Alanis Morissette Explains How She Builds Her Songs

We all have murderous rage, we all have joy,

we all have it in us.

♪ And every time I scratch my nails ♪

♪ Down someone's else back, I hope you feel it ♪

And then we gotta find ways to act it out.

I'm Alanis Morissette,

and I am going to be sharing how I write my songs

and how I allow the vocal performance

to be really emotional.

[dramatic instrumental music]

♪ It's a death row pardon ♪

♪ Two minutes too late ♪

♪ And isn't it ironic ♪

♪ Don't you think ♪

I don't think there were any ironies in that song.

Figure of speech, malapropism turned into a kerfuffle

of two decades worth of having my chops busted. [laughs]

But Glen and I literally didn't care,

and we also didn't know anyone would really hear it

because the record company kept saying, you know,

if 150, 175,000 copies are sold, we're so psyched.

And I remember thinking, oh my God, that's a lot of records.

It was dauntingly large amount.

So that wound up not being the case.

♪ A little too ironic ♪

♪ And yeah I really do think ♪

So with Ironic, it was just like small story,

lilting, pretty, and then bam. [laughs]

And I love the wail.

♪ It's like rain ♪

♪ On your wedding day ♪

You know, I live for the wail.

I live for the just complete ecstasy and surrender

that only dancing and sound can provide for the body,

in my body.

♪ I want you to know ♪

♪ That I'm happy for you ♪

I just let the lyrics and the story dictate

how I perform it.

So there are times where I would love to,

my ego would love to just hit every note

and do the trills and frills

and special little vocal gymnastics

that is just sitting there latent and available.

But the song demands it not be so sometimes.

So the story is number one, the narrative.

So my vocal is serving the story.

♪ And every time you speak her name ♪

♪ Does she know how you told me ♪

♪ You'd hold me until you died ♪

♪ Till you died ♪

♪ But you're still alive ♪

People might initially just hear the anger,

but I hear all these currents of devastation and rejection

and like, oh, it's just so awful.

♪ 'Cause the love that you gave that we made ♪

♪ Wasn't able to make it enough for you to be open wide ♪

So if it has to be really small, then I perform it small

and there's no vocal gymnastics.

If I need to wail and move and writhe,

then I let that be the case.

Anyone who's performing live

and they look really presentable,

they're lip syncing. [laughs]

'Cause there's just no way for me to hit certain notes

without complete, complete acrobatics.

For me, it's about what are the emotions

that are driving the song.

And this is not an intellectual process while I'm doing it.

It's just I can intellectualize about it later

in retrospect, but the combination of devastation

siphoned through rage, it's terrifying

and it sort of does become a physical thing.

♪ But you're still alive ♪

♪ And I'm here ♪

♪ To remind you ♪

It's getting out of my head and letting it be

a really somatic body experience.

But the intellect is always there

because otherwise I wouldn't be able to pull words

and play with the linguistic paint, as I call it.

It's just like painting.

You know, using my vocals as like a giant paintbrush

with every color available that you could ever want.

I just keep coming back to the lyrics

and I just let the lyrics guide me.

And they're written at the same time,

so the music and the lyrics

everyone's cooking at the same time.

♪ I had no choice but to hear you ♪

♪ You stated your case time and again ♪

The biggest challenge around Head Over Feet

was more the subject matter.

So Head Over Feet is really my being at odds

with like I want this functional, amazing, beautiful thing

in front of me, and yet at the same time,

I'm not ready for this level of functionality

and going back and forth.

There's a bittersweetness to Head Over Feet for me.

♪ You treat me like I'm a princess ♪

I think for Head Over Feet the vocal performance

is very not trying to do anything other than, once again,

let the narrative be expressed without distracting.

There is a part of me that just wants to do vocal gymnastics

on everything 'cause it's so pretty.

But at the end of the day, sometimes a story is being told

and it just needs to be told directly and simply

and no frills.

And in some way, I think,

Head Over Feet is my least frills.

It's just a direct communication about this person.

♪ I've never wanted something rational ♪

♪ I am aware now ♪

I just love the, I am aware now, moment in that song

because playing it live I sing that I'm aware now

and you get to experience what it feels like

to say that you're aware.

♪ And I am aware now oh ♪

♪ I am aware now ♪

But the implication is like, you know,

sometimes I'm aware, sometimes I'm mindful,

and sometimes I'm not.

[upbeat harmonica music]

Going to the harmonica is also a way, for me,

to like palate cleanse.

Just gives me a second to just go off

and then come back to the subject matter at hand.

I think breaks and bridges and it's just,

it's like an outbreath.

[upbeat instrumental music]

The version on the record is actually the demo

and the demo vocal.

