Jagged Little Pill, and Jennifer Trynan, Cockamamie. It's an album I'm not familiar with. This is, uh, Chicago Tribute.

• 1:33:14Yasi Salek?

  The Canadian writes like no one would expect a 20-year-old to write. That is, she leads with her emotion. She strives for catharsis, but often merely sounds histrionic. Have they ever, I'm sorry, the feminism is just like has actually taken up, it's squatting back in the audience, never leaving.

• 1:33:29Speaker 04

  It's crazy.

• 1:33:30Yasi Salek?

  Do they ever call men histrionic? Have you ever heard them call a male singer? Does anyone call Youngblood histrionic? I'm just curious.

• 1:33:37Speaker 04

  And it's also like crazy because the thing when women sing aggressively in any capacity, people just can't stand it.

• 1:33:45Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:45Speaker 04

  But nobody's ever been like, no one would ever say anything about like any guy screaming. They're like, oh, this is so cool.

• 1:33:51Yasi Salek?

  But the moment it comes out of them. Daley, histrionic? No, we love him.

• 1:33:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:33:55Yasi Salek?

  Celebrate.

• 1:33:55Speaker 04

  Yeah. The psychobabble.

• 1:33:59Yasi Salek?

  Psychobabble.

• 1:34:00Speaker 04

  Infuriated me to like my core that makes me so angry. Like that is so diminishing. It's so fucking sexist.

• 1:34:10Speaker 04

  And just you have this artist who is like incredible and speaking with so much depth. And you're gonna like reduce it to like, we can't stand you being a little mad. It's just like crazy to me. It's so disrespectful.

• 1:34:24Yasi Salek?

  Here's where it really got me though. This is, and I feel for it because obviously, damn, I'm really like absolutely my Andrea Dworkin bag right now. But obviously, we all have internalized misogyny, even women. I have it all the time. But there was a woman, Lucy O'Brien, who reviewed it for Vox. And she said, she mostly gave it a positive review, but then she said she only has to iron out the sometimes shrill, mannered aspects of her delivery. No one loves a whiner and she'll be cool. Woman on woman crime, babe. Shrill? Once again, have, do you have, have we ever called a man shrill?

• 1:35:03Speaker 04

  Never.

• 1:35:04Yasi Salek?

  No.

• 1:35:05Speaker 04

  I get this a lot, people, and I don't read anything anymore ever.

• 1:35:10Yasi Salek?

  No, that's illegal.

• 1:35:11Speaker 04

  It's not, it's a long time ago.

• 1:35:11Yasi Salek?

  I'm sober also.

• 1:35:12Speaker 04

  But being like, this woman screaming, like, they're just like, can't, they get so mad about it. And it's just like, why don't, are we allowed to swear? And no, we can. Goddamn Gorgeous People song, right? I just didn't know, because there's like, video cameras, something, is this like, a different?

• 1:35:26Yasi Salek?

  No, same swearing podcast.

• 1:35:28Speaker 04

  So, it's just like, so fucking shitty, it's.

• 1:35:31Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:32Speaker 04

  They just can't handle it. They cannot swallow, like, it, they just can't.

• 1:35:37Yasi Salek?

  No, it goes, it goes to like, so many places, like, you just reminded me, because you said, can we swear? I was like, looking through my Instagram, and there was a comment on one of my posts from some man, who was like, "Great podcast, but you need to stop saying fucking with like, such an emphasis every time." And I was like, "Do I?"

• 1:35:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, I actually don't, yeah.

• 1:35:58Yasi Salek?

  Did the police come to your house and make you listen to this awful podcast of this woman who says fucking too much?

• 1:36:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:36:03Yasi Salek?

  Pack it up, bitch.

• 1:36:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, just go away.

• 1:36:04Yasi Salek?

  Go away.

• 1:36:05Speaker 04

  Go away.

• 1:36:06Yasi Salek?

  "They also must compare her to other women or they'll die." "Morissette isn't as good a writer as Liz Phair, but she's a better singer and has attitude to spare."

• 1:36:14Speaker 04

  Okay, it's so rude for both of them.

• 1:36:17Yasi Salek?

  To, to what end?

• 1:36:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, like, what, why even say it?

• 1:36:20Yasi Salek?

  Why even say it?

• 1:36:21Speaker 04

  Why even say it?

• 1:36:21Yasi Salek?

  Are they running a 10K against each other, like?

• 1:36:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's crazy. And they had a good relationship, right? They toured together, I felt like, for a little bit, maybe not.

• 1:36:29Yasi Salek?

  Like, I'm sorry.

• 1:36:32Speaker 04

  It's so, yeah.

• 1:36:33Yasi Salek?

  Elton John is a better singer than Bob Dylan, but, like, did you ever?

• 1:36:37Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:36:37Yasi Salek?

  Read such a thing?

• 1:36:38Speaker 04

  No, because they view the men as human beings, with women, it's like, you can only be in this one category, you guys all have to sit in this same spot.

• 1:36:45Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, well, I mean, listen, I don't want to be completely histrionic. They obviously did compare men, I mean, I'm sure they would compare like, Eddie Vedder and Kurt Cobain, and there was like, things, but it was just, the comparisons felt less gendered.

• 1:37:00Speaker 00

  Visible puts the ultimate wireless hack in the palm of your hand. With unlimited 5G wireless data and hotspot designed to keep you connected. Powered by Verizon's 5G network. And no contract holding you back. Plans start at $25 a month. Or get the premium Visible Plus Pro Plan and save $10 on your first month when you use promo code "HACK". Make the switch at visible.com. Terms apply. See visible.com for details.

• 1:37:31Speaker 06

  Low energy, unfocused, foggy? You might be dehydrated. Gatorade Zero Powders have been scientifically designed to help improve hydration balance in the body. With a clinically proven electrolyte blend and no artificial colors or flavors. Great tasting hydration, no matter where you're going. Shop now online or at retailers nationwide. Gatorade: Hydrates Better Than Water. Is it in you? Symptoms noted are signs of mild to moderate dehydration. Consult a healthcare professional if symptoms persist.

• 1:38:00Yasi Salek?

  All right, they put together a band. It's time to tour. Dave Navarro recommends Jesse Tobias, who was in the band Mother Tongue, also in Red Hot Chili Peppers for one smooth month in 1993, between Eric Marshall and Dave Navarro. They got drummer Taylor Hawkins, may he rest in peace, and guitarist Nick Lashley, who had played with this Canadian rock singer named Sash Jordan, and bassist Chris Chaney. And because they booked the tour before the album took off, they were in a van playing club shows. That's crazy. Yeah. And then, obviously, over the course of the 18-month tour, it goes from like, club shows to stadiums, you know? Radiohead opened for them on a stretch of this tour, which is so interesting.

• 1:38:44Yasi Salek?

  Who, at the time, were playing songs at their set off of the not-yet-completed 1997 album, OK Computer. And they're just playing Karma Police and Paranoid Android, opening for Alanis Morissette. I went to this tour. You did? Yes. I didn't... Oh, my god. My opening act wasn't Radiohead. It was Imperial Drag? Okay. Imperial Drag, which was a sort of like a 90s band that's... They were good, but didn't. At the Greek Theatre here in Los Angeles. Wow. It was 96. It was amazing.

• 1:39:19Speaker 04

  Oh my god.

• 1:39:20Yasi Salek?

  It was incredible. But then back to the teen girl of it all, I was like walking out, I mean 96, I was 14.

• 1:39:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:39:25Yasi Salek?

  I was walking out and someone gave me what at the time, me 14, brand new, green, thought was a backstage pass, but it was like an after show pass, but I don't know the difference at that time. I was like, oh my god, they just like handed it to me.

• 1:39:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:39:36Yasi Salek?

  And I went to this like after show thing and Alanis, I don't think Alanis was there, but I met the Wayans Brothers.

• 1:39:44Speaker 04

  What?

• 1:39:46Yasi Salek?

