The 12 time Juno and 7 time Grammy award winning artist Alanis Morissette is one of the top female performers going 16x platinum with her international debut album Jagged Little Pill, and selling more than 40 million records worldwide.
Alanis began her career early in 1986 when she was on the show "You Can't Do That on Television" for 18 episodes and a year later recorded her E.P. "Fate Stay With Me".
In the early nineties she recorded two full length pop albums, a self titled "Alanis" and "Now is the Time", the former of which went platinum and the first single "Too Hot" was a top twenty hit in Canada. During this time Alanis Morissette was the opening act for Vanilla Ice, and nominated for several Juno awards.
After graduating high school Alanis moved from her home in Ottawa to Toronto where she met several songwriters, and after t trip to Nashville Tennessee proved to be unsuccessful she was frustrated by the whole experience. In an act of desperation to meet a collaborator she began to make trips to the city of Los Angeles where she worked with as many musicians as she could.
By 1995 she had met Glen Ballard and in the spring Alanis had signed with Maverick records who would release her international debut "Jagged Little Pill" on June 13 of that year. After putting out the first single "You Oughta Know" it was put into heavy rotation on MTV and on popular radio stations like KROQ in LA and quickly was in the top twenty on the Billboard 200. That year "jagged Little Pill" made Alanis Morissette the most successful female artist of all time.
After more than a year of touring for the record Alanis became tired of music and almost quit entirely. But a trip to India inspired her to go back into songwriting and wrote "Thank You", her first song in more than a year, in Cuba.
1998 was also a busy year for Alanis as she appeared as a back-up vocalist on several albums not her own including Ringo Starr, Spoon, and Dave Matthews Band. As well as recording the song "Uninvited" for the City of Angels soundtrack. And on November 2, 1998 she released her follow up to Jagged Little Pill called Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie. To the surprise of her record company, who hoped to sell just a million copies, it debuted at number one selling close to 470, 000 copies it's first week, which at that time was a record.
The following year she contributed vocals to several tracks on Jonathan Elias' The prayer Cycle, and did an MTV Unplugged session where she covered the Police song King of Pain.
In the several years after that she continued to tour and in 2002 released Under Rug Swept, and that too debuted at number one. At the end of the year Feast on Scraps was made available, which contained eight previously unreleased songs and a DVD containing live concert footage and backstage documentary, directed by Alanis Morissette herself.
So-Called Chaos was the name of the sixth studio album released in May 2004, a year where she hosted the Juno awards and came out in a flesh colored bodysuit in response to the uproar over censorship that was the "wardrobe malfunction" that Janet Jackson had during the Super Bowl Half-Time show earlier that year.
After a tour of mainly smaller venues for the 10th anniversary of Jagged Little Pill, Alanis was inducted into the Canadian Walk of Fame. Then went out on tour again opening for the Rolling Stones on their "A Bigger Bang" tour in 2005's fall.
2006 was the first year in more than a decade where Alanis did not have a single concert appearance. However she did perform "Wunderkind" on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and in April she made a video of her version of the Black Eyed Pea's song "My Humps".
On June 10, 2009 Alanis Morissette's latest album Flavors of Entanglement was launched, selling 900, 000 copies worldwide. She went on tour with Matchbox Twenty to promote the album, and toured internationally afterwards.
In 2010 Alanis got marries to Los Angeles based rapper SoulEye, and they had their first child in late December.
Albums
- Fate Stay with Me (1987)
- Alanis (1990)
- Now is the Time (1992)
- Jagged Little Pill (1995)
- Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie (1998)
- Unplugged (1999)
- Under Rug Swept (2002)
- Feast on Scraps (2002)
- So-Called Chaos (2004)
- Jagged Little Pill (10th Anniversary Acoustic) (2005)
- The Collection (2005)
- Flavors of Entanglement (2008)
Stage & Television
- You Can't Do That on Television
- The Vagina Monologues
- Sex and the City
- Curb Your Enthusiasm
- Nip/Tuck
- Degrassi: The Next Generation
- Weeds
- Dogma
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