So Glen and I did that version together,

very not precious experience.

And then we later got feedback from the record company

that I don't always, you know, jump when they say how high.

That isn't the case, but I'm also collaborative.

And their request was to rerecord Hand in my Pocket

with, you know, real musicians, et cetera.

And I said I don't really want to recreate this version

of the song.

It's kind of exactly perfectly how I wanted it to be.

♪ But I've got one hand in my pocket ♪

♪ And the other one's playing a piano ♪

But out of respect for the process, we did it.

And then I got a phone call from Guy Oseary saying,

You know what, we've heard both

and we love the demo version. [laughs]

I was like, Yes.

I was always fighting for it being just off the cuff, crass,

even in the producorial approach to it,

and Glen was up for it, God bless.

♪ I'm high but I'm grounded ♪

♪ I'm sane but I'm overwhelmed ♪

I just wrote all the lyrics

to Hand in my Pocket really quickly.

It's all the dualism.

I'm a Gemini.

I love Carl Jung and modernized hot-cold, tall-short.

If I'm going to embrace that I'm scared,

I have to embrace that I'm very brave.

That's song lyrically was just [growling] really fast.

♪ Is that everything is just fine, fine, fine ♪

And then Glen walked back in the studio

and we wrote the music and recorded it,

and the vocal is one take.

And there's just some quality

to the production of that song.

It's very low-fi in a way,

but also there's something really magical about it.

And those kinds of demos are impossible to recreate.

We could chase them for months and years

and you can't recreate that initial capturing

of the urgency.

I can't anyway.

[upbeat instrumental music]

That beautiful keyboard part.

Glen, his way of creating soundscapes that would be inviting

and compelling for me to just collab with him.

He just played that beautiful keyboard part

and I started to sing.

And again, the music and lyrics were all done

at the same time.

♪ How about not equating death with stopping ♪

How about not equating death with stopping,

also is how about not equating the spirit's finiteness

with the death of the body?

You know, so depends on how you want to hear that line.

♪ How about not equating death with stopping ♪

[upbeat instrumental music]

♪ Thank you India ♪

But it's always a sweet line for me

because it's often sung at the end of the night

as a way to tie the bow and just say thank you to everyone.

♪ This is not allowed ♪

♪ You're uninvited ♪

I saw a rough cut of City of Angels

and I felt really inspired and I drove home

and I was alone in my house

and I wrote Uninvited in 10 minutes on the piano.

♪ And unfortunate slight ♪

[sweeping instrumental music]

I love it.

It's, again, that combination of core choices and harmonics

that are relaxing but also some of them can be dissonant

and fighting each other.

[sweeping instrumental music]

I do like the outbreath of harmonic.

It's kind of like happy endings in a movie,

except musically and not always happy.

♪ Like any uncharted terror ♪

The production of Uninvited was very much a team thing.

So there were new people for me to play with,

you know, the strings.

It was also mixed at the same time as we recorded it.

We'd had several different mixes attempted on that song.

Not a big surprise, the demo mix wound up being the winner.

♪ We'll fast-forward to a few years later and ♪

♪ And no one knows except the both of us ♪

Well, this song I'm writing about statutory rape.

When I wrote it I thought, ugh, this is basically a dialogue

between myself and this person who I worked with

when I was a teenager.

The verses are him speaking to me.

And the pre-chorus is me speaking back to him.

And then the chorus is us dialoguing some more.

♪ I've more than honored your request for silence ♪

♪ And you've washed your hands clean of this ♪

I love writing songs where there's implied dialogue

because a lot of times there is no dialogue.

So this is my way of gestalting or faking or pretending

or embodying a real, actual conversation

if we were to really address the large elephants

in this room.

♪ Don't go telling everybody and ♪

♪ And overlook this supposed crime ♪

Wow, this is an intense song

performed on top of a bed of beautiful harmonic,

lilting, enjoyable soundscapes.

But this was before Me Too.

You know, a big pet peeve for me is when people go,

why did she wait so long to tell her truth

about her sexual abuse or her sexual?

I'm just like [beep] yourself.

First of all, we did say things.

It was met with, You're going to be fired.

Or at best it was met with, you know, Shut up.

I mean it's just this whole multitude of reasons

why women wait.

♪ What part of our history's reinvented and under rug swept ♪

The title of the record is Under Rug Swept

and that lyric is in that bridge.

Just the idea of having the liberty and permission from self

to sing about exactly what's going on is a true gift.

It's actually probably why I'm still alive, I think,

'cause if I had no way to express what was going on for me

as a teenager and in my 20s and onward,

I probably would have just imploded,

or eaten my own hand, or something.

