Comprehensive information and links about Alanis Morissette

Alanis Morissette See rationale on the talk page, or replace this tag with a more specific message. Editing help is available. (born June 1, 1974Alanis Morissette is a Canadian singer-songwriter and occasional actress. Her international debut album (1995) became one of the most successful albums of all time, with the total worldwide sales estimated at thirty million copies. Three more studio albums followed –

Early Life

Alanis Morissette was born in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, to school teachers Alan and Georgia Morissette. She has an older brother, Chad, and a twin brother named Wade. Between the ages of three and six they lived with their parents in Lahr (Black Forrest), Germany.

Morissette showed a love for singing and songwriting at an early age. When she was 9 years old, Morissette wrote her first song. With the money saved from her stint on the children's television show , a popular televised American talent competition. Morissette flew to Los Angeles to appear on the show, but lost after one round.

in 1991 with producer Leslie Howe. At the time, Morissette was credited simply as "Alanis" to avoid possible confusion with fellow Canadian singer Alannah Myles. The album went double platinum and its first single, "Too Hot", reached the Top 10 on the Canadian charts. Subsequent singles included "Feel Your Love", "Walk Away" and "Plastic".

In 1992, Morissette was nominated for three Juno Awards: Single of the Year, Best Dance Record, and Most Promising Female Vocalist, the last of which she won. In the same year, she released . The album attempted to move Morissette away from her debut album's dance-pop sound and featured the single "An Emotion Away". However, sold less than half the number of copies of her debut album, and, with her two album deal with MCA Canada complete, Morissette was without a major label recording contract.

Move to Los Angeles

In 1993, Morissette moved from her home town of Ottawa to Toronto. Living alone for the first time in her life, Morissette met with a bevy of songwriters, but the results frustrated her. A visit to Nashville a few months later also proved fruitless.

Morissette began making trips to Los Angeles and working with as many musicians as possible, in the hopes of meeting a collaborator. During this time, Morissette met with producer and songwriter Glen Ballard.

According to Ballard, the connection was "instant" and within 30 minutes of meeting each other, they had begun experimenting with different sounds in Ballard's home studio. Despite Morissette's naivety, Ballard believed he was dealing with a woman wise beyond her years. Ballard and Morissette penned their first song together called "The Bottom Line".

The turning point in their sessions was the song "Perfect", which was written and recorded in twenty minutes. Morissette improvised the lyrics on the spot to Ballard's delicate guitar strums. The version of the song that appeared on was the only take the pair had ever recorded.

In Los Angeles, Morissette lived in a small, one-room apartment. On the way home from the supermarket one afternoon, she was robbed at gunpoint. A man rummaged through her bag while another held a gun to her head and made her lie face down on the pavement. Morissette later revealed that her only concern was for the book of lyrics she was carrying in her bag. To her relief, the lyrics were untouched. They would eventually make up the bulk of literally as they were being written. According to Morissette, Ballard was the first collaborator who had encouraged her to express her emotions completely and fully without any fear of shame or embarrassment. As a result, Morissette unabashedly shared everything, from her buoyant love of life in "You Learn", to her warm infatuations in "Head Over Feet", to her darkest, most ruthless revenge fantasies in "You Oughta Know". Morissette drew inspiration for her lyrics completely from personal experiences. By the spring of 1995, Morissette penned a deal with Maverick Records.

era (1995–1998)

In 1995, at the age of twenty-one, Morissette released her first international album, . Since expectations for the album were low, Morissette's manager and long-time friend Scott Welsh would later admit that he did not expect the album to sell any more than around 250,000 copies. The album debuted at number 118 on the Billboard 200 chart.

However, things changed quickly when a Los Angeles DJ from an influential radio station stumbled onto "You Oughta Know" and began playing it non-stop. The song instantly garnered attention and a subsequent video went into heavy rotation on MTV. Listeners were shocked, unnerved, and delighted by the song's use of profanity, rare for a female artist at the time.

While "You Oughta Know" was a hit, it was the bevy of hit singles that followed that sent to its meteoric rise to the top. Following "Hand in My Pocket", the third single, "Ironic", went on to become Morissette's biggest hit. She received heavy criticism for the lyrics, however, when it became apparent that many of the situations described by Morissette did not actually qualify as being 'ironic'. Indeed, the Irish comedian Ed Byrne based a significant part of his stand-up act on pointing out the lack of irony in the song. "You Learn" and "Head Over Feet", the fourth and fifth singles, respectively, kept was a phenomenal success. It went on to sell 16 million copies in the United States alone, over 30 million copies worldwide and its singles became some of the most recognizable songs of the decade.

Morissette was dismissed by some as a record industry puppet. She was attacked for collaborating with producer and supposed image-maker Glen Ballard, though Morissette was responsible for all of 's lyrics and much of the album's music, and though such a collaboration was not uncommon for many solo artists at the time.

