The 100: Alanis Morissette, SUPPOSED FORMER INFATUATION JUNKIE

It took me a long time to accept Jagged Little Pill into my life. When it arrived in 1995 and “You Oughta Know” assumed its stranglehold over radio and MTV, I was resistant to Alanis Morisette’s obvious charms. After being activated by the Green Day/Offspring revolution of 1994, I dove into punk rock and found myself neck deep in bands both contemporary (Rancid, NOFX, Bad Religion, Pennywise) and classic (Ramones, The Clash, Talking Heads, The Damned). Alanis felt like an industry plant, a Canadian pop star who had co-opted post-grunge guitar crunch and the combative spirit of punk to dominate most every format available.

I eventually came around, though I didn’t like “Hand in My Pocket” any more than “You Oughta Know.” It took the instant classic video for “Ironic” and a particularly punchy live version of “You Learn” to convince me, but once I embraced the lesser-known gems on Jagged Little Pill (particularly “Forgiven” and “Not the Doctor” and that weird a cappella thing she dropped in as a hidden track), I did what I always did and went all in. I started tracking Alanis’ live shows and picking apart the stuff that wasn’t on the album (there was a b-side she liked to play called “King of Intimidation”; later she dropped in a song called “No Pressure Over Cappuccino” that had seemingly been written while on the road; she liked covering the Beatles and would often drop in a cover of “Fake Plastic Trees” by Radiohead—a band that opened for her during her amphitheater tour in the summer of 1996). Since each subsequent Jagged Little Pill single broke bigger than the last, Morissette kept promoting it and was continuously on the road touring nearly two years straight. It was clear she had a lot of new musical ideas, and I started to get excited at the prospect of her next album.

And then she disappeared for most of a year. After operating as one of the most famous musicians in the world, she went dark. That was obviously better for her mental health and her personal and professional well-being, but it created a void that ended up being filled with speculation about what her follow-up would sound like and if it had any chance of matching the success of her breakout (which at that point had gone platinum a dozen times over in an era when that actually meant something tangible). There were music magazine rumors about false starts in the studio and a falling out with Jagged Little Pill collaborator Glenn Ballard. There were questions about how she might embrace then-ascendant electronic sounds and whether or not the explosion of female singer-songwriter types (the first Lilith Fair was the summer of 1997) had dulled the interest in Alanis and made her obsolete. There’s no evidence of this online, but I swear there was at least one release date that got bumped.

Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie finally arrived in November 1998, some three and a half years after Jagged Little Pill dropped. It was always going to be doomed. How do you follow up one of the biggest albums of the decade? What’s even the measure of success for something like that? Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie sold over three million copies, broke a pair of solid singles and was nominated for two Grammys, but she could have released Revolver and it probably still would have crumbled under the weight of expectations.

Everyone was so caught up in the narrative of Alanis Morissette that barely anybody talked about the music itself, which is both plentiful and invigorating. Like Jagged Little Pill before it, Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie is a series of collaborations between Alanis and Ballard. But this time around they break free from guitar-based alt-pop and really let their freak flag fly. Most of that came directly from Morissette, who went out of her way to expose herself to all manner of new musical ideas as she traveled the world. That is most readily apparent on the first single “Thank U” and the crunchy Led Zep bite “Baba,” both of which incorporate Indian and Middle Eastern melodic touches. There’s a ton of ambient electronic textures imported directly from European rave chillout tents, particularly on the bubbly opener “Front Row” and the cascading “The Couch.” Those are all maximalist touches, but there’s also “Are You Still Mad?” and “That I Would Be Good,” stripped back singer-songwriter moments that most closely recall Carole King. “So Pure” is Alanis’ take on a Garbage-esque techno-rock mashup. “Can’t Not” is a minor key sludge thing that reminds me a bit of Alice in Chains. “Unsent” is a wild-eyed monologue with no chorus.

It's a lot of tracks (17) and a lot of ideas (all of them), and the impression most people had was that this was an overlong and scattershot record that had gotten away from Alanis’ core charms. But I loved Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie right away, largely because I was always so taken with any album or movie or book that threw too many ideas at you at once. I love Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis and Smashing Pumpkins’ Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness and David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. With all of those properties, roughly sixty percent of them do not work at all, but holy hell when they hit they hit hard, and I can really feel the absolute bone-deep need to get those ideas out into the open. Some of them are indeed terrible and have no merit or coherence, but that kind of hunger can get you pretty far.

Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie was clearly made not because Alanis Morissette was trying to do a career pivot or to extend her reign on top. She doesn’t have those kinds of commercial instincts, or at least if she does she doesn’t bow to them. This album happened because Alanis was desperate to express herself. It’s a mess, but a glorious and rewarding one.