♪ Oh ♪

♪ Oh ♪

Whenever I do vocals, we often,

if the song's a little beautifully protracted

and an outro is happening,

we'll just keep the tape running

and I'll just sing and wail and harmonize.

And then it's almost like here's a hundred pates.

In this case, I believe I produced that record.

So we just pick the ones that are the most lilting

and feel like a giant hug at the end of a song.

'Cause sometimes if you really go into the rabbit hole

of what the content about in some of these songs,

you know, a nice hug at the end is lovely.

[melancholy piano music]

To be honest, Such Pretty Forks in the Road

was an entirely piano record.

Like I still call it the piano record,

even though at this point it's not the piano record anymore.

But when Mike Farrell and I wrote it together in Malibu

and a little bit up here in the Bay area,

we were just doing it on piano vocal.

So at one point this was just going to be

a piano vocal record but then I had the joy

of meeting Alex Hope and Catherine Marks

and it didn't remain a piano record.

♪ And I no longer give a damn ♪

There are times where I'll record a whole song

and just layer every harmony possible on each vocal.

And then we just mute it all because it's too much

or it's too heavy handed or just doesn't feel right.

Maybe it's distracting.

And other times a harmony just brings it

to this whole other level of like full body experience.

♪ My limbs they recoil ♪

Our gauge is truly the hair on our arms.

If I'm singing something and we listened back to it

and we're just like meh, then delete or mute.

♪ But I'm alone in this meltdown ♪

Harmonizing anywhere for me also introduces

the multitudinous idea that we have many parts of us.

There's a part of me that always feels haunted.

And then other moments when you catch me on super light

and levity and vitality and then other moments where I'm,

you know, underwater again.

So when I have the opportunity of having more

than one vocal going on, it gives voice, pardon the pun,

to all these parts that are dying to weigh in.

♪ This is my first wave of my white flag ♪

♪ This is the sound of me hitting bottom ♪

Smiling was written for my record and for the musical.

So we have three versions out there.

We have my version on Such Pretty Forks in the Road,

we have Elizabeth Stanley's version on the musical record

for Jagged Little Pill,

and then we have the version of Smiling

that we did the music video for

remixed and mixed by Bill Bless.

♪ Life flashing promise before my eyes ♪

I kinda love that there's three versions out in the world.

♪ Such pretty forks in the road ♪

Sometimes a harmony will just come in

and she'll be the feminine marking of like,

yeah [beep], let's just try to get it together.

♪ I was just trying to keep it together ♪

It needed to be amplified like a yellow marker.

So sometimes harmonies will come in

just to mark a vulnerability or to mark a rage

or to mark something.

And I love harmonizing.

♪ I have been working since I can remember ♪

♪ Since I was single digits ♪

If you stay up till five in the morning working

and finishing a project, we're praised, right?

Good work, nice job, pat on the back.

If I told someone I stayed up till four or five

in the morning doing heroin, everyone would be terrified.

But it's the same impulse.

It's the same drive for dopamine and relief.

[cheerful piano music]

There's something about that time holding piano performance.

It sets it up to be really verbal and conversational

and a little bit cheeky.

♪ A break from this torture like they do ♪

♪ Here we are ♪

So there's Alex Hope and Catherine Marks producing.

There's Chris Duge in mixing.

There's Mike Farrell's and my having written it,

and then Mike did the arranging for the strings

and the writing of the string parts.

So the best part about the collaborative experience for me

is that we're all at the so-called top of our game

and we're all contributing and it's really greater

than the sum of its parts.

♪ And I am left wondering how I would function without it ♪

That bridge part, which again is the respite

or the tangential just to...

It's almost like an objectivity moment.

It's really vulnerable.

I mean, I can sing and talk about addiction

and talk about abuse and talk about trauma recovery.

And I do.

And at the end of the day underneath all of it

is just this deep, profound sadness and vulnerability

and disconnect of what's happening circumstantially

versus what's possible for humanity.

That disparity between what's happening and what's possible

is the great, beautiful torture star of Bethlehem for me.

♪ Oh oh oh ♪

Sometimes there has to be a vocal part

or a physical movement.

A lot of times it goes through my hands and my body,

just this current of energy that is almost overwhelming

and I have to get it out of my hands or shake or sing.

Maybe lyric-less singing and just wailing

is just a really powerful healing tool for me.

So anytime I can just add an extra take on a song

where I get to harmonize or sing or wail,

it's a loving act, loving act toward my body issues

in the tissues.

When I first started writing songs,

I would have my fingers crossed

hoping that a song would come

and after about five years,

I just realized that there will always be a song that comes.

It'll just be about what the song is.

♪ Oh oh ♪