Alanis Morissette: Anger, Attachment, & Postpartum

Call Her Daddy

In this intimate episode of Call Her Daddy, host Alex Cooper sits down with music icon Alanis Morissette to explore her groundbreaking caree

Key takeaways

• Alanis emphasizes that true wholeness—embracing all parts of oneself, including pain and anger—is more valuable than chasing unrealistic ideals of wellness.
• She discusses how her music gave women permission to feel angry, messy, and complex, breaking societal norms around female expression.

Main topics

• Alanis Morissette's early career and self-empowerment
• The cultural impact of Jagged Little Pill

Notable quotes

"I saw quickly that people were using this music in a way that felt... inspiring for me to stay in the public eye as an introvert."

"Anything that opens up and pulls us out of the locked binary is a loving act, I think."

Conclusion

Alanis Morissette's journey is a testament to the power of authenticity,

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:02) What is up, Daddy Gang? It is your founding father, Alex Cooper, with Call Her Daddy. Speaker 1 (0:11) Alanis Morissette, Speaker 2 (0:12) welcome to Call Her Daddy. Thank you for having me. Speaker 1 (0:15) You are such an icon. Let me just gather myself. Let me just hold on. I need to take a deep breath. So do I. All of my friends were like, no pressure. And I'm like, okay, well, now you're making me feel pressure. One of my friends specifically is the biggest fan. And she's like, I'll just come do the interview for you. And I was like, you need to- What are their Speaker 2 (0:33) questions? Speaker 1 (0:33) No, literally, she was like blowing me up. Shout out Meg if you're watching this. I love you. I hope I do you justice. Okay, I need to give you your proper intro. At 21 years old, you shattered records, selling 33 million copies of your album, Jagged Little Pill, winning five Grammys, including Best Album, and Since then, you really have continued to release music that I think gives people the permission to feel angry and messy and complicated. And I just love every single thing that you stand for. So thank you so much for giving me your time. It is such an honor. Oh, my gosh. Thanks for saying that and mirroring me so generously. Of course. Of course. OK, your song. Ironic will forever be one of my favorite songs to scream in the car with my girlfriends, as I'm sure it is millions of other people watching. But what does it mean to you that new generations continue to discover your music and to fall in love with you and what you stand for? First, Speaker 2 (1:39) when the record came out in 1995, it was a wild experience. And I saw quickly that people were using this music in a way that felt... inspiring for me to stay in the public eye as an introvert. I had ambiguity about all of it. And I saw that it was supporting people and uplifting people or reminding people of who they were or giving them permission to feel anything. And I thought, this is a good reason to stay here and keep going. For me, it was glimpsing inside way too much information. I can spend a few minutes writing a song and then get back out. So I'm much better now at 52 at going in pretty consistently. But songwriting was terrifying in that way because it would come through and then. Speaker 1 (2:21) And then it's out for the entire world. Yeah, and then it's not mine Speaker 2 (2:24) anymore. Then Speaker 1 (2:24) it's yours. Then I have nothing to do with it almost. You also just performed that song on stage with Olivia Rodrigo. Yes. I know mentoring young artists is something that you're so passionate about. How did you two first meet? Speaker 2 (2:40) I Speaker 1 (2:40) don't even remember. Speaker 2 (2:42) I think we met at the Rolling Stone cover shoot together. Yeah, I just, you know, there's nothing better than supporting young people in being who they are and not having to figure it out in their 80s. Speaker 1 (2:56) And especially I think like as women in this industry, like you have so much that you have learned and continue to learn. So I think that like anytime we can pass that down to future generations, it's such a blessing of like, oh, my God, because I'm sure you're like, oh, I wish I knew this. Here you go. Speaker 2 (3:13) Yeah. Or I wish I had someone, you know, I definitely had the will you be my mommy for a long time in the mid 90s? Like, will there be some mentor, some group of women who kind of rush in and scoop me up? And the answer was a hard no. But now it's a hard yes. And I think consciousness has changed to the point where that which was really confusing or overwhelming or weird or woo-woo, which that word is gone now. I just think now people are understanding what some of us were talking about the whole time. And it feels Speaker 1 (3:42) strange. I didn't expect it. Let's talk about the 90s. What do you miss most about that decade? I Speaker 2 (3:49) miss sitting around doing nothing. Speaker 1 (3:54) I feel like you were doing a lot. Yes, but also, Speaker 2 (3:57) you know, as an artist and as someone who expresses oneself as a career, it's a lot of it, a lot of the writing is just sitting and letting the mind wander or listening or you can call it channeling. We call it whatever the frick, but it's basically listening, heeding, and answering the call. Speaker 1 (4:15) The Speaker 2 (4:16) 90s Speaker 1 (4:16) also, I feel like everyone talks about fashion. Yeah. And the trends keep coming back. What is something that is in your closet that is from the 90s that you still put on today or you still look at? You're like, I still stand by that fashion decision. I have some some Speaker 2 (4:32) Lanvin boots and I have some Dries really