  1996 was crazy, you guys.

• 1:39:47Speaker 04

  How did you even know where to go with that?

• 1:39:49Yasi Salek?

  I think I, I think I just asked.

• 1:39:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:39:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Um, but yeah, there I was with Sean and Marlon Wayans chopping it up, met the opening band. And I was like, why are you giving a 14 year old girl a fucking after show pass? We'll never know. Um, I had a great t-shirt from that tour too, may it rest in peace. Tiny little, I need to get a real tiny violin to like bust out for every time. If you guys know where I can purchase an actual tiny violin, bang my line.

• 1:40:19Speaker 04

  Someone send Jazzy one.

• 1:40:20Yasi Salek?

  Send me a tiny violin. It's the least you can do, honestly. Okay, so they're touring. Alanis loved touring with, uh, Radiohead and she found them to be very inspiring.

• 1:40:32Speaker 04

  So do they have to move all these venues up? I mean, when, when is this tour? When did this tour?

• 1:40:36Yasi Salek?

  It starts in 95 and goes through the end of 96.

• 1:40:39Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:40:40Yasi Salek?

  Um, I don't know what the logistics were, probably. They probably had to like, well, no, they probably had a short tour. If I, I'm just guessing. They probably had a shorter tour booked and then they probably extended it and put it in larger venues.

• 1:40:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:40:54Yasi Salek?

  Cause 18 month tour for one album is longer than I think you would have planned if it hadn't blown up.

• 1:41:00Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah, and she did play massive venues.

• 1:41:04Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I mean, you see it in the, in the, uh, different documentary footage.

• 1:41:10Yasi Salek?

  She said, "The reaction of the audience has been so amazing and open. It's comforting and bittersweet to know that I'm not the only one who's gone through these things. At the same time, it's a little disturbing that apparently there's a lot of people out there having gone through such painful things. The reaction has been pretty intense. There was a mosh pit in Minneapolis when we played there. Is it me or is this music not about mosh pitting?"

• 1:41:31Yasi Salek?

  She also said, "It takes a lot out of me singing every night, knowing there are people listening to things I never thought you could even share with one person, let alone everyone." Yeah. God, it'd be crazy. Yeah. They also passed on replacing Sinead O'Connor on Lollapalooza that year. I went to that as well. You did? It was replaced by Elastica. It was a great Lollapalooza. Oh, Elastica replaced it? Elastica replaced them. Hole played that Lollapalooza. Oh, my God. Pavement, Sonic Youth. Oh, yeah, that was when Lollapalooza was... Jesus Lizard touring. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Let's talk a bit about the press around this album, not the reviews. It's so fucking insane. You brought this up and I watched it too. There's an MTV interview on YouTube that's in its entirety.

• 1:42:13Yasi Salek?

  I think they probably edited it for TV, but we see the entirety. And they're asking her like these kind of serious questions and she's giving this very serious answer about how like she wasn't as... They're asking about her prior albums and she's saying, "You know, I wasn't as fearless as I am now when I was younger." And she's starting to talk, I think what she's about to say is, "There was an impressive environment." And they... Some guy out of nowhere comes in and is like, "Wait, wait, wait, wait." And she's like... Interrupts the interview, gets in the camera. Puts his hand on her. Yes. And is like, "You have a hair in your face." She literally had... It was like this. It was like this. It was like this. It was like right here.

• 1:42:54Yasi Salek?

  And she... It's so great. Can you imagine? Like, what is... And she's like in the middle of like really eloquently... And then she goes... She's so startled and she's like, "Okay." And then she goes, "Um, I don't particularly care." Yeah. It was so... But she said it kind of under her breath. It was just like... I was like...

• 1:43:10Speaker 08

  Stylistically, there's actually a pretty huge difference. They were done when I was in my, you know, 15, 16 kind of year. And I don't think I was as secure and as fearless as I am now in the sense that I don't think I could write the same way then. And I was also in an...

• 1:43:29Speaker 09

  You just have some hair coming on your face?

• 1:43:31Speaker 08

  Do I?

• 1:43:31Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 1:43:32Speaker 08

  Okay.

• 1:43:33Speaker 09

  You want to answer that one more time?

• 1:43:34Speaker 08

  Yeah, you can give us a...

• 1:43:35Speaker 09

  Yeah, we're gonna take it from that question.

• 1:43:37Speaker 08

  Unless you want the hair there, that's fine. I don't really particularly care.

• 1:43:41Yasi Salek?

  Not to be fucking burning my bra, but like... Could you picture?

• 1:43:46Speaker 04

  I'll burn my bra.

• 1:43:47Yasi Salek?

  Could you? Could you picture an MTV presenter coming over to Edward Vedder and being like?

• 1:43:52Speaker 04

  Who's, by the way, who did interviews like this. Literally, yes.

• 1:43:56Yasi Salek?

  And being like, sir, could you please stop? We need to move a hair out.

• 1:44:00Speaker 04

  Your hair.

• 1:44:00Yasi Salek?

  I'm gonna reach over with my hand.

• 1:44:02Speaker 04

  You have a little hair on, like, in your face. It's crazy.

• 1:44:07Yasi Salek?

  Set me. I was like, this is insane. No, I have a hair out of place.

• 1:44:09Speaker 04

  I feel like there were so many questions that were like, what do you think people in Canada would think? Since your pop career, it's like, who gives a fuck? This woman just sold thirty-three million copies of her record.

• 1:44:19Yasi Salek?

  Well, that was the prevailing, like, storyline, right? Like, that she's fake.

• 1:44:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:44:24Yasi Salek?

  Because.

• 1:44:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's what they went with.

• 1:44:26Yasi Salek?

  Because you were this pop girl and now you're this angry.

• 1:44:31Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:44:32Yasi Salek?

  Grungy, which the music is not even remotely grung.

• 1:44:34Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:44:35Yasi Salek?

  And that this, so it was all fake, it's all contrived, whatever. And I'm like, sorry, I don't know, when you were.

• 1:44:41Speaker 04

  She was a child.

• 1:44:42Yasi Salek?

  When you were thirteen years, I mean, okay, in fairness, I was pretty much exactly like this at thirteen years old, but not when I was nine.

• 1:44:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, I, no, I had no idea who I was until I left where I grew up.

• 1:44:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:53Speaker 04

  You know, especially in her position where she's like, kind of, has all these people who are like, telling her it's not okay and what she needs to do. It's like, this is, she was, she wasn't able to express herself. This is like, what makes Jag Little Pill so important.

• 1:45:05Yasi Salek?

  You ever heard of growing and changing, bitch?

• 1:45:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, it's.

• 1:45:09Yasi Salek?

  Nobody?

• 1:45:10Speaker 04

  That narrative, that kind of just, it's, she's just like, kind of cheap. It's like, what?

• 1:45:13Yasi Salek?

  It's so cheap.

• 1:45:14Speaker 04

  Like, why even, I don't know, yeah.

• 1:45:17Yasi Salek?

  I mean, Courtney Love tried out to be in the Mickey Mouse Club.

• 1:45:20Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:45:22Yasi Salek?

  You know?

• 1:45:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:45:23Yasi Salek?

  You have.

• 1:45:23Speaker 04

  Layers.

• 1:45:24Yasi Salek?

  We contain multitudes.

• 1:45:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, like, we're like.

• 1:45:27Yasi Salek?

  I did swing dancing. We don't have to talk about it. I don't want to get into it. We don't really, we really don't. We don't, the nineties were really crazy. No one remembers that there was a whole swing dancing, psychobilly through line. The film Swingers was very popular. Again, we don't need to get into it.

• 1:45:41Speaker 04

  I have not heard about that. I can't wait.

• 1:45:44Yasi Salek?

  Once again, I'm, should not publicly shame myself and can't help myself.

• 1:45:50Yasi Salek?

  So she gets, this is actually very unheard of. She's so popular that she gets simultaneous spin in Rolling Stone cover stories. The Rolling Stone one has a huge headline that says Angry White Female.

