JAGGED LITTLE PILL was one of the defining albums of the 90s.
Tracks like Ironic, Hand in My Pocket and You Oughta Know catapulted Alanis Morissette into the glare of the global spotlight – a transition the Canadian singer/ songwriter recently said she struggled to adjust to.
Alanis, who was just 21 when the album went stratospheric, didn’t expect the level of public scrutiny to which she was exposed, telling Event magazine that she didn’t enjoy this period of her career.
I was already quite an isolated person, and it got worse. I became averse to people even looking at me. I was always a people-watcher, I’d sit for hours observing, and then all of a sudden, every eyeball was on me. I was horrified by it.
Alanis, who admitted she ‘didn’t know what she was signing up for’, was dumbfounded by the public’s reaction.
I started landing at airports internationally and there were 30,000 people there. I wound up hiding in my hotel room, but if I walked past the window, even my shadow on the drapes would cause people to scream outside.
The singer went on to reveal that the attention took a turn for the sinister on occasion when zealous fans overstepped the boundaries.
People would break in and leave notes in my underwear when I was doing a show. It felt like an obliteration of my boundaries.
Alanis, who is now a mother of two, said she sought professional help during the height of her fame, and lamented her lack of a support network.
I had no one, apart from a couple of therapists who I would phone from the road, desperately, at three in the morning.
23 years on, the performer has learned coping mechanisms to deal with her level of fame, saying that in the 90s she simply put ‘one foot in front of the other.’
Alanis will be playing two Irish dates this summer, taking to the stage in both Cork and Dublin.