early work. I keep a lot of it in archive. But. The one thing I noticed about the 90s and it kind of reinvigorating now is that back in the 90s, we weren't like cute and wearing cute, ill-fitting clothes to be cute. It just didn't fit. So also, if you're going to chase the 90s, which seems to be really cool to do now, you got to tweeze your eyebrows to tiny if you mean it. If you don't mean it. Speaker 1 (5:08) Where you really got to lean in. Like you have to commit to it or you're not even going to get close to it. Yeah. We cannot talk about fashion also without talking about Sex and the City. You guest starred on Sex and the City and you kissed the Carrie Bradshaw. Were you a fan of the show before you went on? Yes. And Speaker 2 (5:27) I reached out to them and I said, might it be a nice time for Carrie to experience a lesbian moment? And they said, why, yes, we were thinking the same thing. Wait, you came up with the idea? Well, I think we literally had the same idea at the same time. That happens. That Speaker 1 (5:43) is, that makes it even Speaker 2 (5:44) better. Yeah. Speaker 1 (5:45) Oh, wow. It was a win-win. Well, and I also feel like at the time, it wasn't very common to see a bisexual character written into television. Yeah. And so what did it mean to you to be a part of a moment like that? It's amazing. Speaker 2 (6:01) Yeah. Anything that opens up and pulls us out of the locked binary is a loving act, I think. Speaker 1 (6:06) Do you think you knew, though, at the time, like how groundbreaking it would be when people saw that on TV? Was it groundbreaking? Speaker 2 (6:12) Kind of. Speaker 1 (6:14) You're like, I just want to bow with my day, Alex. Speaker 2 (6:17) I do Speaker 1 (6:17) iconic shit. That was another Tuesday, Alex. Speaker 2 (6:20) I Speaker 1 (6:20) just drop mics and keep walking. No, you do. I'm Speaker 2 (6:23) just joking. Speaker 1 (6:24) No, you do. Speaker 2 (6:24) Sometimes. Speaker 1 (6:26) I feel like when people talk about you, we're always talking about how you've broken barriers. And I think a great example of that is you created your own record label at 13 years old. Now, Alanis, I feel like I'm going to speak for myself and also the collective when I say I was not doing anything like that at 13 years old. Probably Speaker 2 (6:48) best. Speaker 1 (6:48) No, no, no, no, no, no. So I need to understand like. How did that even come to be at that young of an age? Speaker 2 (6:56) Yeah, I started writing songs at nine and I sent it to a friend of the family who's since passed away. And he heard it and created a track for it. So when I went to visit him, he had a track fully prepared. And I said, who's going to sing this? My brothers have informed me repeatedly that I can't sing. And he's like, well, they're lying. Speaker 1 (7:17) Leave it to your brother also to just humble you constantly. Yes, just take Speaker 2 (7:20) you out. Speaker 2 (7:22) So I sang it and then that was that. And then we went to shop a record deal. And back in those days, they weren't signing little children. Now they just go right up the vagina into the uterus and get the signature and come back out and wait, I guess. Is your child signed to a deal yet? Oh, Speaker 1 (7:37) yeah, for sure. For sure. We Speaker 2 (7:38) got Speaker 1 (7:38) an agency set up. Can you imagine? So that Speaker 2 (7:41) was not happening then. And so I basically started a record company with my friend Lindsay and we put it out on the record company at I was 11. Speaker 1 (7:51) That takes a certain level of confidence. Like, were you always a young, confident child? Speaker 2 (7:57) I think my parents, there's so many stages of development, attachment, exploration, identity, competence. My parents knocked the confidence one out of the park. Definitely saying you can do anything you want. Oh, that's such a gift. Yeah, that's a big one. Speaker 1 (8:11) I mean, that can change your life, obviously. It Speaker 2 (8:13) does, yeah. Speaker 1 (8:13) Because I think a lot of times people have to struggle with that their entire life and find a way to find confidence because their home was the place they did not feel most confident. So to have that within your parents, were they at all nervous about you, though, getting into this industry? Apparently not. And did they have any background in it themselves? No. So they had no concept of the industry. And they just were like, go for it, Alanis. You're going to crush. Speaker 2 (8:44) It's really that simple, actually. Speaker 1 (8:46) Did they have any idea for you prior to that of what they hoped you would become? No, I mean, my dad was a grammar Speaker 2 (8:55) guy and my mom, you know, my parents are. They have that go-getter thing. It's in the DNA of the marrow of their bone. Speaker 1 (9:04) When you talk about your experience in the music industry, you've said you were put in a lot of male-dominated spaces at a very young age. What did that even look like Speaker 2 (9:14) for you back in the day when it first started? Just a room full of, you know, 12 men in suits. And I just remember being really overwhelmed. Like, I didn't even know what the word publishing meant. I didn't know what these contracts were that were being put in front of me at 14. I didn't know. So I would run upstairs to my room and cry. I remember I burned my journal in the fireplace just thinking, you know, this is the end of a normal life for me. Speaker 2 (9:41) And then I signed the contracts and that was it. And I still didn't really know. Speaker 1 (9:46) Rewind for two seconds. Why were you burning your journal in the fireplace? Because I talked about all these people I had crushes on and I just didn't want anyone to find that