E-mail a friendAlanis Morissette
airdate June 12, 2008
Alanis Morissette was playing piano by age 6 and writing songs by age 9. At 17, she became a pop diva in her native Canada's music industry and went on to unprecedented success for a female artist with her '95 debut U.S. album, the groundbreaking "Jagged Little Pill." The seven-time Grammy winner has sold over 40 million albums worldwide. Morissette's new CD, "Flavors of Entanglement," is her first original studio release in four years. Having added acting to her résumé, she can also be seen in Radio Free Albemuth.
Full interview (11:28)
Alanis Morissette
Tavis: Always pleased and honored to have Alanis Morissette on this program. The seven-time Grammy winner is one of the biggest-selling singer-songwriters of her generation and is out with her first original studio CD in four years. The new disc is called "Flavors of Entanglement," in stores now. From the new disc, here's some of the video for the single, "Underneath."
[Clip]
Tavis: Four years, where you been?
Alanis Morissette: (Laughs) What have I been doing? (Laughter) What have I not been doing?
Tavis: Four years, where you been?
Morissette: Oh, just motorcycle riding and living the life that can be then sort of commented on through music and through journaling and through sharing. I kind of go under rocks and have a real human being's life, and gutted my house, redecorated, visited family, went to Fiji - I love to travel. Yeah. Journaling, writing everything that becomes songs later.
Tavis: So I assume you're serious about the motorcycle thing.
Morissette: Yeah.
Tavis: You ride bikes for real?
Morissette: I do.
Tavis: Wow.
Morissette: I have an S4s Ducati and a Bonneville Triumph.
Tavis: You got a Ducati?
Morissette: Yeah. Do you ride?
Tavis: No, I don't ride, but I was -
Morissette: Oh, you will now.
Tavis: I was at a friend's garage the other day who had, like, a whole bunch of Ducatis.
Morissette: Oh, yeah, it's a little bit of an obsession.
Tavis: Yeah, for him as well.
Morissette: Is it? (Laughter)
Tavis: Yeah. Jay Leno.
Morissette: Oh, yeah, he's a little obsessed, to say the least. (Laughter)
Tavis: He's got a few of them. I saw his garage for the first time, that collection of his is unbelievable.
Morissette: Pretty exciting, I hear.
Tavis: It's pretty amazing.
Morissette: I've seen photos.
Tavis: Yeah, it's a pretty amazing thing. So in the music business, you're gone for four years and you may not get back. That's not an issue that you have, but the stuff changes so fast, and you come back in four years and people are like, Alanis who? You're not worried about that, though, I take it.
Morissette: I've been through ebbs and flows since I started making records when I was nine. So I've been through the ebbs and flows of who, what? We don't care. We care, we really care. We don't care at all. (Laughter) Who? So I've been through so many of them at this point that all I can do is just focus on what I do, and the rest is not up to me.
Tavis: So this record is what? How would you describe this one? The "Entanglement" project, that's what I call it - the "Entanglement" project.
Morissette: Really? (Laughter) It sounds very surreptitious. It was, actually. It's the disassembling of a personal life hitting rock bottom and then the phoenix rising, chronicled. And then I speak about the personal being the political; how I believe me taking responsibility for myself is much better than my putting all my attention on trying to control what's happening out there symptomatically.
That's what the first single, "Underneath," is about. And there's flavors of that throughout the whole record.
Tavis: You never seem to have any trepidation at all about being so open with your music, which is to say, your life.
Morissette: Mm. Well, I think there is a distinct difference between privacy and secrecy. Secrecy denotes shame, which I'm always trying to move through - shame about being human, having all these emotions that we're allowed to have as human beings and invited to have, but we hide certain ones of them. Anger for women, most; fear, pain, all those colorful ones.
And I think privacy is really fueled by love and respect. So there's still privacy, but not hiddenness or secrecy. Difference.
Tavis: When you're journaling and when you're redecorating your house and all the things you mentioned earlier that you do when you're on a hiatus, are there - I'm trying to phrase this the right way. Are there things that you think are good material for records and other things that are clearly not good material for records, or you just put the stuff out there and what works, works?
Morissette: Yeah, I wrote 24 songs for this record with (unintelligible).
Tavis: Twelve in 12 days, I read somewhere.
Morissette: Yeah, crazy, yeah.
Tavis: How do you write 12 songs in 12 days?
Morissette: I think having taken four years off and accruing all those experiences, by the time I do get into the studio, it's an explosion of stream of consciousness. I can't get it out fast enough. So sometimes I'll have preplanned words that I'll have written in my journal that show up in songs, and other times I'll walk in and there's nothing, and I just trust at this point, because I've been doing it long enough now, I trust the process.
Tavis: Speaking of the process - I'm glad you said that, I like that phrase; trust the process. Does the process typically mean that the music comes first or the lyrical content comes first for you?
Morissette: It's at the same time.
Tavis: Same time?
Morissette: Yeah, and that's why a lot of times I'll have words that shouldn't typically fit into a phrase that wind up having to, because the content is the imperative of getting that out. So the music is sometimes a slave to what's having to be said, but it happens at the same time, really fast - 20 minutes, 30 minutes.
Tavis: I'm fascinated by this. Slow down, slow down, slow down. So back to your creative process - I hate people like you. It all comes at one time, and it's all beautiful.
Morissette: Well, it -
Tavis: No, I'm no Alanis Morissette.
Morissette: You're doing it right now. (Laughs)
Tavis: When you hear this stuff, you're hearing the lyrical content and the music all at the same time?
Morissette: I'm not hearing it, I'm getting it down.
Tavis: Right. What's the difference between not hearing it but getting it down?
Morissette: Hearing it denotes an intellectualization of it. I am not thinking when I'm doing it. I'm just being used, in a sense.
