Fifteen years ago this week, Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill became the country’s best selling album for the third time. It would hold that position for twelve non-consecutive weeks between October 1995 and September 1996. If you follow music charts, then you know it’s crazy for album to be number one over the span of a year. But then again, JLP was the best-selling album of the 90s (13.5 million copies) and is currently the third best-selling album of the last twenty years (14.6 million copies, behind Metallica’s black album and Shania Twain’s Come On Over). It wasn’t just a collection of songs. It was a phenomenon…

… especially if you were in high school back then, like Roommate Joe and I were. At the time, we both loved that record. We ate it for angsty breakfast and slept with it for angsty naptime.

Recently, however, we realized that neither of us had listened to that once-beloved record in a very long time. We wondered, “How does it hold up today? Can the songs survive outside the heat of Alanis Fever?”

Crusaders that we are, we decided to find out. Join as we re-listen to, review, and rate every song on the album (including the hidden tracks!) What are your memories? What are your reactions now? Share them all!

I’ll post the first half of Jagged Little Pill here. To read about the second half, head over to Joe’s blog, Low Resolution.

TRACK NAME: “All I Really Want”

MARK’S KEY LYRIC: “I’m like Estella. I like to reel it and then spit it out.”
JOE’S KEY LYRIC: “I am fascinated by the spiritual man / I’m humbled by his humble nature”

Joe: I’m kind of bummed even now that JLP doesn’t get off to a stronger start. “All I Really Want” isn’t a bad song — I do enjoy that “enough about you…” bridge — but it sounds really ’90s while the rest of the album, at its best, has a more enduring quality. What the song also sounds like is a prequel to “Thank U.” Everything she really wants in this song, she eventually gets, and then she spends a whole song thanking India for it. Rating: 4 Jagged Little Pills (out of 10)

Mark: This song is definitely sprayed with the ’90s: There’s an electric guitar riff over a simple drum loop, and it is seasoned with occasional harmonica. It’s like John Popper and Smashing Pumpkins and Natalie Imbruglia, all mashed together. And unlike the hottest hits on the album, this one doesn’t have a soul-changing hook that your find yourself humming at the gas station six years later. That said, I appreciate the song’s unusual structure. There are, like, five bridges and two pre-choruses in there, and while there is a chorus, the lyrical standouts are sprinkled among the verses. I remember being in high school and feeling awesome because I caught the reference to Estella, Miss Havisham’s pet maneater in Great Expectations, and since I had to listen to the song a few times before I noticed that lyric, it felt like buried treasure.

It’s important, too, that a song like this — dense, strange, literary — is track number one. It suggests that Morissette and her producer/co-writer Glen Ballard are aiming for something grander than a collection of hit singles. Like, remember how Sinead O’Connor’s I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got started with “Feel So Different,” that six-minute chant-song-thing? That let you know Sinead was asking to be taken seriously. Same deal here. Sure, we might dismiss Alanis as being pretentious or humorless — which are pointa I can see — but from the first notes of this album, we can’t write her off as a flake. Rating: 7 Jagged Little Pills

Average rating: 5.5 Jagged Little Pills

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TRACK NAME: “You Oughta Know”

JOE’S KEY LYRIC: “And every time I scratch my hands down someone else’s back I hope you feel it”
MARK’S KEY LYRIC: “Are you thinking of me when you fuck her?”

Joe: The official album version of this song always vexed me ever so slightly because the instrumentation felt so thin and depleted, particularly compared to the vastly superior “Alternate Take” that served as Track 13 on most people’s version of the album. But that is the only possible complaint I could have about this song. Its pure righteous fury was so good it actually made people mad back in the day, and its bluntness is still bracing 15 years later. We’ve clearly progressed well beyond “going down on” someone being taboo verbiage, whether it’s happening in a theater or not. But when Alanis spits it out, it still sounds dangerous. Rating: 9 Jagged Little Pills

Mark: It’s amazing what a beefed-up instrumental track can do! The “hidden” radio mix is a much better match for the red-hot rage of Alanis’ lyrics and delivery. But like Joe, I can’t complain too much. In either form, this song kicks ass. Now that I’ve got some distance from the Alanis phenomenon, I can really appreciate it again. The honesty and the attitude are still exciting, Glen Ballard’s rolling waves of distorted guitar are still awesome, and that braying “you-AH, you-AH, you-AH oughta KNOW-OWW” is still what karaoke was made for.

