Rock singer Alanis Morissette admits her music has been called angry, but says she sees it as a compliment.
The ‘Ironic’ singer created a specific persona in the early part of her career because of her provocative lyrics, but said she liked to direct anger into her songs, as opposed to her personal life.
She told The Guardian; “When someone says that I’m angry it’s actually a compliment. I have not always been direct with my anger in my relationships, which is part of why I’d write about it in my songs because I had such fear around expressing anger as a woman.
“I thought I would be retaliated against or physically hit or vilified. Anger has been a really big deal for women: how can we express it without feeling that, as the physically weaker sex, we won’t get killed. The alpha-woman was burned at the stake and had her head chopped off in days of old.”
The 38-year-old singer made her name in the early 90s, when she was just 20, with her ‘Jagged Little Pill’ album. The record sold over 33 million copies. The artist said she preferred her fame in the latter part of the decade when it wasn’t so intense, as she could use it to help others.
She added; “I think fame became exciting for me in the late 90s because I could actually use it as a means to an end. I could actually have it help me serve a vocation. I could offer comfort and be a leader and take on that responsibility, rather than see it as this daunting thing.”
The singer also said that the success of her hit album gave her Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which she still suffers from.
“I still have PTSD from the ‘Jagged Little Pill’ era. It was a profound violation. It felt like every millisecond I was attempting to set a boundary and say no and people were breaking into my hotel rooms and going through my suitcase and pulling my hair and jumping on my car.
“There was a period of time where I don’t think I laughed for about two years. It was a survival mode, you know. It was an intense, constant, chronic over-stimulation and invasion of energetic and physical literal space.”
Alanis was signed to Madonna’s Maverick record label until 2010, and she insists they had a good relationship in the early part of her career, but said she didn’t feel like they were working well together in later years.
She explained: “We met a couple of times and she was actually quite lovely with me – early on. It was an interesting dynamic. It was kind of like back to the antiquated system of 80 per cent record company and 20 per cent artist.
“There was an inherent win/lose quality to that dynamic, so less a boss and more a pseudo-partnership, but it wasn’t really a partnership because that’s win/win or no deal, right?”
