The sounds of Alanis Morissette’s “Jagged Little Pill” are among the most familiar to come out of North America in the past two or three decades. The record dominated radio and MTV, selling nearly 30 million copies worldwide and defining an entire generation of torn-from-the-diary female songwriters.
The album’s monumental mid-’90s run was a prime example of how commercial radio and its limited playlists can ruin a song by pounding it into listeners’ frontal lobes, leading to musical saturation.
It’s from this perspective that we view Morissette’s recent acoustic reinterpretation of her seminal rock record – “Jagged Little Pill Acoustic” – which is the focus of her current tour, stopping at the Paramount Theatre on Tuesday. Did we really need an acoustic, reimagined “Pill,” even as a reminder of the original’s 10th anniversary?
“We were thinking about reissuing it, but then my friend said jokingly, ‘Anybody who wanted a copy of that record probably already has one,’ and it was a good point,” the Canadian-born singer said earlier this week by phone from a hotel room in Houston. “I’d done acoustic versions of these songs before, and so this kind of a project made more sense. And once we decided to go that way, it was a really quick process of making this record.
“Glen Ballard worked on the tracks for two weeks, and I visited every once in a while. And then I did the vocals in one night. It was a very non-precious experience, as in, ‘Let’s just have fun.’ But it was also a sacred experience, the marking of a passage.
“Funny, I typically just breeze through every passage in my life – like birthdays – but here I could mark it and honor it in a way that I’ve not done before.”
The record isn’t totally faithful to its inspiration, which Ballard and Morissette created together in 1994. Morissette speaks carefully about the new album, calling the songs “reinterpretations” and talking about how some of them, including “Hand in My Pocket” and “Not the Doctor,” have been completely rearranged because “when we did them with the same harmonics as the originals, I was underwhelmed.”
And so “Jagged Little Pill Acoustic” is a unique juxtaposition. It’s the same songs in the same order, but they’re also artfully different from their predecessors. The angsty jam that broke Alanis and her fearless message to the world, “You Oughta Know,” becomes a methodical, down-tempo manifesto of matured understanding. The urgency of the original “All I Really Want” is gone, with cloying strings zapping the song’s inherent energy.
“They don’t feel inappropriately reinterpreted,” Morissette said. “Thankfully, there was enough of a timelessness to them that it wasn’t a cringe-fest to record them. What I’m noticing is that whatever the big questions I had as a 19-year-old were, I’ve taken them and broadened them and enriched them. I was much more blame-filled as a 19-year-old. And it’s more entertaining when you hear a 19-year-old raging against the proverbial machine rather than a 31-year-old doing the same thing.”
Often Morissette, who recently celebrated her 31st birthday with an intimate get-together with friends, will change the word “you” to “I” while performing live, pointing the finger at herself rather than somebody else. She’s performing – and redefining – these songs on this tour with a renewed sense of purpose, hopefully justifying the ticket prices, which are a tad high for her Denver date at $59.50-$69.50, pre-fees.
“This is hands-down my favorite tour I’ve ever done,” Morissette said. “I love playing these acoustic shows. There’s a higher level of interactivity, and the people in the audience are a lot more verbal and vocal.”
Morissette is fully aware that some people were done with these songs by 1997 after two years of overplayed singles and ubiquitous exposure.
“I know people who are really burnt out on it are probably not coming to the shows,” she said. Yet she harbors no ill will toward the radio machine that propelled “Jagged Little Pill” into the “intolerable” pile for many fans.
“I only have gratitude toward radio,” she said. “I give more personal responsibility to (listeners). … Is radio dictating to people what they should like? Or is it people dictating to radio what they want to hear?”
Much has been made of Morissette’s settling down and finding inner peace, mostly because “Pill” was so much the product of a wild child. And as she continues to enjoy life’s spoils – the many beautiful beaches within a short drive of her waterfront home on Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica, Calif. – she continues to write and create. Aside from the hits anthology her label is releasing later this year, which will include tracks from her early days as a teenage pop star, she plans to start working a new record in the fall.
“I have about 5 1/2 journals full,” Morissette said of her personal writings, “and usually a record consists of about two (journals). So I should be ready.”
Pop music critic Ricardo Baca can be reached at 303-820-1394 or rbaca@denverpost.com.