out. Meanwhile, it's like full gold in there. Platinum. You're called platinum, Speaker 2 (10:00) baby. Speaker 1 (10:01) You're like, why did I burn it? No, literally. Shouldn't have burned it. I actually have Speaker 2 (10:05) legit diary burning regret. It's a thing. Speaker 1 (10:09) And so you just, why? Because you were just like, I don't want to lean into Speaker 2 (10:12) these emotions and these feelings. Oh, no, no, no. I want to lean into the feelings. I just don't want anyone to know anything. I just got really Heidi. I'm an introvert. So this whole life that was sort of presented as an option, I just thought, wow. Speaker 2 (10:28) How am I going to do this? I'm a poodle inside a black stallion. It's like the black stallion is lovely and awesome, but the poodle, the nervous system, you know, so. But Speaker 1 (10:39) also what's so crazy is to even hear you say that. And I'm sitting here and I'm like, you are. The breakup anthems that you've written, the push and pull dynamics between the person that you're in love with or that you hate or you both. It's usually both. To hear the way that you have been able to pen to paper and then release that into the world and to hear you be like, oh, I wanted no one at first to hear any of this. How did you get through that? I'm Speaker 2 (11:08) fine with everyone Speaker 1 (11:09) hearing everything. Speaker 2 (11:10) I didn't want anyone to know. Because there's layers of vulnerability. And I do receive a lot of comments around how is it possible to be that publicly vulnerable and empowered? And I'm like, first of all, thank you. But you can do both. You can be empowered and vulnerable. I can be comfortable sharing that I feel anger and shame and guilt and fear and joy. But I might not want you to know the seven people I'm obsessing over right now. Maybe not. Speaker 1 (11:38) But also, did you ever change like light little details? Because you're like, I refuse to let him know this one's about him. Oh, yeah. I never tell anybody anything ever. But Speaker 2 (11:47) do you think Speaker 1 (11:48) some of your exes knew Speaker 2 (11:49) it was them? Well, here's the thing. If you're calling me up, which some of them did, and saying, is that song about me? Speaker 1 (11:55) We're done. Speaker 1 (11:58) Really? Okay. Speaker 2 (12:00) You're like, well, does the shoe fit? You tell me. Does this resonate? Right. And if it does to the point where you're calling me, Speaker 1 (12:07) aren't we done? Speaker 2 (12:09) We're done. We're done. This wasn't written for some overt revenge. I love revenge fantasy. Speaker 1 (12:17) Just keep it a fantasy. Write about it or sing about it. That's the best Speaker 2 (12:21) revenge. But real revenge is... Nobody wins. Speaker 1 (12:25) Yeah, but real revenge does end up happening when your name is like, and then you put it out and then it's like, everyone is going to listen to this. That's a pretty good form of revenge. Okay. Okay. Okay, Alex. You're like, yeah, yeah, whatever you say. No, that's totally true. You, I think it's important also to emphasize, you reference all these men in these suits and you being like, I didn't know what getting published meant. Like, I just was. A talented young woman who had a very, very specific skill, obviously, and everyone saw that you had that skill. And so everyone's going to be interested in monetizing that. But back then, I don't think we really had the language or the understanding to even call certain things for what it was like, oh, that's a double standard or this is gaslighting. Yeah, all these beautiful new Speaker 2 (13:12) words, Speaker 1 (13:12) right? That's emotional abuse. That's the patriarchy. That's misogynist sexual abuse. A lot of that. No language to explain a lot of times how specifically I think women were feeling. In what ways did you feel yourself up against that push and pull of like, I feel like something's off here, but I don't know how, like what this is? Speaker 2 (13:37) Well, there was a lot of extraction and exploitation. So already there's a dehumanization. The fame one is a whole other concept, a conversation. But in those rooms with the soup peeps. Speaker 2 (13:54) There was no attunement or empathy, a lot of personality disorders, a lot of misogyny, a lot of just hate of the feminine. Not just women. It's like we hate women. Yes. But we also hate the feminine. We hate vulnerability, but we want it. We want tenderness, but we can't say we want it. There's just so many indoctrination conversation of how we're supposed to live, what we're supposed to want, how we're supposed to present. Meanwhile, we're all animals. We're all humans with a little neo Speaker 1 (14:25) frontal doing our best. And isn't it so weird when you say that, too? It's like the men who hate that so much, but a lot of these men are recognizing this is what will sell. So they're not afraid for you to put it in the song and to have it released. Oh, they love it. They love it so much. But behind closed doors, there's... Speaker 2 (14:45) They Speaker 1 (14:46) still Speaker 2 (14:46) hate. They Speaker 1 (14:46) still hate. Speaker 2 (14:47) Well, it's also people were very generous by saying, oh, you know, you've changed the game. You know, there was a point in time where it was, you know, if we called a radio station to see if they would play one of my songs, they would say, we can't play it. We're playing Sinead. Or we can't play it at this radio station. We're already playing Tori. Speaker 1 (15:04) One woman. So Speaker 2 (15:06) that all changed. And it was a beautiful, I just felt like I volunteered to ride the hugest wave. I put my hand up before the question was even asked somehow. And the wave was