PDF - Sofia Barros

Over the last 20 years, Canadian rock star
Alanis Morissette has transformed herself from
pop princess to angry young woman to spiritual
seeker. Her latest incarnation? A smart, balanced and
thoughtful woman who loves to have fun.
by Rebecca Caldwell photographs by Odette Sugerman
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Chatelaine april 2008
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Chatelaine APRIL 2008
“i don’t feel like
I’m a human being having
a spiritual experience;
i feel like a spiritual being
having a human experience.
it’s not something that
i choose to do.
it chooses to do me.”
sion of “My Humps.”
The original “My Humps” video
by The Black Eyed Peas featured
the band’s sole female member, a
whored-up and blinged-out Fergie,
flaunting her “lovely lady lumps”
and cooing “they keep givin’, so I keep on takin’,” all the while strategically shaking her booty to illustrate her argument. It was, simply
put, one of the ickiest videos of the
last few years.
Then, in a one-day shoot in her
garage last winter, Morissette and
her friends recreated the video,
but with a few notable changes.
The throbbing drums and synthesizer were replaced with an acoustic piano. The tempo was slowed
to that of a funeral dirge. And, in
Morissette’s characteristically anguished vocals, lyrics that had been
merely pointlessly demeaning became grotesquely obscene – and
gut-bustingly funny.
“Comedy and music are my two
favourite ways to make social commentary,” she says, “and when you
can combine them both, it’s even
better. I just loved presenting the
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lanis Morissette and I are alone in the windowless back room of a
Santa Monica photo
studio. The air conditioning is in
overdrive (no one can figure out
how to turn it down) and she’s shivering in a chunky brown cardigan
over a T-shirt and jeans, warming
her hands with a mug of hot tea.
Despite the decidedly unglamorous surroundings, the frigid tem-
perature and the fact that the
Ottawa-born singer has spent a
long day posing for Chatelaine’s
cover shoot, a diva attitude is nowhere in sight.
In our conversation about her
seventh album, Flavors of Entanglement, expected out this spring,
Morissette is good-natured and
prone to laughing in quick eruptions. Making small talk, I mention
her twin brother, Wade, a yoga instructor with a budding music career, and she beams with pride.
And when I ask, “Which one of
you is the ‘evil twin’?” she cackles
with delight. “It’s a legitimate question,” she says. (The answer? “It depends when you catch us.”)
For a musician often regarded as
earnest, Morissette’s sense of humour is a revelation. For every good
Canadian knows the story of Alanis
Morissette. Her unlikely transformation from mall-rat pop princess
into music’s patron saint of agonized relationships into spiritual
junkie is as familiar as “O Canada.”
But, like the national anthem’s second verse, Morissette has a whole
other unknown refrain.
Sure, when we want to dance out
our revenge fantasies on no-good
ex-boyfriends, we’ll crank the volume on “You Oughta Know.” And
when we’re feeling more med-
ditative, we’ll groove to the feel-
good “Thank U.” But we never
think of turning to Morissette
for a laugh, and maybe it’s time to
start. A great beginning is her ver-
song to people in a way that asked,
‘Have you heard these lyrics?’ And,
I hate to say it, but after singing
[them], I realized some of them were
awesome. In the game of gender differences, some of those lyrics were
dead true.”
The video was a semi-private
joke, posted on Morissette’s website,
www.alanis.com, for her dedicated fans. Then someone uploaded it to
YouTube, where it picked up five
million hits in a matter of days. Ini-
tially, she refused to talk about her
pet project, showing a lack of inter-
est in spotlight hogging that bumped her already elevated street cred
up another notch. Even Fergie saw
the humour: She sent Morissette a
cake shaped like a derrière with
a note that read, “Alanis, you’re a
genius. Love, Fergie.”
It turns out that Morissette is a
satirical mastermind as well as a
feminist. So while every good Canadian knows her story, they’re
going to have to rewrite the ending
to make room for her latest incarnation: that of a smart, thoughtful,
balanced woman who likes to have
fun. Someone like us, or at least
who we hope to be. Except for the
international-superstar part.
P
erhaps the first real clue
about Morissette’s other
persona was the grace
with which she handled
the February 2007 breakup of her
engagement to her beau of four
years, a fellow Canuck, Ryan Reynolds. At the time, their publicists
issued the typical Hollywood state-
ment announcing the end of their
relationship, their continued mutual
affection and their desire for privacy.
When I ask her about the news
that Reynolds, the star of Smokin’
Aces, Blade: Trinity and Van Wilder,
is heavily involved with the bombshell actress Scarlett Johansson,
her response is heartfelt: “I wish
nothing but absolute joy for him.
I want him to be as happy as he
wants to be.” As for her own dating
life, Morissette will only offer an
impish grin and say, “I’m having a
lot of fun.
“Down the road I would love to
have a full-blown family, but I am
nowhere near ready to be married,”
says Morissette, who turns 34 on
June 1. “I have a ways to go before
I am emotionally mature enough
to sustain a healthy connection.
I’m too much of a kid still, but I’m
growing up. And I mean that in
a positive way.”
