ALANIS MORISSETTE: Jagged
Paul Cantin
Bloomsbury, #9.99
ONE minute, Alanis Morissette is not exactly setting the charts alight as Canada's wholesome and vapid teen-pop answer to Tiffany, all bouffant hair and hula-hoop earrings; the next, her hair's gone nouveau hippie and she's selling squintillions of albums worldwide by raunching her leather-trousered way through grunge-rock anthems like the sexplicit You Oughta Know in which she vengefully taunts some previous lover about his new amour's unwillingness to fellate him in public - just like what Alanis done . . . as if he'll ever be able to forget it.
Oo-er, Alanis! What happened? And how did it happen so quickly? For in spring, 1994, Alanis Morissette is the credibility-free 19-year-old hostess of a cheesy local TV pop show, with no live on-stage musical experience to speak of. Suddenly, on May 16, 1995, You Oughta Know airs for the first time on top LA alternative-rock radio station KROQ and lights the blue touch-paper under the album sales sky-rocket which is Jagged Little Pill. How did Alanis manage to re-invent herself so completely, earning Grammys and filling stadiums in the process?
Principally, as this standard cut-and-paste histoire eventually confirms, more than two-thirds of the way into its exhausting chronological narrative, what happened was that Alanis Morissette relocated from Toronto to Los Angeles, and there began collaborating on songs with veteran studio whiz Glen Ballard, whose expertise has benefited everyone from straight-shootin' country geezer George Strait to alien funk-popper Michael Jackson. Quite how the partnership works the book doesn't say.
There's also some me-generation psycho-babble about Alanis having had an anxiety attack on a plane late in 1994, thus realising that she needed to learn to ''focus on her inner self, and accept and resign herself to the external circumstances''.
Yup, that's all a would-be chart-topper has got to do in order to release the rock star within.
What else does this book tell us? That Alanis isn't a vengeful, angry person. It's best instead to think of her as serious. Anything more?
Only that, whichever boyfriend it was who once earned Alanis's ire, it sure wasn't Paul Cantin. Pardon my French, but he doesn't come close enough to his subject.
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