[LINK] "Why Alanis still matters"

[rfmcdonald]

Sonya Bell of MacLean's makes a convincing case for the continued relevance of Alanis Morissette, newly-inducted to the Canadian Music Hall of Fame.

The reason it’s important to recognize Morissette in 2015 is that, 20 years on, we can fully appreciate Jagged Little Pill’s legacy. Its wildly successful blend of Riot Grrrl feminism and pop hooks announced to the music industry—in that distinctive husky screech—that there was a mass market for female singer-songwriters.

In the mid-1990s, that still wasn’t obvious.

“There was a quota for a very small [number] of female artists,” Morissette says in a piece she wrote looking back on that time. This meant her label, Maverick, initially had a hard time convincing radio stations to give You Oughta Know a shot.

As Morissette tells it, “Before a certain time, the response was, ‘We’re already playing two female artists. We’re playing Tori Amos and Sinead O’Connor, so we have plenty of females. We’re good.’ ”

It’s a hard attitude to wrap your mind around today, when the charts are dominated by Taylor Swift (who has been spotted with the You Learn lyrics scrawled on her arm) and Katy Perry (who says she grew up idolizing Morissette).

But Morissette is widely credited for helping to open the floodgates, ushering in a generation of mainstream female artists who sang about love very differently from Mariah Carey and Céline Dion. She paved the way for Fiona Apple, Nelly Furtado, Avril Lavigne and Pink, many of whom cite her as a direct influence.