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Morissette Shuns Categorization
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Published: October 9, 2008
Updated:
TAMPA - The biggest stereotype about Canadians is that they're all hockey fans.
And it's "pretty accurate," singer Alanis Morissette confirms.
The Canadian-born Morissette (a naturalized U.S. citizen since 2005) is honorary captain of the NHL's Ottawa Senators.
Although she claims to have lost some of her gusto for the sport, she says she "grew up on it. It's in my blood."
Morissette is more associated with emotional hard knocks than the ones collected on the ice. Her breakthrough album, 1995's "Jagged Little Pill," and its first single, the scornful "You Oughta Know," got Morissette branded as an angry young woman, despite the album's far broader emotional range.
Similarly, her most recent release, this year's "Flavors of Entanglement," was dubbed a breakup album since it followed the end of her engagement to actor Ryan Reynolds.
"One-dimensional-izing is not a new concept to me," Morissette says by telephone from a tour stop in Ann Arbor, Mich.
"It's been a process of people rounding me up - or rounding me down - in order to get a grasp on who I am," she says. "I think it makes some people feel more secure about who I am if they can categorize me. But people cannot be reduced to a concept or a category."
Morissette got a quick lesson in celebrity and its attendant public perceptions thanks to the success of "Jagged Little Pill," which has sold more than 10 million copies.
In response, she took a year and a half away from touring and recording to travel and spend time with friends.
"I was going crazy," she says. "I'm Canadian, and I'm a little 'aw shucks'-ish. I was getting an idea of the concept of the illusory aspects of fame and notoriety, but I still hadn't processed it."
Over the course of five albums - including 1998's "Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie," 2002's "Under Rug Swept" and 2004's "So-Called Chaos" - Morissette has stretched musically and lyrically, exploring spirituality and other topics in song, writing pithy pop as well as more experimental works.
"I have songs like 'Thank You' from 'Supposed' that are very kind of quintessential pop, which is right up my alley," Morissette says. "The other aspect is more nonstructured, more like a landscape."
Experience has brought greater confidence in herself, Morissette says.
Although the process of creating her music is "exactly the same" as in her younger days, "the reliance upon it happening has become a no-brainer," she says.
Now, she says, "I'll go into the studio and I know that a half-hour later I'll have a song, as sure as night turns into day," Morissette says.
"It's a decidedly feminine approach to songwriting," Morissette says. "Well, booking the studio and showing up is the male aspect. The feminine aspect is that once everything is set up, I just let go."
ON TOUR
Alanis Morissette
WITH: Alexi Murdoch
WHEN: 8 p.m. Thursday
WHERE: Ruth Eckerd Hall, 1111 McMullen-Booth Road, Clearwater; (727) 791-7400
COST: $47.75, $57.75 and $67.75
Curtis Ross can be reached at (813) 259-7568.
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