Albums I Wish Existed: Alanis Morissette

Friday, December 9, 2022

Alanis Morissette - Alanis (1991)

Alanis Nadine Morissette was born on 1 June 1974 in Ottawa, Canada, 12 minutes after her twin brother Wade, who is also a musician, and they both have an older brother Chad. Her parents were teachers in a military school, and due to their work often had to move, so between the ages of three and six she lived with her parents in Lahr in Germany, moving back to Canada when she was six. She started to play the piano at a young age, by seven she was taking dance lessons, and she composed her first song at the age of 10. She recorded her first demo called 'Fate Stay With Me' at Marigold Studios in Toronto, and a second demo tape was recorded on cassette in August 1989 and sent to Geffen Records, but the tape has never been heard as it was stolen in a burglary of the label's headquarters in October 1989. In 1991 she released her eponymous debut album through MCA Records Canada, but it only appeared in that country. She co-wrote every track on the album with its producer, Leslie Howe, and the dance-pop album went platinum, with its first single 'Too Hot' reaching the top 20 on the RPM singles chart. Subsequent singles 'Walk Away' and 'Feel Your Love' didn't fare as well, but still made the top 40, and her popularity, style of music and appearance, particularly that of her hair, led her to become known as the 'Debbie Gibson of Canada'. In 1992 she released her second album 'Now Is The Time', which was more of a ballad-driven record, with thoughtful lyrics and a less glitzy production that her previous release.

Once again, the record only appeared in Canada, but it did produce three top 40 singles in 'An Emotion Away', 'No Apologies', and '(Change Is) Never A Waste Of Time'. The industry considered it a commercial failure, however, since it sold only a little more than half the copies of her first album, and with her two-album deal with MCA Records Canada complete, Morissette was left without a major label contract. In 1993 her publisher Leeds Levy at MCA Music Publishing introduced her to manager Scott Welch, who suggested that she move to Toronto and start writing with other people, and so after graduating from high school she left Ottawa and moved. While in Toronto she met producer and songwriter Glen Ballard, and he believed in her talent enough to let her use his studio, where they co-wrote and recorded her first internationally released album, 'Jagged Little Pill'. By the spring of 1995 she'd signed a deal with Maverick Records, who released 'Jagged Little Pill' internationally in 1995, expecting it to just sell enough to warrant a follow-up record, but the situation improved quickly when influential Los Angeles radio station KROQ-FM began playing the first single 'You Oughta Know', and after that success, further singles 'All I Really Want', 'Hand In My Pocket', and particularly 'Ironic' helped propel the album to the top of the charts. For most people, and I was one of them, this was their introduction to the singer, who seemed to emerge fully-formed from nowhere with a Juno and Grammy Award winning album, but it was in fact her third release, and while it's certainly not a case of her 1991 debut paving the way for her international success four years later, fans might still be interested in hearing 'Alanis', as like me, they might not have known that it even existed.