While she was scheduled for the 2020 Festival d’été de Québec, which never took place due to the pandemic, Alanis Morissette will finally take the stage at the Plains of Abraham on Friday night. Here are 7 little-known facts about the Canadian singer.
• Also read: Jagged Little Pill: the album that changed everything for Alanis Morissette
1) Already a star at 16
Alanis Morissette was already a “certified” pop star in high school, selling more than 100,000 records before she even finished 12th grade.
But it was at the age of nine that she wrote her first song, titled Fate stay with me.
2) French speaking?
Alanis owes her surname to her father, Alan, who is Franco-Ontarian and a French teacher. If she doesn’t have any French-language songs in her repertoire, she still has a good command of the French language.
When she visited the Pope in the Vatican, Italy, in 2000, she even caused a surprise.
Morissette reveals the issues that surfaced as she left the stage after meeting the Pope – unsure whether to go ahead of the cardinals or not.
“There was this awkward moment and I walked past them,” she said.
“They were all French and they started talking about me and saying how rude and terrible I was, but they didn’t realize that I could understand what they were saying in French,” she says.
“Then I turned and said to them, ‘Thank you for your kindness’.”
Needless to say, the Cardinals’ faces turned scarlet like their cassock after realizing the Canadian star understood every snide word they said about him.
3) Alanis and its dependencies
Some people mistakenly believe that one of Alanis Morissette’s biggest hits, Jagged Little Pill, is drug related.
Rather, she says that she composed this song from the notes of her own diaries full of disturbing and deep feelings.
In the context of her song “Jagged Little Pill,” the singer refers to hard-to-swallow truths.
In 2020, Alanis revealed in an interview with The Guardian that she suffered from work, love and food addictions. She also claims not to consume alcohol since 2014.
4) An actress?
Known less as an actress than as a singer, Alanis Morissette nevertheless appears in a number of films and television series.
She made her television debut at age 10 on the Canadian children’s sketch show You Can’t Do That on Television.
In 1999 she appeared in the film Dogma, where she played the role of God.
In 2004, Morissette returned to cinema in De-Lovely, a musical comedy based on the life of Cole Porter. She also landed recurring roles on the acclaimed television series Nip/Tuck (2006) and Weeds (2009-10).
5) Color for composing songs
The colors would be sources of inspiration for the singer who uses them when composing.
“When I meet people, or when I write songs, or when I listen to music, I close my eyes, or sometimes I keep my eyes open, and I see colors,” she described to WENN. .
“Sometimes (when I’m writing music) when it’s chords that are too harmonically primary, I consider the colors primary. So I’ll say, “It’s a little too yellow or red,” she adds.
6) We can now meditate with her
The singer’s new album, The Storm Before The Calm, takes her fans through 11 different meditations.
Alanis has previously spoken about her love for meditation, admitting that it has helped her immensely over the years.
In fact, she has previously said that meditation “rests her to the point where I can access ideas, visions and inspiration – I can hear my own self”.
She explained that this new meditation disc allowed her to stay “connected” and “in charge” during COVID-19 “when I felt like I was going to just disappear and fly away.”
The Storm Before The Calm has been streaming across various digital mental health platforms and apps since June 17.
- It can also be found on QUB musique ▶
7) Isn’t that… ironic?
His song Ironic almost never saw the light of day.
Alanis, who wrote this song with Glen Ballard, wasn’t particularly enthusiastic at first and suggested throwing it away.
“When it came time to decide what was going to be on the record (Jagged Little Pill), I didn’t want Ironic. But the people around me who I trusted really loved the song,” she revealed in a 2020 interview with BBC’s The One Show.
So she decided to record it. It was a good move when Ironic hit #4 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart on April 13, 1996 and stayed there for 32 weeks!