Incomplete - Alanis Morissette

 

Incomplete - Alanis Morissette

Flavors of Entanglement has been a coming-of-age album for me. In 2008, teenage me had just started crafting his musical taste and, after The Cranberries in 2007, Alanis Morissette was the second singer I threw myself into head first—also thanks to my mom’s only cassette in the car being Jagged Little Pill while I was growing up.

Notwithstanding the musical merit of the album, it always held a close place in my heart, being the one just released when I approached Alanis. Underneath was playing on the radio and has been the most played song on my iTunes for years to come. I really (virtually) consumed that album, and have felt a close bond with many of the songs for a long time. As my musical taste (and age) matured, I found myself looking at FoE with more emotional distance and, although I still love most songs very much (even the ones that I was not much into at the time), Incomplete ended up being the least favorite of my adult self. It just sounded… Incomplete? Too light and airy? Just plain forgettable? Silly?

Things have changed in recent times. Facing a low-point in terms of mental health, hope, energy, and general life motivation, I have started to relate to the song much more. “I have been running, so sweaty my whole life, urgent for a finish line” sings Alanis. How not to relate to this? Study in school to open doors for your future. Work hard to set up your life as a young adult. Then, upon choosing an academic life, give your whole time, brain, energy to your work—which you love, but love is ephemeral as we know. Give your whole self to the person you chose as your partner—over and over, but then facing the inevitable disappointments. 

One day I’ll be arrived, I’ll be secure, I’ll be less afraid, I’ll be measured outside my professional achievements (“poems and lyrics and art”) sings Alanis, unclear (to me) whether this is hope for her future self once she’s able to let go or rather the ghost of the past self-imposed demands to be perfect, to live a perfect life, to achieve one’s goals.

The message of the song, apparently, is that achieving our goals is actually not life’s goal. In the end, if we achieved all our goals, what would there be left to do? Embracing the uncertainty, precariousness, incompleteness of life is actually what life is about: “I’ve been missing the rapture this whole time of being forever incomplete”. Blessed be Alanis who can feel rapture at being incomplete. I still feel anguish, lack of energy, hopelessness… I just feel tired. Maybe incompleteness is not meant for perfectionists. Or for people who don’t even know what their actual goals are and who have been running around so sweaty their whole life not even knowing where they are going…

I guess that, overall, I still don’t feel like I fully buy into the song given my incapability to enjoy incompleteness, but at least I now more deeply understand its starting point and see the state of being it describes as a desirable state. Maybe that’s the first step to getting there, to feeling the rapture of being forever incomplete.

#liveweek Mary Jane (Jagged Little Pill live) - Alanis Morissette

Mary Jane (JLP live) - Alanis Morissette

I couldn't leave Alanis out of this #liveweek of course! Hers has been my first "real" concert as an adult in 2008, and I still cherish the memories linked to that moment, what a great feeling...! The pick of today is one of the songs featured on her record-selling pop-rock debut 'Jagged little pill', which just turned 20 this year and has been re-released with demos and previously unreleased material. This is my mother's favourite album and the only musicassette we've had in the car for years and she's the one who "introduced" me to Alanis "for real", even though she's not a big music fan generally! Mary Jane is an awesome song and this live performance is astounding, you really can't miss it... I feel like going crazy together with the audience! It seems a good cherry on the pie of a nice couple of weeks I just spent in Milan, and tomorrow I'm gonna post the last liveweek entry from a little further away...! Stay tuned and stay curious!

Lens - Alanis Morissette

Lens - Alanis Morissette

You might remember I have been listening to country music in the last few days in my car; after the playlist got to an end, the following one started. And that's 'Critical voices', i.e. my personal selection of the (at least) decent material Alanis Morisette released a couple years ago (wait... was it 2012?! Seriously? So long ago?) as her latest album, bonus tracks and stuff. I've been a big fan since 2008, but I listened to her music since I was little, as my mother's only cassette in the car was Jagged Little Pill. I practically like/love all of her albums until the 2008 Flavors of entanglement, even though the majority of her fan-base started criticising her music in the early 2000s, but her latest album... well, it's just not good. There are very few songs on it I actually genuinely like, but more than half of the material... I wouldn't go out of my way to listen it, let's just put it that way. This is an exception, a beautiful exception, for sure my favourite track of the era. My vietnamese friend T. loves it too since I got her to know it, so maybe you will too!!

