JAGGED: Alanis Morissette blew a hole in the crass ceiling of rock’n’roll for women

by Screenmancer 

Even if you know 90’s powerhouse femme-rock fronter Alanis Morissette is from Canada, even Ottawa, even the name of her small town, you outta know… sorry, you should know how Alanis now at 47 makes sense of it all. “I can’t write all these songs (about empowerment) without, obviously, having been disempowered,” the Canadian pop-star turned global music phenom says in the documentary, JAGGED.

Directed by Alison Klayman, the title comes from hit song “Jagged Little Pill” which became the second best-seller LP of the 1990’s, and the film is part of a wider playlist of musician in-depth docs from HBO’s Music Box series that dropped in streaming rotation on HBOmax Nov. 19

What’s to know about the allegedly “angry” superstar? That being her overnight shot to fame with radio play in 1995 for “You Outta Know,” actually took most of Alanis’ childhood from age 10 recording her own songs. 

Can you imagine a time “when you couldn’t play female artists back to back?,” a KROQ exec is quoted on the fly. In other words, back in the 90’s “you couldn’t play new Alanis Morissette after Gwen Stefani,” that’s just how it was.

Interlaced between previously private footage, interviews with numerous rock journalists, her bandmates, musicians like Shirley Manson, producer Glen Ballard, and even filmmaker Kevin Smith, a very different Alanis Morissette emerges. The concert clips included become more nuanced.

In fact, one fan viewer described her as “unrecognizable” in the opening scenes at the hitmaker’s home studio. Unrecognizable is code for the real persona behind the aloof persona… watch.

Yes, Alanis Morissette blew a hole in the crass ceiling of rock’n’roll for women. Yes, she was #MeToo before MeToo. And yes, she sold 33 million albums to date… and yes, married American hip-hop’s Souleye (Mario Treadway) in 2010 and has children… but? Behind the child song and dance act that became a 33 million best-seller, there was a “human” who wanted to beat the image-making music machine at its own game.

See JAGGED now on HBOmax. It’s a free education for stage parents, and just a helluva ride.

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