Alanis Morissette

Prior to making waves in the music industry, Morissette had appeared on the children’s television show “You Can’t Do That on Television”. Using money she had earned from the show the young talent recorded her first music demo entitled “Fate Stay With Me” in 1985, when the singer was 11. Three years later Morissette inked a publishing contract and in 1991, after signing with MCA Canada, released her debut album “Alanis”. Produced and co-written by Leslie Howe, the album became a hit in Canada, spawned the singles “Too Hot”, “Walk Away”, and “Feel Your Love”, and led to Morissette winning the Juno Award for Most Promising Female Vocalist.

Morissette’s sophomore album “Now Is the Time”, released in 1992, was a more thoughtful and candid album, and featured less pop production work than its predecessor. Despite being popular and producing three Top 40 singles “An Emotion Away”, “No Apologies” and “(Change Is) Never a Waste of Time”, the album was a comparative commercial failure and the singer was dropped from MCA Canada.

After graduating from high school, in liaison with her manager Scott Welsh, Morissette moved to Toronto, Canada, and began recording her third full-length in songwriter and producer Glen Ballard’s studio. By 1995 she had signed a deal with Maverick Records who issued “Jagged Little Pill” internationally in June 1995. The album’s lead single “You Oughta Know” soon got picked up by the relevant and influential Los Angeles, California radio station KROQ-FM, snowballing Morissette to success. The exposure led to heavy rotation on MTV and MuchMusic, and resulted in “Jagged Little Pill” reaching No. 1 in the U.S. Subsequent singles included “All I Really Want”, “Hand in My Pocket” and the instantly recognisable “Ironic”. The album went on to sell over 30 million copies worldwide, was certified 12 times platinum in Canada, and won the singer-songwriter six Juno Awards and four Grammy Awards in 1996.

After a successful tour in support of the album, and a six-week hiatus in India, the singer collaborated with Ringo Starr and Dave Matthews Band before returning to the studio to focus on her follow-up. Released in 1998, “Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie” earned the highest first-week sales by any female artist, however failed to live-up to the success of its predecessor. After contributing four tracks to the Jonathan Elias project “The Prayer Cycle” Morissette released the live acoustic album “Alanis Unplugged” and toured alongside Tori Amos.

Morissette’s fifth studio album “Under Rug Swept” once again topped the charts in Canada, this time however the singer wrote and produced the album on her own. Aided by the singles “Hands Clean”, “So Unsexy”, and “Precious Illusions”, the album went platinum in Canada and sold over a million copies in the States. After the live concert DVD “Feast on Scraps” in 2002 the singer went on to release her sixth full-length album “So-Called Chaos” issued in 2004, followed by the acoustic rework of her breakthrough album entitled “Jagged Little Pill Acoustic”. In 2008 Morissette released the album “Flavors of Entanglement” which documented the break-up of her relationship with Ryan Reynolds, followed by “Havoc and Bright Lights” in 2012.