• 1:46:01Speaker 04

  This is so upsetting.

• 1:46:03Yasi Salek?

  Which she actually said later on Oprah's Super Soul Sunday. Get into it bitch. That she was really happy about that in a way because she was so used to just being an sexual object. And she was like, well, at least like an angry white female is a person. It's a thinking person. It's not just an object.

• 1:46:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:46:23Yasi Salek?

  I thought that was so interesting.

• 1:46:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, that is interesting. I feel like a lot of what I read, she was like, no, I was angry about that. But it wasn't, it was more so just about that it was diminishing her down to one thing. The whole thing is she has so many different emotions going all the time. And she was like, once again, you're just completely missing the point. I'm not being seen.

• 1:46:42Yasi Salek?

  It was, yeah.

• 1:46:43Speaker 04

  Because she didn't know that that was, they were gonna say that, right?

• 1:46:46Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, of course not.

• 1:46:47Speaker 04

  God, what a...

• 1:46:49Yasi Salek?

  It's funny that it wasn't until 1992 that like the world was like, women can be angry? They get mad about stuff?

• 1:46:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:46:58Yasi Salek?

  You guys, what are you talking about?

• 1:46:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:47:00Yasi Salek?

  This shit's wild.

• 1:47:01Speaker 04

  Again, it is weird too, like in my whole life, having listened to her, I never would have just been like, she's angry. Like it's, it's...

• 1:47:10Yasi Salek?

  But you know, again, a lot of people are just going off, you ought to know.

• 1:47:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, right.

• 1:47:13Yasi Salek?

  It is also crazy that, to think about how,

• 1:47:19Yasi Salek?

  again, what these women did, like that they, they kind of bulldozed through and took the brunt of like, being angry and being, you know, maligned and diminished and reduced for it. So that we now live in a society that it's like almost impossible to imagine someone caring.

• 1:47:37Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:47:38Yasi Salek?

  That there's...

• 1:47:39Speaker 04

  Right, yeah.

• 1:47:40Yasi Salek?

  But on the flip side, all the women who are very popular to the level of an Alanis or even honestly a Courtney Love are pretty, uh...

• 1:47:52Yasi Salek?

  I want to word this properly, but pretty...

• 1:47:57Yasi Salek?

  tame pop stars, you know? I mean, I think they will never diminish the work of, you know, pop musicians, female pop musicians. I think they do great stuff, amazing songwriting, a lot of emotion. But they're not provocative in that, in that way anyways, you know? So I just think that is kind of interesting that even though they kind of, they pushed this door down, then they just disappeared.

• 1:48:20Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:48:21Yasi Salek?

  And then it went away, you know?

• 1:48:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:48:25Speaker 04

  She was also, I feel like too, just her live, she was doing something different live where it was like she was massive and in this huge world, but it wasn't, it didn't, it felt real.

• 1:48:34Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, she was just wearing a t-shirt.

• 1:48:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, it wasn't like this orchestrated

• 1:48:38Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:39Speaker 04

  thing, we're gonna make you this so other people can be, you can please other people. It's like, she was like, this is my release, like I have to do this.

• 1:48:47Yasi Salek?

  She said in the Jagged documentary, I think, or some, again, it's all mixing up, but one of these cover shoots, they had to reshoot the whole thing because they styled her and she was like, I can't, I don't like that. And she came back in her own clothes, you know?

• 1:49:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's, yeah. I have this conversation with a couple of my close friends who are musicians because you get that pressure all the time. And the thing about it is in the moment, it's like, you have to do this, you have to do this. But then you have to live with those pictures and you're supposed to use those pictures. And you're like, this doesn't even look like me. I don't even want to see this, it makes me sad to look at.

• 1:49:17Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it makes me sad.

• 1:49:18Speaker 04

  And why are you saying that I need to be wearing, like, why can I just be the way that I am and that's also okay?

• 1:49:26Yasi Salek?

  No, because they want to sell stuff.

• 1:49:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, they want to sell stuff, which is what's so cool about Jagged Little Pill again.

• 1:49:30Yasi Salek?

  They did sell stuff.

• 1:49:31Speaker 04

  Fucking sold stuff. So many stuffs.

• 1:49:34Yasi Salek?

  So many stuffs, so many compact discs.

• 1:49:37Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:49:38Yasi Salek?

  And vinyl is still available for you guys. I don't know if people can see that. Here's some gorgeous writing in the Spin Magazine cover story by James Hanaham.

• 1:49:51Yasi Salek?

  21-year-old Morissette has successfully packaged female anger and sold it back to ex-boyfriends worldwide.

• 1:50:00Yasi Salek?

  Her debut album, Dragged Little Pill, is racing up the Billboard album chart with "all the fury of a ravenous she-wolf hunting her prey."

• 1:50:11Yasi Salek?

  I hate you. "Her monosyllable provides few clues as to whether or not she'll bite my head off when my espionage becomes clear." It's just so interesting because we just sort of talked about what informed Dragged Little Pill, which like, I mean, there's no way to talk about Dragged Little Pill without talking about the sort of root pain and trauma that informed it. And then she makes this amazing thing, and it is successful beyond her wildest dreams. And then she suffers another kind of trauma, which is becoming extremely famous extremely quickly at an extremely young age.

• 1:50:56Yasi Salek?

  She said, "I didn't laugh for like, two years. One has to almost experience it, the fame, to be able to truly see that it doesn't offer what it's touted as being able to offer. I had this naive thought that if I became famous internationally, or even in America, that I'd be hanging out with Johnny Depp or having lunch with Sharon Stone. But what happened was I felt more disconnected from people. I thought the opposite would happen. I would feel seen and less visible, less invisible. But that didn't happen." I mean, do you have experience, I mean, I know you're not, you know.

• 1:51:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, I have not experienced that at all.

• 1:51:31Yasi Salek?

  Well, but you are, you are to, you have a relationship with a fandom.

• 1:51:38Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm. Yeah.

• 1:51:40Yasi Salek?

  Is it, does it ever feel like, I don't know, like off or weird or dehumanizing to just, and this is, this is to say nothing about, there's nothing wrong with how, with there being fandom. It's great, it's part of the experience, but it is, it's gotta be so bizarre to have people have a relationship with you and you have a relationship with them back.

• 1:52:04Speaker 04

  Yeah. I mean, especially to you, I feel like when it comes to really... Emotional stuff, because a lot of people connect with it and a lot of it is like traumas and stuff. So I feel like it gets to be like kind of heavy sometimes, especially if you're an empath. You're just like taking it on. So you have to have boundaries. But I mean, I feel like what I struggle with the most, way more than I kind of lucked out. I feel like most Bully fans are like really sweet and nice and stuff. But it that more of the pressures and stuff is way so much more from the music industry side. That's what's stressful is because you're just constantly having people be like, do this thing. Don't do this thing. You have to do this thing. Oh, you don't want to do it? Well, you should really do it.

• 1:52:43Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:52:43Speaker 04

  Ruin your career. Yeah. And so that's where it kind of gets like, I can only imagine her in like certain situations. She's exhausted having to do like some stupid photo shoot or something. She's like, I just can't do the same. Why is it like, you kind of feel like to an extent, you're just like perpetually defending yourself to just like exist.

• 1:53:04Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:04Speaker 04

  The way that you want to. But I feel like that was probably a lot of stress for her, but.

• 1:53:09Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, totally. She, she also said in a interview that she'd be. She'd arrive at like airports and there'd be like fans with scissors, like wanting to cut her hair off. To like keep it, you know?

• 1:53:22Speaker 04

  I would never know what that is.

• 1:53:23Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I just, I mean, that's like a different layer of the whole thing, but.

• 1:53:27Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:53:27Yasi Salek?

  Um, also, this is, I think.

• 1:53:32Yasi Salek?

  Universal to people that put things out in the world. The more people see it, the more you're gonna get hate.