As with “All I Really Want,” my key lyric is based in a personal story. Before all my high school pep rallies, they used to crank us up by playing the big hits of the day. Naturally, “You Oughta Know” made it on the playlist in the fall of 1995, and as the song played on, you could feel all the students in the gym getting worked up. The teachers didn’t seem to notice when “go down on you in a theater” blasted through the speakers… would they notice when Alanis screamed the word “fuck?” God! The anticipation! And I swear to god, everyone in the gym eventually stopped talking and just waited to see if the f-bomb would be dropped. AND IT WAS! As loud as a siren, we heard the line, “Are you thinking of me when you FFFFUUUUUCKKK her?” Seriously, it was like time stopped. It was like Alanis sang “fuck” for forty minutes. The way I remember it, the basketball players were hanging in mid-air, jaws dropped open in surprise. It was amazing. Rating: 9 Jagged Little Pills

Average Rating: 9 Jagged Little Pills

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TRACK NAME: “Perfect”

MARK AND JOE’S KEY LYRIC: “Don’t forget to win first place / Don’t forget to keep that smile on your face”

Joe: It’s clearly a filler song, but it’s not a terrible one. Its weaknesses are in Alanis’s vocals, which sound strained when the song calls for something more polished, and yes I realize that I’m criticizing her for imperfections in a song that’s about mean parents criticizing their children for their imperfections. But still! Rating: 3 Jagged Little Pills

Mark: I must respectfully disagree with my colleague. This is NO filler song! Thanks to my years of pop music geekery, I know that this was the first song written for the album and that the vocal was captured in one take… so maybe those mythical qualities elevate it in my mind. Maybe what Joe hears as “strained” I hear as “raw” and “honest.” Either way, this song also distills a major part of Alanis’ appeal, which was her ability to represent sensitive and alienated adolescents. There’s nothing teenagers appreciate more than being told their insecurities are important and unique, and “Perfect” validates every moment a kid has felt pressured by adults. And since the lyrics sympathize with boys and girls alike, it’s an equal-opportunity pity party. If I’d encountered this track as an adult, that might annoy the shit out of me, but dammit, I first heard it when was sixteen. Therefore, I’m granting it a slight pass. Rating: 5 Jagged Little Pills

Average Rating: 4 Jagged Little Pills

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TRACK NAME: “Hand in My Pocket”

MARK’S KEY LYRIC: “I’m young, and I’m underpaid. I’m tired, but I’m working, yeah!”
JOE’S KEY LYRIC: “I’m sick but I’m pretty, baby”

Joe: To anyone expecting the rest of JLP to sound the same as its lead single, “Hand in My Pocket” likely came as quite a shock. I know I’ve never been able to warm up to it as much as I’d like, and I wonder if that initial whiplash of expectation is at least partially to blame. But honestly, it’s a good song with a solid structure, and it makes an excellent fit into Alanis’s idiosyncratic vocal wheelhouse. It’s also one of Alanis’s many beloved list songs, this one ticking off her many contradictions. She’s drunk but she’s sober, she’s poor but she’s happy, she’s a bitch, she’s a tease, she’s a goddess on her knees. I generally enjoy snarky/angry/moody Alanis more than I like faux-wise Alanis, but the nostalgic singalong factor of this tune is high. Rating: 5 Jagged Little Pills

Mark: My muted enthusiasm for “Hand In My Pocket” only proves how excellent the rest of this album is. Would I ever skip this track? No. Can I sing the hell out of it? Yes. Plus, even though Joe correctly identifies it as one of her “beloved list songs,” it rises above “Thank U” and that one about all her boyfriends [EDIT: I still dream of dating someone named Terrence so that I can make use of Alanis's "Dear Terrence, you rock my world..." -- Joe] because it isn’t trying to teach us anything… or at least not as earnestly as “Thank U” is. The lyrics have more self-deprecating humor than any other Alanis song I know, and it seems like she’s pretty chill about how fucked up she is. That’s a nice change of pace from the sea of angst that washes over the rest of the record.

Still… fifteen years later, this song sounds a little anonymous. Not that it’s easy to make a great pop song, mind you, but this particular great pop song might have been by Abra Moore or Sixpence None the Richer or, hell, even Lisa Loeb. Compared to “You Oughta Know” or “You Learn,” which could only be by our Canadian Lady, it’s a less essential delight.