Crazy - Alanis Morissette

Crazy - Alanis Morissette

Hello my dear followers, I'm deeply sorry for disappearing in the last few days, but my life has been kind of on a roller-coaster, even if now it's back on the usual (sad) tracks.  Came back from Thailand once again, but something beautiful happened before coming back, some sparkle in the sentimental point of view, but after a couple of days flying today I fell back down on earth, back to my usual place. It's so tiring for me now, such a tiring life: not having a home, going back and forth to Veneto and to Thailand, jet lag, early wake up calls, uncertainty about the future... it felt like I could finally find some peace of mind, something to help me relieve the stress... instead it turned up as another source of stress, another mess to deal with. Well, that's the price to pay. And that's what relationships are, aren't they? They say we're never gonna survive unless we get a little crazy, but what do they say we need to do to find some happiness without paying the price for it?

#sundayrevival Straitjacket - Alanis Morissette

Straitjacket - Alanis Morissette

It's being too long since I posted a sundayrevival so I have to do it now and do it well!! Last night I was taking a shower and I decided to play Alanis in the meanwhile: it immediately brought back to 2008, when I started listening to her massively and when her album 'Flavors of entanglement' (one of my absolute favourites of all time) came out. After a few songs I really enjoyed, I turned off the speakers just as this song was about to start and I found myself singing it by heart walking through the house, so I then got to listen to it and decided it would be a perfect post for a sundayrevival! Although it is not a particularly Alanis-like song, it was quite in front of the strongly-produced electronic-pop music that has been going strong since the beginning of the new decade. Moreover the lyrics were really powerful, I realised while singing them "acapella". I'm sure you're gonna love it too! Have a happy sunday!

Princes familiar - Alanis Morissette

Princes familiar - Alanis Morissette

I'm a bit too late to be posting a sundayrevival, and I am sorry I didn't post anything yesterday, but life in Bangkok is pretty intense and it's very hard to find the time to sit down and dedicate 10 minutes to my dear blog!! But here I am now! Yesterday I have taken a walk to Chatuchak market, which I thought was closer to my hotel that it actually was, this meaning that I kinda melted under the (morning!) sun. Well, I got there and took a "short" walk through the market, very big and I think I've only seen a part of it! Then I came back to the hotel, plunged in the (boiling hot) swimming pool for some physical activity and then went to the river with a couple of colleagues to take a trip through the channels on a traditional long boat, an amazing experience to see how people live there, it's another world! And today back to work, it feels like I've been devoting half of my time to sightseeing and the other half to working and travelling, so that I never have enough time to devote to sleep!! Well, I think it's not so unusual for a first visit to such an intense city as Bkk is!! Tonite, just before going to eat a super Japanese dinner, I took a shower and was listening to the most-listened-to songs in my library, among which is this and I felt like posting it, so that you can enjoy it too!!

#blogbirthday Underneath - Alanis Morissette

Underneath - Alanis Morissette

So here we are, the time has finally come to say HAPPY 1st BIRTHDAY to A song (or two) per day! That's right, it's been one year since I started this blog and, I swear it's not made on purpose, this is the post number 365! That meaning that I have written 1 exact year worth of posts, so the target for next year is to improve that, in order to be faithful to the blog title! To celebrate this special event I chose a very special song that also marks my musical evolution: last year I started posting with Dolores O'Riordan, that together with her band (The Cranberries) has marked the beginning of what I defined as the first adult phase of my relationship with music, marked by a return to the music of my childhood, the 1990s, and by the diffusion of technology, that let me be exposed to loads of new and old music. Alanis Morissette has been the second step in 2008: my mother loved her debut album and had the musicassette in the car for years, so I already knew her most famous songs, but it has not been until Underneath that I started falling in love with her, second performer I utterly fell for after the Cranberries. And then, also thanks to they guys on the Italian forum of Alanis, I got more and more inspiration on new music I completely fell in love with too (Tori Amos, PJ Harvey...). Now I am approaching many many "new" artists every year and I lost that kind of one-artist per year approach, so I'm carrying the old guys and girls in a special corner of my musical heart!
Enough with the words, I can just say I am very happy for reaching this goal and thanks again for reading, I won't get tired to tell you that! Enjoy Alanis!