• 1:53:40Speaker 04

  Mm hmm. And the hate is usually louder.

• 1:53:43Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 1:53:43Speaker 04

  This is why you can't read things like.

• 1:53:45Yasi Salek?

  Don't read the comments. Don't read the subreddit.

• 1:53:48Speaker 04

  I haven't read it stuff for so long. If somebody I know and respect is like, you should read this. This is good. This is nice.

• 1:53:53Yasi Salek?

  Right. And they've already pre-vetted it.

• 1:53:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, but.

• 1:53:57Yasi Salek?

  But yeah, she said, as soon as it became white hot, the hatred came out, abject hatred and incessant. There were websites erected to figure out how to kill me. It was dark shit. There was one UK journalist who wrote about a photo of me on stage with my hair flying around. He wrote, she looks like the Elephant Man. Like, why would you even write that? That's just mean.

• 1:54:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:54:13Yasi Salek?

  So I quickly stopped reading anything. It was a survival strategy.

• 1:54:16Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 1:54:17Yasi Salek?

  I have PTSD from it.

• 1:54:18Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 1:54:19Yasi Salek?

  I'm sure.

• 1:54:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:54:20Yasi Salek?

  Um, so she wins four Grammys off the back of Jagged Little Pill. Best female rock vocal performance, best rock song, those are for you, I don't know. Best rock album and album of the year.

• 1:54:30Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 1:54:30Yasi Salek?

  Such a huge.

• 1:54:31Speaker 04

  Massive.

• 1:54:32Yasi Salek?

  Massive.

• 1:54:33Speaker 04

  Massive.

• 1:54:35Yasi Salek?

  In July, there's an article that comes out in Details Magazine with Joni Mitchell, who, she says,

• 1:54:47Yasi Salek?

  "I am an arrogant artist. I get really arrogant when they start pitting me against people and saying something or someone's like me, when that something is mediocre. If you want to be a songwriter and see what the standard is, you have to take a look at Dylan and me. Dylan tremendously upgraded the American pop song in terms of content, and I, well musically, I'm further out than Dylan, and as a result, less popular. But I'm a musical explorer and not just a pop songwriter, or an occasional writer of a song or half a song, like these other women. Alanis Morissette writes words, someone else helps set it to music, and then she's kind of stylized into the part. To me, Sheryl Crow is a style invention, and I know some of her inventors. A lot of these women were made." I thought it was really interesting. Again, back to the internalized misogyny.

• 1:55:29Yasi Salek?

  You know, it's just like, I, like, Joni, talk about having to fucking claw your way through the most male-dominated space on Earth, you know, like,

• 1:55:40Yasi Salek?

  just to give her some grace, but like, god, it must have felt shitty to read that.

• 1:55:43Speaker 04

  Yeah. Also, can you imagine having like a fraction of that confidence?

• 1:55:47Yasi Salek?

  No.

• 1:55:48Speaker 04

  Like, I can't even.

• 1:55:49Yasi Salek?

  I'm better than Bob Dylan.

• 1:55:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:55:50Yasi Salek?

  Yes, bitch.

• 1:55:51Speaker 04

  It's just like, what? I'm just, again, just like, why say it? Just like, don't say that. I don't know.

• 1:55:57Yasi Salek?

  I mean, it's like, on one hand, I almost, like, it's almost back to what we're saying, it's like, why are you comparing me?

• 1:56:04Speaker 04

  Why are you, yeah.

• 1:56:05Yasi Salek?

  Why are you putting, why are you constantly, and why is it only women? Like, she, and she's like, I'm like Bob Dylan. I'm not like Alanis Morissette. Whatever she thinks about, but it's like, I kind of get where that's coming from, although, you know, again, a woman, a woman in crime. All right. December of 96 is when this jagged little pill tour finally ends. Alanis is burnt the fuck out. She starts doing Ayamgarh yoga, and then goes to India for six weeks with her mom and a couple of friends.

• 1:56:32Speaker 04

  Oh, she went with her mom?

• 1:56:33Yasi Salek?

  That's, that's what it said in one of the articles I wrote.

• 1:56:38Yasi Salek?

  And this trip inspires much of the concept of the next album.

• 1:56:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, I just feel like.

• 1:56:44Yasi Salek?

  And the rest of her. Yeah, well, I, I think, it's interesting, because like, I think. What seems to startle people who only have familiarity with Jagged Little Pill is that they feel like this artist made some like huge U-turn. But I feel like when you read about, first of all, she was 20, so this is the beginning of everything. When you read about her, it's like she's been interested. She started going to therapy pretty young. She's been interested in spirituality and psychology from a very early time. And so Faith stay with me. If faith stay with me, come on, baby. The writing was on the wall. And it's no surprise, even if we were looking at the text of Jagged Little Pill,

• 1:57:28Yasi Salek?

  there's a lot of sort of like surrender and like latent spirituality in that too. So it's like, it's not that surprising, but I get why people who can only surface kind of saw that. They're like, what is the sitar in this bitch? Which we will go to the sitar in this bitch in a little bit.

• 1:57:46Yasi Salek?

  I thought it was interesting, so 97

• 1:57:50Yasi Salek?

  is really a year where, I think thanks in huge part to Lance Morissette, and they even talk about in the Lilith Fair documentary, like how many doors that opened, like that a woman was this high of a selling artist, you know? But it really like the age of kind of girl power comes into play around 97. Obviously, we had already had Hole, we had already had Garbage, Fiona Apple, and you know, the Riot Girl movement, P.G. Harvey, Tori Amos, Liz Phares, we have all this stuff. First Lilith Fair is in 97. The Spice Girls album, which is, you know, part and parcel with girl power, obviously, the commercialization of girl power. But still, that came out in 96 and the movie came out in 97.

• 1:58:35Yasi Salek?

  No Doubt It's Just a Girl came out in 95, which really does play on a lot of the same themes that we've been talking about of like having, feeling like you have no agency and aren't taken seriously because you're a girl.

• 1:58:49Yasi Salek?

  Anne Powers wrote this whole piece about it in Spin in 1997, The Goat, Anne Powers. I know. Girl power may be a manufactured term designed to sell things, for instance, abstinence and record albums, to an increasingly assertive female audience. Yet, the phrase, like juvenile delinquency in the 1950s or sexual revolution in the 60s, also indicates a serious social shift. Young women, shunned or patronized by everyone from social policymakers to feminist intellectuals to entertainment execs, are finally insisting on the right to star in their own lives. Not since the height of Beatlemania have adults been so aware of girls' power to shape trends, and never before have girls been so active in the culture at large. Pop music is dominated by young women artists.

• 1:59:34Yasi Salek?

  And then she goes on to talk about, she's like, "I'm here to remind you of the mess you left when you went away," shouted Alanis Morissette in You Oughta Know, the 1995 hit that began girl culture's hero phase. Her yell was so melodramatic that fans of cred girls like Love and Fair were ready to send her back to drama club. But even if she was beyond fake, her hocus pocus did the trick. Raising her voice changed Morissette from a permed Canadian child star with a fading dance pop career to a vengeful goddess ready to answer the petitions of millions of fans. Morissette turned out to be more new age peacenik than spiritual terrorist, but she never lost the momentum of that first cold cock to the universal older man. That was good. I think here Anne Powers is reflecting how this was experienced in the society,

• 2:00:19Yasi Salek?

  and I thought that was really interesting.

• 2:00:23Yasi Salek?

  Teenage girls now preoccupy the public consciousness the way teenage boys did in the 1950s. And I think that kind of hasn't changed. You know, like, if you think about the reason that the biggest pop stars on the planet are all women. Yeah. It's because teen girls are super powerful fandoms, you know? In 1998, Alanis appears on two tracks of my beloved David Matthews. David Matthews Band, "Before These Crowded Streets." This is huge for you. Huge for me. "Don't Drink the Water." She goes so crazy on that one. So good. Also huge for me, the City of Angels soundtrack, which, produced by our beloved Rob Cavallo, comes out with her song, "Uninvited." Yeah.