Once again, though, my lyric choice is personal, which just underlines how deeply this album sank into my life. I will never forget the night my friend Garry and I were driving home from our crappy mall jobs, belting out that we were young and underpaid. Rating: 6 Jagged Little Pills

Average rating: 5.5 Jagged Little Pills

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TRACK NAME: Right Through You

MARK AND JOE’S KEY LYRIC: “You took me out to wine, dine, 69 me / and didn’t hear a damn word I said”

Joe: Here’s where the album really kicks it into gear, hitting a sweet spot that will last through almost the entire rest of the album. “Right Through You” often seems like the little sister to “You Oughta Know,” down to the high-school naughtiness of “69″ mirroring “go down on you in a theater.” Maybe that’s part of the reason why I latched onto Alanis so hard at age 16. She was clearly working an arrested adolescence in her twenties and lashing out at guys in ways I could identify with. Rating: 7 Jagged Little Pills

Mark: As I’ve prepared to write this retrospective, I’ve been pondering what makes an album sell fourteen million copies. As I mentioned above, I think the success is partly due to Alanis’ innate understanding of how frustrating it is to be a teenager. Part of it, too, is her exhilarating willingness to be a young woman who’s pissed off. Then as now, a smart and thoughtful girl who’s not trying to be pretty for the boys is a welcome surprise. On top of that, you also get Ballard’s influence, which means that Alanis’ anger is matched with familiar and delightful hooks. For anyone who thought Bikini Kill’s rage was too loud and Ani DiFranco’s was too queer, Alanis created the perfect middle ground between emotion and confection.

But even still… that doesn’t explain fourteen million copies. Another huge factor is the fact that every song on this album has something to recommend it. I’ve got my least favorites, yes, but there’s nothing on Jagged Little Pill that makes me wince like, say, “Star Me Kitten” on R.E.M.’s Automatic for the People or “Anytime, Any Place” on Janet Jackson’s janet. Emotion, accessibility, adolescence, and consistency, then, are the key ingredients in this stew.

And “Right Through You” captures all those parts. It’s just sitting there in the middle of the album, tucked between the big hits, yet it demands attention. That chorus? Forget it. And I will never get tired of the poison in Alanis’ voice when she sings lines like “oh, hello Mr. Man” and “wine-dine-69 me.” This woman is a rock star, y’all. Rating: 9 Jagged Little Pills

Average rating: 8 Jagged Little Pills

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TRACK NAME: “Forgiven”

MARK’S KEY LYRIC: “I will suffer the consequence of this Inquisition.”
JOE’S KEY LYRIC: “We all had delusions in our head / we all had our minds made up for us / we had to believe in something / so we did”

Joe: Ah, the ballad of the lapsed Catholic — like catnip to my teenage soul. Seriously, though, this song is so fantastic. Once again, it’s that adolescent sense of betrayal when you pull back the curtain on the religion you’ve grown up with, and the song features some of Alanis’s best, most muscular vocals. Of the seven album cuts on Jagged Little Pill, this one’s my favorite. Rating: 8 Jagged Little Pills

Mark: Maybe it’s because I’m a lapsed Southern Baptist, but this song just doesn’t do it for me. I mean… it’s fine, and I love the high notes in the chorus. But for me, this one crosses that line between “intense” and “turgid,” like of some of Tori Amos’ twelve-minute shriek-a-thons. [EDIT: "Yes, Anastasia" 4 ever! -- Joe] Rating: 3 Jagged Little Pills

Average rating: 5.5 Jagged Little Pills

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TRACK NAME: “You Learn”

MARK’S KEY LYRIC: “The fiiiii-iiii-re trucks are… comin’ up around the bee-ee-eend!”
JOE’S KEY LYRIC: “Wear it out (the way a three-year-old would do) / Melt it down (you’re gonna have to eventually, anyway) / The fire trucks are coming up around the bend”

Joe: The sense memory I have with this one is insanely strong. I’m in the car with my family, headed for a family wedding out of town, I’ve got Jagged Little Pill in my Discman, and I am positively disappearing into this song, on repeat, across three states. I’m not sure if it was the sonic structure of the song — where the verses all sound like bridges — or if it’s that the song is basically an ode to fucking up, but something bonded me to it in a serious way. I always felt like this single got unfairly lost in the shuffle merely because “Ironic” got a better video, but as those are the pointless ravings of a crazy person, I’ll not go down that road. Rating: 9 Jagged Little Pills

Mark: I can’t. I seriously can’t. How can I talk about this song without exploding? It was, is, and forever will be my jam. And yeah, the lyrics are faux-wise in some places and utter nonsense in others, but who gives a hot damn when Alanis is stretching out those notes in the bridge and then reinventing the pronunciation of words like “settles” and “firetrucks” and “bend?” You can hear the joy in her voice, and it’s perfectly matched by the ultra-90s drum loop and… AAAH! Instant joy maker! All objectivity destroyed! Oh, and this is the song that gives the album its title. Bonus! Rating: 10 Jagged Little Pills

Average rating: 9.5 Jagged Little Pills

REVISIT THE REST OF THE ALBUM AT LOW RESOLUTION