It's only a pop song, Alanis Morissette said. Yet critics are taking the tack that she's poisoned the minds of little schoolchildren everywhere with Ironic.
Yes, Morissette knows that every situation described in the song -- rain on your wedding day, a free ride when you've already paid -- doesn't meet the dictionary definition of irony. Still, critics felt compelled to devote entire essays to the concept of irony and how Ironic doesn't caputure it.
Geez. Had she known how much it would upset people, she'd have looked it up and changed a word here or there. But she's got a better suggestion -- get over it, guys.
This is just the latest round of backlash against the Canadian who blew into the public eye a year ago with her album JLP, which has sold 13 million copies.
The critical nitpicking is to be expected. The buzz around Morissette isn't that she's just the hottest new female singer since
Madonna, the owner of Morissette's label, Matador Records. (Yep, that's really what they wrote : O ) The buzz is that we're witnessing the birth of an icon --someone who could become her own larger - than - life - one - name industry and cross over into other areas of the arts. Like Madonna. Like Whitney. Like Cher.
By now everyone knows her story. She grew up an actress on a TB show, YCDTOTV, and released two frothy dance-pop albums that made her a teen idol in Canada.
She wanted a more honest album and collaborated with veteran producer Glen Ballard to make the soulful blast that became JLP, often writing and recording songs within a few hours. The single YOK was a hit right out of the box, but also stereotyped her as a raging young woman until follow-up hits such as YL and Ironic exposed her more to the public.
Next came platinum albums and Grammys. Virtually unknown in the US a year ago, she's now selling out big arenas and even is able to bring along bands she admires, such as Radiohead, ad the opening acts.
But the debate continues. Supporters call JLP an example of incredible artistic growth by Morissette; detractors still look at it as a calculated, by-the-numbers peice of Gen X Product.
Whatever.
The incredibly self-assured Morissette doesn't care what her detractors think. Two days before her recent 22nd birthday, Morissette talked by phone from Portland, where she was preparing to kick off her biggest tour ever.
Q: You've kept a low profile since the Grammy's. Is that on purpose?
A: I try to keep a low profile in general. Not with my art, but just as a person. Anything I do has to be directly related to my music. If it isn't, I don't really see a point to it.
Q: How is fame different this time around?
A: The reason why I'm a lot more peaceful now, ironically, a lot more so that when I was younger and I had this on a smaller scale, was that when I was younger, my perception of all this was different. I was motivated by just thinking that if you had all this external success that everyone would love you and everything would be peaceful and wonderful. I found the opposite to be quite true, in fact. I saw music as a way to entertain people and take them away from their daily lives and put smiles on their faces, as opposed to what I see it being now, which is a way for me to actually communicate, and a way for me to tap into my subconscious. I didn't realize that I would be able to do that through music, for many reasons, including myself being my own saboteur and being in creative environments that were not conducive to my feeling free and injudged.
Q: How do you deal with fans who see you as a spokeswoman for their generation?
A: I see the whole concept of Generation X implies that everyone has lost hope. I can agree with that, and I can understand why; thinkgs like my parents coming out of high school or university with five or six jobs waiting for them, and people my age coming out of university with a degree and every reason to get jobs and having no potential jobs and being in the same position as someone who left high school in Grade 8. Just our times are different. So obviously, our mind-sets are going to be different. But at the same time I don't think that an entire generation should be underestimated. I happen to be lucky in that I knew what I wanted to do as far as a career since I was nine years old. I was blessed in that I could tap into what I loved to do that turned me into something that could put food on my table at a very young age. That's the only difference I see between myself and anyone else my age.
Q: Has the success of singles besides YOK killed off the angry-young-woman stereotype?
A: Yeah. When YOK first came out and that was the only song you heard, I completely understood why people had that perception of me. I just thought that it was obviously such a one-dimensional thing to call someone simply an angry person. It's just so one-dimensional. I have an angry part of my personality, definitely. But I think once people heard the rest of the songs, I think it went away.
Q: How do you deal with the new criticisms -- the tweaking of your use of "ironic" for instance?
A: (laughs) That's funny. I did actually hear that one. For someone to take that much time to analyze something like that when it's just something that is...I guess what people forget sometimes is that when I write songs, I write them sometimes in about 20 minutes. And it was just a snapshot of that moment. It's not something that I foresaw turning into a song, first of all, that I'd have to sing every night for a year. Or something that I thought millions of people would be listening to. Honestly, it was something that I just wrote as anyone would write a poem, for a high school project. They write it, then they honestly think they'll never have to read it again, really. And that's kind of how I saw my songs.
Q: Given that, are there any you might look back on and not want to perform in coming years?
A: Maybe. I don't know. Let me think...No, I think a lot of what I wrote about on this record was in retrospect to begin with. So if I were to sing it in years from now, it would just be further back in retrospect.
Q: Glen said the two of you plan to work together again. Do you think you can re-create the chemistry you had for JLP?
A: The viewpoint I have, as Glen does, I think, is that we're not trying to re-create it. I think we truly just scratched the surface of what we wanted to do just as friends. This is beyond whether it was going to go on the record or not,. There are many things I want to talk about. There's so much to say. There's so much to create. And so many observations that I've made over the last year that I just can't wait to release. This is regardless of whether it goes on the record or not. So he and I are not going to go back into the studio trying to re-create Jagged Little Pill, Part II. Definitely not. No.