• 2:01:08Yasi Salek?

  Massive song. Massive tune.

• 2:01:21Yasi Salek?

  Absolute banger. This song actually does not even release as a single. It becomes a number one single anyways on the top 40 mainstream chart. Hits number four on the Hot 100.

• 2:01:31Speaker 04

  Grammy, right?

• 2:01:32Yasi Salek?

  It won two Grammys in 1999, Best Female Rock Vocal Performance. She's still so huge, you know? And also, this song is fucking amazing. Okay, and then later that year in November, she puts out Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie. I feel that we need justice for Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie. It's really long and I didn't say the words properly the second time. I think people don't give it enough credit.

• 2:01:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:01:59Yasi Salek?

  She almost didn't make another album. She was like, "I quit."

• 2:02:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:02:02Yasi Salek?

  "I'm out of here."

• 2:02:06Yasi Salek?

  But then, again, surrender. As soon as you quit, you're like, "Oh, maybe I could, because I don't put this pressure on myself." This is what the New York Times said, "The tone is different. Where jagged Lil' Pill often lashed out, much of Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie is about reconciliation with parents, with lovers, with the fears and weaknesses that Miss Morissette saw in herself."

• 2:02:27Yasi Salek?

  I think this is an amazing album.

• 2:02:30Speaker 04

  Yeah. I almost, I almost feel like under rug swept.

• 2:02:35Yasi Salek?

  I know, I love, don't fuckin'...

• 2:02:37Speaker 04

  I kinda like that one more than this one.

• 2:02:39Yasi Salek?

  I think they're both really good.

• 2:02:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, in their own right, but...

• 2:02:43Yasi Salek?

  I just, okay, we need to talk about "Front Row."

• 2:02:53Yasi Salek?

  Because it's a really good song, but also it is about Kevin Smith, which he confirmed in 2012, which is so wild. Which also puts really into context the lyrics.

• 2:03:08Yasi Salek?

  It's so good. "I am in the front row with popcorn, so I can see you up close."

• 2:03:14Yasi Salek?

  He was in, you know, he's in his films.

• 2:03:17Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:03:18Yasi Salek?

  He said that the lyrics were partially inspired by a phone conversation he and Morissette once had. They were mutually attracted to each other but never actually dated. His suggestion of naming the reasons they were not a couple became part of the lyrics.

• 2:03:30Speaker 04

  That's sweet.

• 2:03:31Yasi Salek?

  That's sweet. I started by saying things like, "You smoke, you live in New Jersey," Kevin Smith. You started saying things like, "You belong to the world."

• 2:03:40Yasi Salek?

  We love Kevin Smith in this house. Okay, we gotta talk about "Thank You, India." I feel like "Thank You, India," it's not called "Thank You, India," it's called "Thank You." We gotta talk about "Thank You."

• 2:03:55Yasi Salek?

  I feel it's become a bit of a punchline, and I think that's unfair.

• 2:03:59Speaker 04

  I like, I love it. I love "Thank You."

• 2:04:01Yasi Salek?

  I love it.

• 2:04:02Speaker 04

  I was telling you, I was tearing up during the music video, something about, I was just like, oh my god.

• 2:04:06Yasi Salek?

  That's the one where she's stand, she has this super long hair and she's nude, right? And she's just standing and people are going all around her.

• 2:04:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:04:12Yasi Salek?

  Oh, it's a really good video.

• 2:04:14Speaker 04

  She's like going in all these like, public places where she wouldn't, yeah. Like, it was like, a nightmare. But not really, she was like, again, surrendering in acceptance.

• 2:04:23Yasi Salek?

  I feel like Rob Sheffield nailed it. He said, "Thank You could have been a pretentious disaster, but instead, it's a pretentious stroke of brilliance. She finds something shockingly smart to say about her spiritual crises, riding an indelible 80s, uh, album-oriented rock synth hook and wailing like Robert Plant stealing cashmere back from Jimmy Page."

• 2:04:42Speaker 04

  I love "Thank You."

• 2:04:43Yasi Salek?

  I love it.

• 2:04:47Yasi Salek?

  Let her thank India.

• 2:04:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:04:49Yasi Salek?

  She went to India and it changed her. She can't thank India?

• 2:04:52Speaker 04

  She went at a time where she really needed to go. I mean, they, everyone should thank India because she got, agreed to do another record after she had.

• 2:05:01Yasi Salek?

  And then, again, there's still these like, similar themes, right? How about "Stop eating when I'm full up?"

• 2:05:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:05:08Yasi Salek?

  You know, the eating disorder stuff? How about, uh, them transparent dangling carrots about, you know, the overachieving?

• 2:05:17Yasi Salek?

  When she does "Thank You" silence.

• 2:05:21Speaker 04

  I know.

• 2:05:22Yasi Salek?

  It's really powerful.

• 2:05:23Speaker 04

  It's really powerful and it's again, like we were talking about before, where it's like she's kind of forced to find, in a way, because of her depth, like the silver lining in all of these lessons, whether or not they're unfortunate or not. She's like, "Oh, thank you."

• 2:05:39Yasi Salek?

  I think that's a wonderful song.

• 2:05:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:05:40Yasi Salek?

  Justice for "Thank You."

• 2:05:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:05:43Yasi Salek?

  "Are You Still Mad?" also a pretty good song, also a very Yasi core lyric, "Are You Mad at Me?" that I would be good.

• 2:05:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:05:50Yasi Salek?

  It's kind of like "Perfect Part Two," you know?

• 2:05:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:05:52Yasi Salek?

  But it's like the other side of it, or it's like, "What if I could be good if I wasn't all of these things?"

• 2:06:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:06:02Yasi Salek?

  If I lose my hair, if I'm not young anymore, if I'm not the queen. This one makes me cry every time.

• 2:06:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's what I was gonna say.

• 2:06:10Yasi Salek?

  This one is very interesting because there's a buzz on Glenn's guitar on this one. And he was like, "I redid it," and she was like, "Nope."

• 2:06:18Speaker 04

  No.

• 2:06:18Yasi Salek?

  We're using that one. You can hear it on the track.

• 2:06:20Speaker 04

  I want to listen and hear. I read that, but I didn't go back and listen.

• 2:06:24Yasi Salek?

  You literally can hear it.

• 2:06:31Yasi Salek?

  I love it. And then she plays the flute at the end.

• 2:06:35Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 2:06:35Yasi Salek?

  That's my girl.

• 2:06:36Speaker 04

  She can do it all.

• 2:06:37Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:40Yasi Salek?

  I don't know if she's like an amazing flute player, but that's not the point. That's exactly opposite of the point, actually.

• 2:06:51Speaker 04

  I love that she didn't let him, that she was like, "We're keeping this fuzzy guitar."

• 2:06:54Yasi Salek?

  Buzz. "Unsent" is also, I really like it.

• 2:07:07Yasi Salek?

  I'm jumping ahead to when Taylor Swift brought her onstage, but like... There would be no Taylor Swift.

• 2:07:14Speaker 04

  Or like, it reminded me of Thank You Next, like your Yeah. It was like, it was like Alanis.

• 2:07:19Yasi Salek?

  But like, confessional songwriting in the style of what Taylor Swift has like, made a mini cottage, not a mini, a major cottage industry out of.

• 2:07:28Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:07:28Yasi Salek?

  A lot of it is rooted here, you know? Yeah, this one is all her, addressing all her ex-boyfriends, so you say, "Thank you." Dear Matthew, I like you a lot. I realize you're in a relationship with someone right now. It's, it's-

• 2:07:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's like, what I learned from each one of these things.

• 2:07:41Yasi Salek?

  It's so nice.

• 2:07:42Speaker 04

  It's nice. It's nice.

• 2:07:44Yasi Salek?

  It's very earnest.

