Jagged Little Pill

Was flipping through my radio presets the other day, begging the computers who put Johnny Fever et al. out of work for something I wanted to listen to, when (finally!) The Bob came through for me, playing the original version of Alanis' "You Oughta Know." I was slightly taken aback, to tell you the truth, clearly I've spent far too much time listening to the 1996 Grammy Awards version and 10th Anniversary Acoustic version. I'd forgotten just how, for lack of a better term, raw the song was (even now, really).

Inspired by that, I've listened to the entire Jagged Little Pill album a handful of times in the last few days. It's one of those albums that's very easy to get lost in, my productivity slipped a lot while I sang/hummed along. Yes, there are problems with the album -- her poor understaning of irony, for example -- but it's about as close to perfection as you can get in a pop album. Joy, contentment, amusement with the human condition, anger, disappointment, did I mention anger?, love...she covers all the bases in a way really no one had before -- at least not with the commercial success she found.

I would consider myself an Alanis fan -- TLoML's a bigger one, tho'. We have every album, even the concert VHS from the Jagged days. And while I enjoy her stuff, and the artist she's evolved into, I'd say there's only about 1/3 of her material I like as much as this album. It's probably unfair to compare anything else she does to the magic that was Jagged, much like it's unfair to compare anything Peter Jackson does to his Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Seinfeld cast to that show, etc. If someone catches lightning in a bottle once, you should be impressed that they did and enjoy it for what it is, without demanding the impossible again and again.

If you have it on your shelf (or hard drive), do yourself a favor and give it a whirl if you haven't recently. You'll be glad you did.