Despite this setback, the album was nominated for six Grammy Awards. At the 1996 ceremony, Morissette performed a moving rendition of "You Oughta Know", one that all but drained the anger from the song, leaving only an air of sorrow and remorse. That night, Morissette won awards for Album of the Year, Best Female Rock Vocal Performance, Best Rock Song and Best Rock Album.

Later that year, Morissette embarked on an eighteen-month world tour in support of era (1998–2002)

In 1998, Morissette recorded "Uninvited", a song from the soundtrack to the film . The track was never officially released as a single, but nevertheless received widespread radio airplay.

Later that year, Morissette released , once again collaborating with Glen Ballard. Fans and critics alike were unprepared for Morissette's new songwriting approach, as most of the songs on the disc, including "The Couch" and "Unsent", challenged traditional song formulas.

Upon release, the album started selling extremely well. Privately, the label hoped for a million copies upon initial release. It sold about half of that. Nevertheless, the album debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 chart, breaking the record for the most albums sold in a single week by a female artist, with sales at 469,000 copies (eventually eclipsed by Britney Spears's had very little staying power. Its wordy, personal lyrics turned many fans off and after only 28 weeks, it left the Billboard 200, selling 2.5 million, a huge drop from . Worldwide, the album sold about 7 million copies. However, it received positive reviews, including a four-star review from Rolling Stone magazine. In 1999, the song "Uninvited" won two Grammy Awards for Best Rock Song and Best Female Rock Vocal Performance. The first single, "Thank U", was also nominated for a Grammy for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. The video for this song, which featured Morissette in the nude, generated mild controversy. That same year, Morissette released the live acoustic album .

In 1999, Alanis Morissette expanded her résumé by delving into acting. She appeared as God in the Kevin Smith film . Smith, who claimed to be a big fan of Morissette's, asked her to be in the film several times. She had to turn down the female lead and by the time her schedule allowed her to participate in the film, only the role of God, which involves virtually no speech and only an appearance at the very end of the film, was left.

In 2002, after a four year absence, Alanis Morissette released her third international studio album collaborator Glen Ballard. For the first time, Morissette took on the role of sole writer and producer.

The album spawned the hit single "Hands Clean", while the album debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 chart, selling 215,000 in the first week. would eventually sell close to a million copies in the United States alone, though only "Hands Clean" received any substantial radio airplay. The album was overlooked by the Grammy Awards, but Morissette won yet another Juno Award for Producer of the Year.

In December 2002, Morissette released a CD recording sessions. The album was nominated for a Juno Music DVD of the Year award.

In November 2003, Morissette appeared in the off-Broadway play as Sunny Jacobs, a death row inmate freed after proof surfaced that she hadn't committed the crime.

Selling over 115,000 copies in its first week of release, the album debuted at number five on the Billboard 200 chart to generally favorable critical reviews. The album’s lead single, "Everything", was released in March 2004 and saw some commercial success on adult contemporary radio. In an effort to avoid a censor "bleep" in the first line of the song, the radio and music video versions changed the word "asshole" to "nightmare". The radio and music video version also edited out several verses from the album version. Two other singles, "Out Is Through" and "Eight Easy Steps", soon followed but neither matched the success of "Everything". A dance mix of "Eight Easy Steps" was a top ten hit on US dance music charts.

In June 2004, Morissette announced her engagement to actor Ryan Reynolds. Morissette expanded her own acting credentials with the July release of the Cole Porter biographical film , in which she performed the song "Let's Do It, Let's Fall in Love" and had a brief acting role as an anonymous stage performer. Her recording of the song was featured on the film's soundtrack and on era (2005)

On February 11, 2005, Morissette became a naturalized citizen of the United States while still maintaining her Canadian citizenship. Morissette refers to herself as a Canadian–American.

Also in February 2005 she made a guest appearance on the Canadian television show . CNN reported that the album would be exclusively released through Starbucks' Hear Music retail concept through their coffee shops for a six-week run, much like Ray Charles's successful album . This move caused much controversy, with companies such as HMV in Canada removing their entire Morissette catalog for the duration of the deal in protest. The album sold about 310 000 copies. The album went into wide release to all retail chains the last week of July. This version included enhanced features not included on the Starbuck’s release version. The accompanying Jagged Little Pill: Acoustic tour ran for two months in the summer of 2005, with Morissette playing small, intimate theatre venues.

On October 14th, Morissette released a cover of the 1991 Seal song "Crazy" as the first single from her greatest hits album, was released on November 15, 2005, followed by a limited edition version of the album on December 6, 2005. The limited edition features a DVD including a documentary with videos of two unreleased songs from Morissette’s 1996 "Can’t Not" Tour: "King of Intimation" and "Can't Not" (the latter appeared in a reworked version on ). The DVD also includes a 90 second clip of the unreleased video for the song "Joining You".

Morissette contributed a song entitled "Wunderkind" to the soundtrack of the film . The song was nominated for a Golden Globe award for Best Original Song.

In several articles, it has been said (including statements by Morissette herself) that a new album is in the works and is expected to be released during 2006. The sound is rumored to be more "exotic."