• 2:07:45Speaker 04

  Yeah. I know, it's, I think her contacting the majority of them to let them know that she was gonna write about it speaks volumes on her character as well.

• 2:07:55Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, totally. I think that the earnestness that was sort of like, accepted in Jagged Little Pill was maybe not as accepted in this album. Even though it was still there in the other one. Again, I just feel justice for, justice for this. Uh, it got pretty good reviews, though. Like, it got four stars in Rolling Stone. Not NME. NME gave it a six out of 10 and said, "Suppose it is not by any means a Sean Ryder solo album." It's a really specifically British thing to say that most Americans would not understand Sean Ryder, the singer of the Happy Mondays.

• 2:08:31Speaker 04

  Oh, wow.

• 2:08:32Yasi Salek?

  That's right. It is the bit where following the 28 million sales, it had not hit 33 yet, of Jagged Little Pill, Morissette stops, thinks, goes to India, stares into the fame-shattered remains of her swan costume psyche, considers giving it all up, and then writes a 17-track, hour-and-a-half-long, open agony letter to the universe concerning her miasmically-complex interfacing with mom-celebrity god blokes and blokes.

• 2:08:59Speaker 04

  Swan costume, what is-

• 2:09:01Yasi Salek?

  I don't know if that was like, uh, yeah, I didn't really get that reference. Is that a-

• 2:09:07Speaker 04

  I don't know.

• 2:09:08Yasi Salek?

  Swan Lake reference?

• 2:09:09Speaker 04

  I don't know, I'm just imagining like, a zip-up swan costume.

• 2:09:12Yasi Salek?

  I kept thinking about Black Swan, but that didn't come out till later.

• 2:09:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:09:15Yasi Salek?

  They also say, "Men you see are from Mars, Alanis is from verbose." Rude.

• 2:09:20Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:09:21Yasi Salek?

  Entertainment Weekly said, "This 17-track repetition-loving therapy session from Canada's musical equivalent to an episode of Felicity."

• 2:09:31Yasi Salek?

  Yes. And then he says, "Which, believe it or not, I mean it as a compliment." Okay.

• 2:09:39Yasi Salek?

  It's a good album. It is an overarching good review, but still, there's just no need. Felicity, great show.

• 2:09:44Speaker 04

  Seventeen is a lot of songs.

• 2:09:46Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's a long album. Okay, here's the article I was telling you about, where it's in The Guardian, and it's by a woman called Sheryl Garrett. And here's what it says. "Happiness is largely a matter of perception. But if the world is split into optimists who see a glass as half-full and pessimists who see it as half-empty, then Canadian singer-songwriter Alanis Morissette goes one further. She sees the glass as a dangerous weapon that will inevitably be smashed into the face of a poor, defenseless woman by a rampaging drunken male. Morissette is not a happy bunny, but these days, there's money and misery."

• 2:10:24Speaker 04

  The happy bunny thing is odd to me.

• 2:10:26Yasi Salek?

  The whole thing is weird. It basically compares her to Morrissey. He says, "After years of ink-stripping young men, some would say it's good to see equal opportunities whinging. But sometimes miserableness groups like The Smiths were funny. Often, they had good tunes. Morissette is like Morrissey without the wit and choruses. Morrissey, in other words, minus Johnny Marr."

• 2:10:48Yasi Salek?

  It basically goes into this whole thing where it calls the album self-indulgent, and then it says, like, "You've never actually had abuse."

• 2:11:02Yasi Salek?

  And I'm like, "Well, first of all, you don't know that."

• 2:11:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:11:07Yasi Salek?

  She says, "Probed for a cause for all this distress, she came up with little, a childhood with no real abuse. The pressures of child's dardom, lapsed Catholicism, disappointing relationships."

• 2:11:18Speaker 04

  Also, we're reviewing the music right now, right? Like, what is...

• 2:11:22Yasi Salek?

  And you don't know that. You don't know what anyone's been through. And also, it's like, she might not have said it, but again, it came out later, like, obviously, there was...

• 2:11:29Speaker 04

  An insane amount of trauma, yeah.

• 2:11:32Yasi Salek?

  It made me feel for this woman, because I was like, wow. Whenever this kind of stuff is, it's like, oh, you're projecting.

• 2:11:39Speaker 04

  That's what I feel, yes.

• 2:11:40Yasi Salek?

  You know, like, there's some part of you that feels that you can't

• 2:11:43Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 2:11:44Yasi Salek?

  express your pain.

• 2:11:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:11:46Yasi Salek?

  Because you'll be a whiner, or you'll be whatever.

• 2:11:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:11:50Yasi Salek?

  And I don't wanna psychologically analyze this woman who I don't know, but it's just like, I was like, this is ugly.

• 2:11:56Speaker 04

  Yeah. That's what I feel like often when people.

• 2:11:58Yasi Salek?

  You could say you don't like the music.

• 2:12:00Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:12:00Yasi Salek?

  You could be like, I hate this album.

• 2:12:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:12:02Yasi Salek?

  But you don't, can't say she has no right.

• 2:12:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:12:05Yasi Salek?

  To write like this.

• 2:12:07Speaker 04

  And it's just, again, like, why? Or you say, just don't say it. Don't, like, it's so odd. It really does. I feel like anytime I see this, or like, I know we'll get to this, but like the Taylor Swift article, or the websites that are about, I hate Alanis, that to me is so much projection. It's like, there's something inside of you that's very unsettled, that I feel like you need to maybe work on.

• 2:12:29Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, couldn't agree more. All right. So, the next year MTV Unplugged comes out. We don't, I don't wanna get super into the weeds on it, although it's a fantastic unplugged. I just need to point out that it has one of my favorite covers of all time on it, which is the cover of King of Pain by Sting.

• 2:12:43Speaker 04

  Oh. This is so good.

• 2:12:45Yasi Salek?

  There's a little black swan on the sun. I should be a singer. Too bad. I'm preoccupied being a podcaster and also that I am tone deaf. Um, yeah, it's fucking, she's really good at covers, but this, this, I listened to this song so much in high school. It's, it's, it's phenomenal. Fucking jam. All right. Also, my queen, she's got range. In 2001, she's on the Tricky album, Blowback. She's on the song Excess. So cool. Song rules. Okay, the fifth studio album comes out in 2002, Under Rugged Swept.

• 2:13:19Yasi Salek?

  This hit number one on Billboard. I wanna say, I wanna say the last one did too. I didn't mention that, but,

• 2:13:27Yasi Salek?

  well, I don't know if it did, but definitely went three times platinum. But this, but Under Rugged Swept hit number one. She's still very popular, you know?

• 2:13:33Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm, yeah.

• 2:13:34Yasi Salek?

  Tell me why you love this album.

• 2:13:37Speaker 04

  Uh, well, the first song I love, it's a total banger.

• 2:13:41Yasi Salek?

  Twenty-one things I want in a lover.

• 2:13:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, distorted guitars, it's like hits so heavy. The first three songs-

• 2:13:46Yasi Salek?

  Dean D'Leo of Stone Hill Pilots playing guitar on this one bit?

• 2:13:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, the first three songs, I just, I really-

• 2:13:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:52Speaker 04

  The narcissist, you know, the second one, that chorus is so odd, in the best way. Like, when I heard it, I was just like, oh my god, this is so cool.

• 2:14:02Yasi Salek?

  It's really cool.

• 2:14:02Speaker 04

  And then of course, Hands Clean. But this was also, isn't this the first, didn't she solely write and produce this one, right?

• 2:14:11Yasi Salek?

  Yes, yes.

• 2:14:12Speaker 04

  That I like because I feel like a lot of the time she was asked about collaboration, which is fine, because her and Valerie had such a good relationship, but it is, it's nice that she could be like, also, I can do this.

• 2:14:24Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I mean, how brave. She's like twenty-seven, twenty-eight years old, and it's like, okay, I'm gonna do, I'm not gonna do it, but like, I do require two hours to talk about Hands Clean. I could talk about Hands Clean for the live long day. I just heard the producer scream in agony, like, please don't talk about Hands Clean.

