Mullin
Joined: 16 Aug 2004
Posts: 20062
Location: Ivybridge
|
| Tell a Friend Posted: Thu Sep 09, 2004 2:34 pm Post subject: Alanis Morissette |
|
|
Alanis Morissette was born on June 1st 1974 and by the age of ten she had landed a role on the Nickelodeon TV show You Can't Do That on Television and had recorded her first single Fate Stay With Me. She spent most of her teenage years performing throughout Canada, singing O Canada at sporting events and even making an appearance on Star Search.
But all her hard work had paid off and at the age of 14 she was offered a record deal with MCA Records Canada. Her debut, Alanis, a collection of dance-pop songs, was released in 1991 and went platinum in Canada. That year, she won the Juno award (Canada's Grammy) for Most Promising Female Vocalist. In 1992 Now Is the Time was recorded and released before she had graduated from high school.
After she had finished high school, she moved to Los Angeles where she met songwriter/producer Glen Ballard, known for his work with Michael Jackson, Paula Abdul and Wilson Phillips. The creative chemistry between Ballard and Alanis was obvious from the beginning. Ballard pushed Alanis to pursue the darker and edgier themes in her music, moving away from the cutesy teenager to a young woman.
In 1995 after she was signed to Maverick she released Jagged Little Pill, and after the success of You Oughta Know the album achieved platinum status. The album was kept in the charts for two years by the continuous success of numerous singles from it such as Hand in My Pocket, All I Really Want and Ironic.
The album won her Grammys for Album of the Year, Best Female Rock Vocal Performance, Best Rock Song and Best Rock Album and her much-anticipated follow-up, Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie, was released in November 1998 on Maverick and sold over 7 million copies worldwide.
In 1999, Alanis produced her MTV Unplugged album, re-working her material and introducing some unreleased work before a live audience at New York's Brooklyn Academy of Music. The album, which featured the single That I Would Be Good, focused on her amazing vocals and creative arrangements, becoming a fan favourite.
After working on her album Under Rug Swept, Alanis kept busy in 2001 playing various benefits, including the televised John Lennon tribute from New York City, Toronto's Music Without Borders event and Seattle's Groundworks.
In December 2001, Alanis was honoured by the Friends of the United Nations with a Global Tolerance Award in New York City for making outstanding contributions to promote tolerance through the arts in addition to her work on behalf of tolerance in her personal life and activities.
In 2002 she released Under Rug Swept. This album has helped clarify her principal talents. Her melodic sense and expressive voice remain the most impressive weapons in her arsenal. And that's a good thing, because her lyrics have grown increasingly infatuated with the language of psychology to the point where they come off sounding like clunky-worded diary entries, rather than anything resembling poetry. Embracing that fact can be liberating, though. She's got nothing to lose, and Under Rug Swept sounds like an artist who is ready to accept whatever the world has in store for her.
This is definitely the case on her new album So-Called Chaos which was released this year and she seems to have come to a place in her life where she is happy with her work and the way her career is headed. I have yet to hear her new album, so if you have had the chance to listen to it then please leave your comments.
By Amy Mullin on 09/09/04
Proof read by Alan for UKEvents.net |
|
