The story of supposed former infatuation junkie, Alanis's misunderstood follow up to Jagged little pill

[Spicechinodiva]

Fresh off from winning album of the year at the 1996 Grammys (setting a war with the lambily as they felt Mariah Carey and daydream was robbed, due to being more commercial than JLP was).

Starting in India (even name checking in Thank U, which at the time shocked viewers on MTV as they aired a Music video where Alanis Morissette was completely nude, but this upset some people as MTV said this was artistic vs. ***ual expression being seen as Artistic as well).

 

And yes they shut down LA for two days to shot a nude alanis privately. Meaning this really wasnt CGI post edit. 

 

She hated music, as she wanted to leave due to knowing she would face constant comparisons to JLP, which it underperformed selling 3 Million in the US, compared to the 16 Million of her previous album.

 

To ten million worldwide, vs the 30 Million worldwide performance of JLP..

 

So to say these kind of pressures to live up to commercial expectations is definitely much harder pressure on any artist. 

 

Part of the albums underperformance was due to the shift from anger and angst to a much calmer and introspective lyrics which was alienating to a lot of people. 

 

The album held the best first week sales for a female artist with close to 500,000 in its first week, until Britney spears broke it May of 2000 with oops!... I did it again, who would hold that record until 2015 when adele sold 3 Million with 25 in its first week of release.

 

Alanis is considered the songwriter that allowed Taylor swift and Adele to happen..

 

@Jordan Miller

[anthony7226]

ADORE ADORE ADORE!! Alanis is my all time fave and SFIJ is in my trinity for AM albums.

I haven't watched the vid yet to know if it is included or not, but did you know that Madonna personally went up to AM to convince her to continue recording? She really did not want to after the success of JLP. So glad she did! 

[Spicechinodiva]

46 minutes ago, anthony7226 said:

ADORE ADORE ADORE!! Alanis is my all time fave and SFIJ is in my trinity for AM albums.

I haven't watched the vid yet to know if it is included or not, but did you know that Madonna personally went up to AM to convince her to continue recording? She really did not want to after the success of JLP. So glad she did! 

Madonna understood the constant pressures of having to live up to prior commercial success.

 

The only artist who failed to understand that they will never see the height of an era was Michael Jackson, he thought he could always top Thriller, but would end up being disappointed that it never topped it. 

 

@Prachi

 

 

[bitbitboi]

"JLP" was HUGE and so important in my teenage years... It showed me that there could be powerful angry women in rock/pop too. Alanis was definitely not the first one doing that of course, but to me, coming from (and forever staying in) pop, that was fresh and captivating. I didn't know (because there wasn't internet around here at that time, and it's not like this was talked about in the news here either) that she had trouble recording the follow up album, or that she even considered not doing it altogether, but listening to and watching "Thank You" was definitely weird, it felt like a shock because it was so different, almost the opposite of what I had heard and seen from here. It was definitely alienating, and like I said I'm not even a big rock fan! But you could tell that she still had something to say, and later on in life as I grew older I understood her reaction to that massive success of her debut.

Thanks for this thread, Spice!

[Spicechinodiva]

21 minutes ago, bitbitboi said:

"JLP" was HUGE and so important in my teenage years... It showed me that there could be powerful angry women in rock/pop too. Alanis was definitely not the first one doing that of course, but to me, coming from (and forever staying in) pop, that was fresh and captivating. I didn't know (because there wasn't internet around here at that time, and it's not like this was talked about in the news here either) that she had trouble recording the follow up album, or that she even considered not doing it altogether, but listening to and watching "Thank You" was definitely weird, it felt like a shock because it was so different, almost the opposite of what I had heard and seen from here. It was definitely alienating, and like I said I'm not even a big rock fan! But you could tell that she still had something to say, and later on in life as I grew older I understood her reaction to that massive success of her debut.

Thanks for this thread, Spice!

You're welcome, I understand Lauryn hill as well now. 

 

You're basically setting yourself up to fail after a massive album.  

 

That's different than a one hit wonder single. 

[itsxrichiexbish]

I think I'ma have an Alanis power hour