• 2:14:46Yasi Salek?

  Jesus fucking Christ, man, this song, this song almost ruins me more than any of the other ones. It has that thing that we keep talking about, where it's like, this hopeful, like, lilting kind of music with the darkest, most fucked up lyrics.

• 2:15:03Yasi Salek?

  I told you, I wept, I literally wept in the car. I was just like, and then, we've talked about it, and it's like, she has, she definitely went sideways about a lot of this trauma, but this is the first song where she addresses that, this fourteen-year-old situation head-on, you know? And the lyrics are insane.

• 2:15:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, they are, I know.

• 2:15:25Yasi Salek?

  "You're essentially an employee, and I like you having to depend on me. You're a kind of protege, and one day you'll say you learned all you know from me."

• 2:15:33Speaker 04

  Like a young thing would, as a guardian?

• 2:15:36Yasi Salek?

  "I know you depend on me like a young thing would to a guardian." Which, these men, again, whoever it was, did serve as her legal guardian as they were traveling together. "I know you sexualize me like a young thing would, and I think I like it." Back to what we were saying, right?

• 2:15:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:15:53Yasi Salek?

  She's able, she's fucking brave enough and honest enough to put that in.

• 2:16:00Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:16:00Yasi Salek?

  Even if it like makes her look bad or whatever.

• 2:16:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:16:03Yasi Salek?

  You know?

• 2:16:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, and I like too when she, how she kind of is like talking about, or when they're like, basically she's saying the lines about how they were like, "You would be nothing without me," or "I made you successful." And she's like, "Here I am in my own," like, just kind of, yeah.

• 2:16:19Yasi Salek?

  You, why?

• 2:16:21Speaker 04

  That song is so sad.

• 2:16:22Yasi Salek?

  And the thing is like-

• 2:16:23Speaker 04

  It's so good though.

• 2:16:24Yasi Salek?

  It's so good. And it's, I know the lyrics are like, kind of like freakishly specific, but I think that like, you could hear this song,

• 2:16:34Yasi Salek?

  there's so much broad universality in it too.

• 2:16:38Speaker 04

  There is, yeah.

• 2:16:40Yasi Salek?

  It's like, "I've honored your request for sounds." I think a lot of women have experienced that. You know, whether it's like-

• 2:16:46Speaker 04

  Or like, let's fast forward to a few years later when she's actually becoming an adult and realizing how fucked that situation was.

• 2:16:54Yasi Salek?

  Don't tell, like, don't tell your friends, don't tell your family. I'm not gonna tell my friends.

• 2:16:58Speaker 04

  Nobody, your inner posse.

• 2:17:00Yasi Salek?

  And your inner posse, that always made me laugh.

• 2:17:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:17:02Yasi Salek?

  Your inner posse. You've washed your hands clean of this. Again, it is, it's like spiritually in the lineage of You Oughta Know, right? It just goes deeper and darker, honestly, in a way. Less anger and more like sadness.

• 2:17:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:17:18Yasi Salek?

  She said, "My intention in writing this song was to get to a place where I could be as truthful and as honest as I possibly could be about certain relationships in my past. It's definitely not with the intention of seeking any sort of revenge for the person who is at the heart of this song that I'm singing about, but it was in my silencing myself to protect somebody else that I was ultimately completely abandoning myself."

• 2:17:42Yasi Salek?

  It's really-

• 2:17:44Speaker 04

  I feel like she also kind of talks about the shame that she felt for it.

• 2:17:48Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:49Speaker 04

  And that being such a big part of it, that makes me so sad.

• 2:17:51Yasi Salek?

  Well, it's again, it's, of course, you feel shame because you, you're 14 and you're like, "I made my decisions," you know, and "I liked it," you know?

• 2:18:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's just-

• 2:18:01Yasi Salek?

  And it removes-

• 2:18:04Yasi Salek?

  That's so complicated.

• 2:18:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:18:07Yasi Salek?

  It's messy.

• 2:18:07Speaker 04

  It's so messy, so layered. I feel like the places that your brain goes in situations like that is just, there's just so much to it, you can't even really.

• 2:18:18Yasi Salek?

  I've said this before and I'll say it again. Broadly speaking, past the fact that like the onus is on the older person, whether it be a man or woman, usually it's a man, to be like, oh, interesting, my mind, 30, there's 14, probably on a different stage. Past that, let's put that aside, which is the biggest part. The fuck is wrong with you? Like, I can't help but, I'm like, aren't you ashamed? Aren't you embarrassed? That your, your level of, you know, like, the level that you're functioning at is connected to a 14-year-old? Are you an idiot?

• 2:18:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:18:58Yasi Salek?

  You know, like, you're only capable of contending with a 14-year-old? It's so embarrassing for you to lose her.

• 2:19:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, I was like thinking about it while I was in the shower. Because I was like, I wonder if this person like has a significant other and what they would think to be like, yeah, you were 30 doing that to a 14-year-old.

• 2:19:14Yasi Salek?

  Or even wanting to, wanting to, forget about like the legality or the morality. Put that all aside. What the fuck are you even getting out of it?

• 2:19:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, what are you doing?

• 2:19:23Yasi Salek?

  Are you a simpleton?

• 2:19:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:19:25Yasi Salek?

  They're 14.

• 2:19:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:19:28Yasi Salek?

  Anyways, I was angry, sorry. Um, Flinch is also about this similar situation of running into that person later. It's a really profoundly powerful song. This album is great. Also got really good reviews. Like I said, hit number one. She's doing great. Um, I think some people are still presuming that all these songs are about Dave Coulier. It's like Uncle Joey, really? Took that and ran with it.

• 2:19:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:19:54Yasi Salek?

  I think that's the imperial phase of Alanis Morissette, right? This is the arc of the career. We should talk. She's obviously not done yet. She's still making music to this day. She put out a song with Carly Simon a couple of months ago. The next album is Feast on Scraps, which is just B-sides from Under a Rug Swept. Pretty good, has an acoustic version of Hands Clean that I often return to. 2004, the album is So Called Chaos. I actually really liked the first song on there.

• 2:20:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, me too.

• 2:20:25Yasi Salek?

  It's called Eight Easy Steps.

• 2:20:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:20:26Yasi Salek?

  It's a good song.

• 2:20:27Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:20:27Yasi Salek?

  That song goes.

• 2:20:28Speaker 04

  It's a solid record.

• 2:20:29Yasi Salek?

  Eight Easy Steps is kind of reminiscent of Jagged Little Pill era music, I feel like. Yeah, it's a solid record. The album art gets a little questionable, like, right around the third album, but who am I to?

• 2:20:39Speaker 04

  Similar thing, yeah, lots of butterflies, purples, and hands.

• 2:20:43Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:44Speaker 04

  Which is totally fine.

• 2:20:45Yasi Salek?

  The jewel oil on my hands are small, I know. Everything is also kind of a good album, a good song on here that is like sort of an updated head over feet. So if you like that energy. In 2005, because it's the anniversary, 10th anniversary, they put out Jagged Little Pill acoustic. Pretty great.

• 2:21:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:21:02Yasi Salek?

  It's a Starbucks exclusive.

• 2:21:04Speaker 04

  Oh, is it really?

• 2:21:05Yasi Salek?

  2005 was a wild time, babe. We kind of forget that like, there's like this like no man's land that happens where like CDs are dying off, but streaming hasn't happened yet. And it's like this bizarre time of like, you're downloading MP3s, babe. Like, you have an MP3 player, you're getting tickets for a thing. Things are Starbucks exclusives. Like, it was a weird time.

• 2:21:27Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:21:27Yasi Salek?

  April of 2007, meaningful because Alan Lanis releases a cover of the Black Eyed Peas song, My Humps. Do you remember this?

• 2:21:35Speaker 04

  I don't remember this.