#sundayrevival One - Alanis Morissette

One - Alanis Morissette

Welcome to June! It's time for another #sundayrevival post (also as last sunday I skipped it). My headache has been dragging its way to the one-week anniversary, with ups and downs. My wisdom tooth also started aching (again), I wonder if the two phenomena are linked... Anyway, I'm here to celebrate something happier than my illnesses! Today is Alanis's 40th birthday, so happy birthday Alanis! To celebrate this new goal reached and the new website she released a couple of days ago about vegan way of life and mommy advice and stuff like that (say goodbye to her career as a musician: bye byee!), I'm picking one of her older tunes that I really do love. Worst case scenario about the future, we still have some great stuff from the past to lean on! Happy birthday!

#sundayrevival So-called chaos - Alanis Morissette

So-called chaos - Alanis Morissette

It's a typical home sunday: at home, Formula 1 GP (such a boooring one, again), football matches, a brief but strong rain followed but a perfect blue sky with a chilly strong breeze... Summer is coming but not fast enough! And then I will complain about the excessive heat, but now this chilly nights are really freaking me out and not helping me recover from my flu at all! All the context is anyway perfect for a sundayrevival post and, given that I've still been focusing on music that I can't post (yet), I decided to go back back back in time to one of the first loves of my "young-adult" musical adventure (i.e. Alanis) and to the album of her I really used to love and now has a little bit faded in me (just a little bit), i.e. So-called chaos. And I'm gonna throw myself on the song that gives the title to the album, one of my favourites on the CD and in the whole music career of Alanis, I dare say. I love everything about this song: the music, the lyrics (I wanna be naked running through the streets, I want to invite this so called chaos, that you’d think I dare not be
I want to be weightless, flying through the air
, I want to drop all these limitations and return to what I was born to be), the message, the need for total freedom outside the schemes of society, the power in it (a thing that might be lacking to some other tunes on the album) and... I could go on forever! Just listen to it and improve your sunday! See you next week!

Empathy - Alanis Morissette

Empathy - Alanis Morissette

Hello everybody! Another day is passing by smoothly, I am waiting for the pizza lunch we have in the office every other Tuesday. We have been striving to reach our target but we are not there yet, not very far but still a little behind and Q1 is going to end very soon, we really need to give it a final boost! And to do that what we need the most is motivation, and so in turn to get motivation I need good music. I wouldn't go as far as saying that Alanis's last album is good music (there is quite a bit of crap in there), but some of the songs speak to me, to say the least. Some of them I really like, even with their cheesiness and everything, and Empathy is one of them. I also do like the graphics and the concept of this video and, being aware that this is far from her best in strict musical terms, I can't not find it enjoyable. Hope you will enjoy it too!

Knees of my bees - Alanis Morissette

Hey guys! Yesterday I didn't post, I'm very sorry but I went to Plymouth with the other guys working with me, it's bee a very awesome trip with a beautiful sunny day we enjoyed till the end! Sadly enough, I was so tired that I realised just today that I didn't post anything. Anyway, yesterday my colleague T. withdrew a keyboards set in Plymouth, my other work mate H is about to buy a guitar and I felt excluded, so I decided to order a Harmonica on Amazon, a thing I have been planning for quite a long time. And so it is! I've been listening to Alanis Morissette today to refresh the songs I wanna learn to play, and in the end I'm posting a song that has no harmonica in it, but... it's so funny I know you'll love it anyway!

Wake up - Alanis Morissette

Usually changing the tune for my wake-up call is not something that happens very often, it is kind of a delicate step for me... in the end the way you start your day impacts all the rest of it! Yet my last one my not really satisfactory, I must say, so I made up my mind and decided to change it pretty soon. I wasn't really sure about what I should pick next, then browsing through the songs I have on my phone I stumbled on this and I realized it made perfect sense as a Wake-up call!
Back to Milan tonight, but just for a stop-and-go! One down, now looking forward to Dublin, it's just a few hours away (hopefully)!

Thank u (long intro) - Alanis Morissette

Time for a new post! Time to go back again, this time of about 15 years to 1998, when Alanis Morissette released her second album (fourth if we consider her two dance releases limited to Canada when she was younger) after the super successful Jagged Little Pill. The expectations for this album have been huge and, as it happens oftentimes, they have not been met, at least in terms of commercial success. The heavy burden of having an enormously successful album very soon in the career of an artist is that the rest of your career always lives in the shadows of that success. Yet, it'd be unfair to say that Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie was not a success: it went on to become a fans favourite and it sold decently. The first single out of it was Thank u: it is one of my Alanis personal favs and here I'm sharing with you a longer version, with some added (beautiful) lyrics with respect to the standard album and single version.