I Hate To Bug You In The Middle of Dinner

If you're anywhere near my age, chances are you at the very least remember hearing the sounds of an angry caterwauling nineteen year old Canadian emanating out of some form of music player during the middle years of the 1990s, that is if you weren't yourself obsessed with the now legendary emblem of a generation of teen and preteen angst, Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill. But after her musically adventurous sophomore album smashed sales records but bamboozled many of her former fans, Morissette's career slowed to a steady idle, where it continues today, three albums later. Morissette toured a few years ago with Barenaked Ladies in support of her 2004 album So-Called Chaos, and it was the first pop/rock concert I'd ever attended (much less spent money on a ticket for), and to this day it remains my favorite. At said concert Morissette, sans backup singers and headbanging jovially, introduced a confused but delighted crowd to some unusual renditions of some of her old songs that later showed up in the tenth anniversary re-release of Jagged Little Pill, a fully re-recorded acoustic reimagining of the iconic 1995 album that, in my mind, rivals if not surpasses the original and is a must-have for any Morissette fan. But how can raging angry-rock anthems like "You Oughta Know" possibly translate to acoustic versions? Well, here's your answer.

You Oughta Know - Alanis Moris...

"You Oughta Know"

Alanis Morissette

Jagged Little Pill Acoustic

(Maverick, 2005)

Trivia: Alanis Morissette's eighth (!) album, an acoustic re-imagining and re-recording of her third album, Jagged Little Pill, appeared on June 13, 2005 (two days before my birthday...just saying) as a special promotion through Starbucks coffee shops, only being available in North American Starbucks outlets for the first five weeks before it was made available to all retail. Starbucks promotions have certain common aspects, such as the fact that they are not 1. uncommon, nor 2. chart-busters. Besides, by 2005 So-Called Chaos had barely moved a million copies worldwide, and Morissette can't have been seen as a colossal moneymaker overall. So why HMV Canada got its nose so bent out of joint by this Starbucks deal that it pulled all Morissette albums from its stores for the duration of the promotion is as much your guess as it is mine, but happen it did.


Definitely get Alanis Morissette's phenomenal acoustic re-release, Jagged Little Pill Acoustic, one of my favorite albums of all time.