Still, Morissette has always been
mature enough not to kiss and tell,
just kiss and sing, albeit without
naming names. (She’s never confirmed nor denied the rumour
that the antagonist in “You Oughta
Know” is her one-time flame the
former Full House sitcom star Dave
Coulier.) But she does admit that
her method of creating music always has been deeply rooted in her
own experience. She calls Flavors of
Entanglement – her follow-up to the
2005 release of both a greatest-hits
collection and a Jagged Little Pill
acoustic remix – a snapshot of her
life in the past year.
“The album chronologizes me
and my personal relationships; it’s
hard for me not to write about
them,” she says. “It captures the
rock-bottom moments, the phoenix-
rising moments, the insights that
are derived from excruciating pain.
The overarching theme is growing
up: I might be in a 33-year-old woman’s body, but there are parts of me
that are still seven years old. It’s
about taking a little more responsibility, even though that sounds decidedly unsexy and not fun.”
O
f course, Morissette’s
maturity may work for
her personally, but it
remains to be seen if
her newly embraced wisdom will
work for her music. More than a
decade ago, Jagged Little Pill’s sales
scorched the charts – a recordsetting 30 million copies worldwide
– in large part because of the single
“You Oughta Know,” with its >
Chatelaine APRIL 2008
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cover story
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Chatelaine APRIL 2008
the theme of her new
album is growing up: “I
might be in a 33-year-old
woman’s body, but there
are parts of me that are
still seven years old.”
ity when she’s engaged in any kind
of performance, which explains her
extensive and varied body of work.
She may not have toured since
2005, but you’ll have noticed her
popping up in the television series
Degrassi: The Next Generation, Nip/
Tuck and Sex and the City, as well as
the movies Dogma and De-Lovely.
She recently wrapped the film
adaptation of Radio Free Abelmuth, based on the story by the
sci-fi master Philip K. Dick, in
which she plays a leading role. She’s
also written a manuscript for a
non-fiction book, which she describes as a collection of the “socalled wisdoms I’ve accrued over
the years from my experiences.”
Currently, she’s also busy shuttling
around North America to open for
Matchbox Twenty as a warm-up con-
cert tour for her more extensive
headlining stint this fall.
“Each art form informs the
other ones, and gives the other
ones a break. When I haven’t danced
in a while, I’m dying to dance;
when I haven’t acted in a while,
I’m dying to act; when I haven’t
written songs in a while, I’m
dying to write.”
Ask her what makes her happy,
and she rhymes off a list: “Inti-
macy, connection, self-care, art, ex-
pressing, moving, nature, laughing, comedy – those are my favourite things.” Community counts
highly, too. She divides most of
her time between houses in Malibu and Los Angeles (with a piedà-terre in Ottawa), living with her
aunt, a dear childhood friend, her
two dogs and “a few people who
come and go.
“I don’t know if there will be a
day when I don’t have a village in
my living environment,” she says.
“That’s where I thrive the most.”
A
fter 20 years in show
business, her life plans
are getting mellower.
“I’ve realized so many
sweet dreams already, travel and
that kind of thing. My goals are
much smaller, in the minutiae department: I want to keep my space minimalist, spend more time in nature.
“This is about as happy as I think
I’ve ever been in my whole life. So
much has to do with being able to
take care of myself. Before I was
looking outward. Now I know there
is no way anyone else can parent me
or love me in the way that I have
to do. There is a peace that comes
with that for me.” •
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hissing lyrics: “Every time I scratch
my nails down someone else’s back
I hope you feel it.” But “Not as
We,” a likely single from the new
album, offers a more poignant view
of heartache: “Step one, step one,
I’m barely making sense; for now
I’m faking it till I’m pseudo making
it. / From scratch, begin again, but
this time I as I, not as we.”
“Alanis has obviously grown as an
artist, but she has obviously grown
as a person, too,” says Guy Sigsworth,
the British producer who teamed
up with Morissette for Flavors of
Entanglement. “She’s got a different experience of life and is writing from that, and she’s older and
has more to say.”
Sigsworth, who has worked with
Bjork, Seal and Madonna, also promises that Morissette’s sound has
changed. “The album is really a hybrid, like fusion cuisine, and came
about very organically. It’s not going
to shock people, but I hope it will
surprise people.”
More surprises: Cynical minds
may have mocked Morissette’s soulsearching journey to India post–
Jagged Little Pill, but in conversation
her spirituality is endearing. On
her arms, Morissette tattooed the
words breathe and gentle, close
and permanent reminders of how
to live her life. She’s also exploring
ways to do charitable service, most
recently by visiting cyclone-ravaged Fiji this past January to hand
out medical supplies.
“I don’t feel like I’m a human
being having a spiritual experience; I feel like a spiritual being
having a human experience,” Morissette says. “It’s not something that
I choose to do; it chooses to do me.
It shows up in all kinds of forms:
in me being silent, or being meditative, although I am a shitty meditator. It shows up in me spending
time alone, communing in nature,
dancing or when I’m onstage.”
She feels this sense of spiritual-