Urban Arson

Jagged Little Pill by Alanis Morissette

In order to understand why this album is so important to me you have to know a bit about my upbringing. I grew up in my father’s very strict Christian household and wasn’t allowed to listen to anything but Christian music. I had a little AM/FM radio and listened to the pop station (96.7 KHFI for all you Austin cats) in bed at night so I could appear to be in the “know” with my elementary school friends. It was ridiculous.

Its 1995 and I’m 10 years old. My maternal grandmother, is dying a slow death from cancer in her Houston apartment. I was her first grandchild, we shared the same birthday and thus had a special bond. She had family from all over the world there to see her through the final days. She lay jaundiced and thin on the living room couch as we sat around her trying to make her as comfortable as possible, the disease slowly taking her away from us, away from me.

So it was at this sad and somber time that my mother and I were in a Barnes and Noble browsing through the music section. Out of the blue I spotted it. Jagged Little Pill, an album that none of my friends or cousins had. Its maroons, indigos and turquoises stared back at me tauntingly. I had to have it. I begged my mom to get it, she complied and this became my first of many cassette tapes. She also got me a tape player and a 24 pack of batteries at Sam’s Club and I was in business, I was in love. She was my first real “crush”, Alanis. For a long time after this I would see her face everywhere and in every woman I met. I used to think she was what Eve must have looked like. Whatever, don’t laugh too hard I was 10. An interesting sidebar, I was pleasantly surprised to see her cast as God in Kevin Smith’s Dogma. If Eve was the made in God’s image then she might have looked like God from Dogma. Thus my 10 year old theory had a bit of confirmation from someone else I greatly admired.

This album showed me how to feel in bad situations; that it was ok to be angry and let it show. It gave words to the inexplicable pain that was coming from my first big loss. After a while I moved over to some of her more optimistic songs, I’d sit in my room for hours listening to Side B “Head Over Feet” over and over again. To this day this song is in my Top 10 list. I don’t know why, call me a hopeless romantic or a girl or gay but this song is incredible. From the first time I heard it, love was all I wanted in life, it still is. I want someone to feel about me as I do about them. Love is all you need to quote the prophet John Lennon.

Every song on this album is killer. They’re packed with angst and disappointment, contrasting loss with boundless happiness. I was talking with my friend about influential music and she said this was her first cassette too. I’ve met so many people who remember where and when they first got it. It’s just that striking.

30 Million copies worldwide and still counting. I know this was her third studio album but it was the first to be released internationally so it counts as an Incredible Debut.

Tags: Alanis Morissette, Incredible Debuts, Jagged Little Pill

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 10th, 2008 at 22:23:05 and is filed under Incredible Debuts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.