Francesca Michielin writes for Rockol of “Jagged Little Pill”
It was June 13, 1995, exactly thirty years ago, when an album destined to become one of the most important of the rock of the 90s on the shelves of the record stores: “Jagged Little Pill” by Alanis Morissette. Considered, until then, as a promising Canadian rockeuse, the singer -songwriter would have consecrated himself, thanks to that album, as one of the most influential rumors of the rock of his generation. And to think that between the previous “Now is the time” and “Jagged Little Pill” Morissette had also remained without a record company, after the label that had launched her four years before the release of the 1995 album, the MCA Records, had not renewed her contract. “Jagged Little Pill”, whose songs were hymns on the self -affirmation and independence but also on vulnerability, sold over 30 million copies worldwide and won four Grammy Awards, becoming an iconic album: the album brought in the foreground an intense, angry but also vulnerable female voice, in a period in which pop and rock were dominated by male figures or by female figures. more conventional. On the occasion of the thirty years of his release, we asked one of the Italian songwriters closest to the themes and atmospheres of “Jagged Little Pill” to tell the Readers of Rockol the importance and impact that that album had on the history of music: Francesca Michielin, despite the many commitments on the agenda (from the new single “Francesca” to the preparations for the show on Sunday 15 June at the Circus Maximus of Rome as Special Guest of the Duran. Duran, up to those for the concert of 4 October at the Verona Arena), wrote the text you find below.
Thirty years ago an alternative grunge disco (or perhaps impossible to be inscribed in a precise musical definition) scaled the world charts ERideal a new way of being songwriters. Only in Italy has it inspired generations of musicians and future such, including the undersigned! “Jagged Little Pill” is the same age and I listened to it and lived graduallyin his liberating imagination, with a very long hair of Alanis Morissette who enchanted me, to his apparently simple but revolutionary video clips, obviously passing through the sounds, especially those of the debut single, “You Oughta Know”, which features two musicians for me of reference, the same as another album released in that year, “One Hot Minute”: Dave Navarro on guitar but above all Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers on bass.
When in 2018 I opened the Morissette concert at the Cavea of the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Romeit seemed to me to close a magical circle. I remember this aurea around her, a timeless rocker, disruptive, self -deprecating, ready to split everything, yet Sensitive, simple, bright, sweet, careful, with all his children next to him, who has never gave up even for a second until just before climbing on stage and stopping time and space Around creating something unforgettable.
Perhaps it is precisely this dichotomy that we often create for convenience, but which should not in fact exist, the point: Alanis can be everything he wants, he has always done everything he wanted, with an instinctive verve and without ever giving up on himself. A delicate and at the same time sharpened voice. Always consistent in every facet proposes.
Sometimes I have the feeling that in Italy for many it is impossible to imagine such a figure, yet From Carmen Consoli to Elisa, passing through the east, Maria Antonietta and many others of the new scene, such as Galea, I recognize that fascination and that desire to be a kind rocker, Never sunny and never too accommodating.
Also “Grace” by Jeff Buckley is from that period, precisely a year earlier, and I feel a strong, almost mystical similarity that binds these two records, children of the grunge influences of the time, but also, if I can afford, of an ideal of pop inspired more to telling each other in music with immediate and revolutionary lyrics, progressive but without epic, effective and liberating, “jagged” as the title suggests, “Jaggen”, in fact, and a little naive.
“Jagged Little Pill” is an immortal album precisely because there are no limits inside it, its author did not have them when she produced it, ed He is a feminist album in his naturalness and in his communicative power. Perhaps these 30 years of “small and jagged pills”, but infinite, should be inspired by us Go back to making music because we have something natural and instinctive to say, because we could not help but this, with less patterns and less algorithms in the head.