Tavis: Just channeling whatever you -
Morissette: Yeah, we're - channeling kind of sometimes is a fraught little word, but I just let it come through. And if it's to belabored, if the process is too hammered out, I just stop, because I don't like that.
Tavis: I'm still fascinated by your process here. When stuff comes out, is there stuff that you know when you get it out that's better than other stuff that comes? Do you have a sense that - like when I'm doing a TV show, I hope that every conversation's a good conversation. But the minute - I don't have to wait till the conversation's over; I'm sitting here -
Morissette: You know when it's juicy.
Tavis: I know when this is working. The audience is going to love this. I feel that this is a great conversation.
Morissette: Right.
Tavis: So I know that when I'm in it, this is better than the thing I just taped or just recorded. Is it the same way for you?
Morissette: Yeah, I don't think in terms of better or worse; I think in terms of accurate.
Tavis: Right.
Morissette: A real snapshot of this time. That's accurate - successful. So accuracy for me is what success means to me, in terms of songwriting.
Tavis: And accurate means?
Morissette: Accurate means this is really what happened, this is really what I felt. There's a distilling that happens to you, so I'll clarify when I'm writing. A lot of times I'll start writing a song and be very confused about something. By the time the song is finished, I will be clear. So it's a clarifying exercise, too.
Tavis: And how does the clarification come? You're writing it and it feels inaccurate, but to your point, by the end of it, you've got what you want. How does that work?
Morissette: Usually the first verse or two, I'm working through something. There's some struggle, some quandary. The chorus gives me a first sort of flash of clarity. Usually the time the bridge comes, there's some reflection. And by the end of the song, there's some dreg of hope or some insight or something that's been gotten, or some moment of sarcasm that just kind of makes it all make sense to me. And that usually happens within a four-minute song, and it's not something I plan. It just happens.
Tavis: Wow. How does - let me ask you, you're such a modest person anyway, but set all your modesty aside for a second.
Morissette: It's hard as a Canadian to do that. (Laughter) It's against our cultural religion.
Tavis: Yeah, okay. You have this American's permission to set your Canadian modesty aside for just a second.
Morissette: Oh, okay. (Laughs) Thank you.
Tavis: How does it feel to be a vessel - that's the word I want - a vessel that's used in that way?
Morissette: Great. I feel happy to have a sense of my vocation, because for a long time, I was meandering and not sort of - not giving the credence that my gift really deserved. And everyone has their own individual, unique one, and I wasn't giving any credence to what it was that I could do - songwriting and singing and moving and interpreting and distilling and all these things that I love to do. So I feel blessed that I have awareness of it now, and that I give it its props. Because I didn't used to.
Tavis: Now let me flip this conversation completely -
Morissette: Back to humility?
Tavis: (Laughter) Back to playfulness, for lack of a better word. We've been having a pretty in-depth conversation here about your process, which, as you said earlier, you trust, and I'm glad you do because we're all the better for the fact that Alanis trusts the process.
Morissette: Bless you.
Tavis: But it is always that deep? Is it ever just simple, like don't worry, be happy?
Morissette: But it is - trusting the process, for me, is simple. It makes things very light, even if the content is a little beleaguered, there's a lightness to the process. I'll go in at 1:00 p.m. and leave at 4:00 and go have a martini and have a fun evening. Like, there was a whole lightness to the writing of this record, even though some of the content and subject matter was a little intense on this record, to say the least.
Tavis: I was trying to juxtapose (laughter) what I'm hearing with what you're saying.
Morissette: Right, there is a - but there's an invitation for all of the aspects of humanity, and for me, the through-line these days is a levity and a lightness and a nothing really matters approach. And then when I am dealing with stuff that's very human and fragile, I still have that voice that says, "And don't forget that none of this matters." So that helps.
Tavis: How does this project, you think, fit in, not fit in, it matters, it doesn't matter to you? How does it fit in to the music scene now, four years after your last in-studio project?
Morissette: I have no idea.
Tavis: Does it matter to you? Do you care?
Morissette: I loved working with Guy Sigsworth, and I think he has a sort of 2010 approach to music. So I love being a pioneer or on the tip or on the edge of something that is, when it's presented - a song, an approach, an idea - oftentimes I'll present something that is not embraced or it's highly unpopular at first because it's new.
So I pride myself on doing that, and I also pride myself on working with the great people who are ready to stretch their own parameters, and he definitely did that on this record.
Tavis: How do you contextualize the risk that comes along with that, though? You have this sense of appreciation for being able to try something, to paraphrase what you said earlier, but there seems to me also to be a risk in that. You're trying something that may or may not work, that your fan base may or may not get, but you're hoping - underline that word - that they're going to catch up with you.
Morissette: Right, although I was born misunderstood. I feel like the familiar place for me to be in is to be heavily misunderstood, so when someone understands me, I'm thrilled. (Laughter) It's a shock. So yeah.
Tavis: You should be happy, I think I get you.
Morissette: Do you?
Tavis: I think I do.
Morissette: I feel gotten. (Laughter)
Tavis: That's (unintelligible). So okay, so what happens now? Project's done; you're going to do some touring?
Morissette: Yeah, we're touring in Europe, back and forth, America over the summer, and then most likely in September -
Tavis: Why back and forth? Why don't you, like, do that and then come home?
Morissette: That's a good idea. That's the simpler approach. But the record comes out -
Tavis: You want the frequent flyer miles, is that what it is?
Morissette: Yeah, I really love to be on airplanes.
Tavis: You need the miles, yeah.
Morissette: (Laughs) That's actually true.
Tavis: Nice to see you. You know you're welcome here any time.
Morissette: Thank you. Good to see you.
Tavis: My girl, Alanis Morissette.
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