To date, Morissette has sold 16 million copies of her album Jagged Little Pill.
PUBLICITY PHOTO

Though she first burst into American pop culture in 1995 with her breakthrough album, Jagged Little Pill, Morissette was already a showbiz veteran by the time she released that landmark disc. In 1986, at age 12, she landed her first acting gig as a cast member of the Nickelodeon sketch comedy show You Can’t Do That On Television. Two years later, having been a songwriter since the age of eight, she reached a publishing deal with MCA, and by 1991, was a bona fide dance pop superstar north of the border, selling over a million copies of her debut album, Alanis, and earning an opening gig with rapper Vanilla Ice.

Still, with success came personal demons. For four years, she suffered from anorexia and bulimia, and her troubles multiplied when she began dating Full House actor Dave Coulier in 1993– when he was 34 and she was 19. After her sophomore effort Now Is The Time flopped in record stores, Morissette’s label dropped the young singer.

In 1995, Morissette was back a vengeance. Reinventing herself from a mall-crawling teenybopper into an angry young woman, she channeled her personal struggles into Jagged Little Pill. The first single, “You Oughta Know,” inspired women and frightened men everywhere with its angst-infused lyrics pointed squarely at an ex-lover. The target of the song’s venom has been as debated as Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain,” and Morissette has never revealed the secret. Popular guesses include Coulier, fellow Full House-er Bob Saget, NHL hockey player Doug Gilmour, Friends star Matt LeBlanc, and Morissette’s former producer, Leslie Howe.

“You Oughta Know” was the first of the six Billboard top-10 singles the album spawned, including a string of three consecutive #1 hits: “Ironic,” “You Learn,” and “Head Over Feet.” In 1996, she won four Grammys for her work on Jagged Little Pill, including Album of the Year. The album became only the second release to remain in the Billboard top 10 for more than a year, joining Michael Jackson’s Thriller. To date, the disc has sold 16 million copies, making it the eighth best-selling album in American recording history (better than Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A., and the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack), and with a total of 30 million copies worldwide.

While she’s never had another hit album as big as Jagged Little Pill, Morissette has continued to produce commercially and critically successful music. She’s had two more #1 albums (1998’s Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie and 2002’s Under Rug Swept), two more #1 singles (1998’s “Thank U,” and 2002’s “Hands Clean”), and three more Grammy awards. She’s presently touring in support of her album Flavors of Entanglement, her fifth consecutive album to enter the Billboard top 10.

Morissette has numerous Charlottesville connections. In 1998, she sang background vocals on Dave Matthews Band’s “Don’t Drink the Water,” “Halloween,” and “Spoon” from the band’s third album Before These Crowded Streets. In 1999, Matthews took Morissette’s advice to enlist the services of her frequent producer and collaborator Glen Ballard for the DMB album Everyday. She’s also a client of Coran Capshaw’s Red Light Management.

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