• 2:21:36Speaker 08

  You can look, but you can't touch it. If you touch it, I'm gonna start some drama.

• 2:21:44Yasi Salek?

  It is like a really slow, mournful piano-accompanied My Humps. It's kind of amazing, and she doesn't, at the time, she never said why, but it was released on April 1st, so people thought it was an April Fool's joke. But then she later was like... Oh, I was just having a hard time writing my music and I was like, oh, I wish I could write a song that's like pop and easy like this. And so she covered it. 2008, Flavors of Entanglement. This one is not for me, respectfully. And I think we can all just have things that are for us and not for us.

• 2:22:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, right.

• 2:22:16Yasi Salek?

  I blame Ryan Reynolds.

• 2:22:17Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:22:18Yasi Salek?

  For this and honestly, some other things probably, but this is the Ryan Reynolds breakup album. They were engaged.

• 2:22:24Speaker 04

  Oh, I didn't know they were engaged.

• 2:22:25Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Fellow Canadian. Okay, 2012, Havoc in Bright Lights. I don't have much to say about this album. But I love that she's continuing to make music. She got married sometime, or 2010, I think is when she got married.

• 2:22:46Yasi Salek?

  In 2018, in May, The Jagged Little Pole Musical debuted. I never saw it. Did you see it?

• 2:22:51Speaker 04

  I didn't see it.

• 2:22:52Yasi Salek?

  Famously, Catherine Gallagher, who's in it, is also in the Pavements film that you're also in, your co-star. Made by our friend Alex Ross Perry. She's in the musical portion of it.

• 2:23:04Speaker 04

  Oh, wow.

• 2:23:08Yasi Salek?

  I haven't seen it, but it did really, really well and was, you know, went on a big round, made a lot of money. The book was by Diablo Cody.

• 2:23:17Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 2:23:18Yasi Salek?

  It tells the story of the Heelys, a seemingly perfect white Connecticut family with an adopted black daughter, begin to unravel when faced with issues of repast, gender identity, sexual assault, and substance abuse. Nothing is weirder to me than when people take an existing, what do they call it, jukebox musical, like existing album, and then just make a new story, like Green Day, American Idiot.

• 2:23:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:23:38Yasi Salek?

  It holds no interest for me, but it's very, I was like, oh, you just could do that, I guess.

• 2:23:43Speaker 04

  Yeah. With Green Day's thing, it was kind of the same thing. They're just like, we're gonna put this separate story to this.

• 2:23:48Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:23:49Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 2:23:50Yasi Salek?

  I think so. I didn't see it.

• 2:23:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:23:51Yasi Salek?

  If that's wrong, I'm really sorry to American Idiot Musical, who I think did win Tonys. I don't know. 2020, ninth studio album, Such Pretty Forks in the Road.

• 2:24:03Yasi Salek?

  It actually hit number 16 on the Billboard charts, number one on the Billboard Rock. Still got juice, babe.

• 2:24:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:24:09Yasi Salek?

  She toured this one, I remember. Not a bad, not a bad album. I kind of like Reasons I Drink.

• 2:24:19Yasi Salek?

  And then 2022, "The Storm Before the Calm." This is a meditation album.

• 2:24:26Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 2:24:26Yasi Salek?

  Have you heard any of this?

• 2:24:27Speaker 04

  No.

• 2:24:28Yasi Salek?

  I'm just gonna play you a little.

• 2:24:36Yasi Salek?

  She walks it like she talks it, babe.

• 2:24:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:24:38Yasi Salek?

  She's a meditator. And then, yeah, just five minutes ago, which was a couple of months ago, she put out "Coming Around Again." So that is an 86, 1986 song by Carly Simon. Then she covered with Carly Simon. And it came out in August.

• 2:25:02Yasi Salek?

  And she also toured.

• 2:25:03Speaker 04

  I was gonna say.

• 2:25:04Yasi Salek?

  Did you go to that?

• 2:25:05Speaker 04

  No.

• 2:25:06Yasi Salek?

  The Jagged Little Pillor Tour?

• 2:25:07Speaker 04

  I was on tour.

• 2:25:08Yasi Salek?

  It was so good. I went with our mutual friend and former guest of the pod, Bethany Cosentino. We cried.

• 2:25:13Speaker 04

  Was it, yeah?

• 2:25:14Yasi Salek?

  It was very emotional.

• 2:25:14Speaker 04

  She said it was incredible.

• 2:25:16Yasi Salek?

  And that's, I think that's the Alanis Moore's that story.

• 2:25:20Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 2:25:21Yasi Salek?

  I feel like I've probably missed some important things.

• 2:25:24Speaker 04

  No, I mean, I feel like, yeah.

• 2:25:27Yasi Salek?

  She has a gorgeous podcast.

• 2:25:29Speaker 04

  I was gonna say.

• 2:25:29Yasi Salek?

  Which you guys should check out. She's very deep in the spirituality and psychology space. And if you're interested in psychology, the podcast is actually great. She interviews people like Byron Katie, psychotherapists, specialists in sex addiction. It's really good. She's a very thoughtful interviewer. Quite like it.

• 2:25:51Speaker 04

  Talks a lot about the sensitivity stuff.

• 2:25:53Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 2:25:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, she's, yeah. It's interesting, all her just endless therapy knowledge, too.

• 2:26:00Yasi Salek?

  I think, you know, the highly sensitive and the empath part, like, paired with all this trauma, it's like, what else are you gonna do? Lay down and die? Because I think that's kind of the only option besides, like, doing inner work. And again, as a fellow girly who will fucking try anything, do anything, meditation, retreat, whatever you're, whatever you're offering, babe, I'll try it once.

• 2:26:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, sign me up.

• 2:26:23Yasi Salek?

  I really relate. Thank you, India. Thank you, Alanis.

• 2:26:28Speaker 04

  Thank you, Alanis.

• 2:26:29Yasi Salek?

  Thank you, Alicia.

• 2:26:30Speaker 04

  Thank you, Yasi.

• 2:26:32Yasi Salek?

  Come back next week for a new episode of Dance Mind.

• 2:26:38Yasi Salek?

  If you liked what you heard today, subscribe for more episodes of Bandplain. Our guest today was Alicia Buñano. This episode was produced by Rob Sunderland and edited by Adrian Bridges with help from Justin Sales. Video animation and graphics are by John Richter and video production is by Ashley Smith. Executive producers for Bandplain are Gina Dalvak and me, Yasi Salek. Our gorgeous and catchy theme song was composed and performed by Bethany Cosentino and Jennifer Klavan and graciously recorded by Carlos de la Garza in Los Angeles, California. Special thanks to our producer Emeritus, producer Dylan, aka Dylan Tupper Rupert, and also Sean Fantasy, Michael Hardbin, Casey Simonsen, Robert Adler, Leah Edwards, David McDonough, Dana Myerson, Jessica Hopper, and the Little Fair Documentary. Come back every Thursday for a new episode of Bandplain on Spotify or wherever you listen

• 2:27:23Yasi Salek?

  to podcasts.

• 2:27:34Speaker 07

  With Truvia Sweeteners, it's simple to make sweetness part of your routine. From sweetening your creamy morning matcha to freshly baked blueberry scones, Truvia Sweeteners make it easy to enjoy the flavors you love with less sugar per serving. From everyday drinks to homemade favorites, they're made to fit right in. Because with Truvia, every moment tastes better. Find Truvia at your favorite local grocery retailer and bring better sweetness home.

• 2:28:01Speaker 10

  My name is Taylor. The economy is crushing moms like me right now, even working full-time. My paychecks went straight to childcare and all of the bills. Nutritious food is really important to me.

• 2:28:15Speaker 09

  High food costs and changes to nutrition programs constrain family budgets. Your donation helps Feeding America provide the nourishing food families need.

• 2:28:23Speaker 10

  I'm hopeful for stability.

• 2:28:25Speaker 09

  When budgets strain, your gift sustains. Give now at feedingamerica.org/communityresponse.