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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Friday, February 22, 2002

Morissette on the rise again

By Elysa Gardner
USA TODAY

After the pressure of her second album, "Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie," Alanis Morissette says her third, "Under Rug Swept," has a sense of integration and acceptance.

Associated Press

When your breakthrough album sells 15 million copies, commercial expectations for the follow-up can be ludicrously high. So Alanis Morissette realizes why her last CD, 1998's "Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie," was perceived as a disappointment — and why her current, fast-rising single, "Hands Clean," is being touted as a comeback.

"It's understandable if people are speaking in relative terms," says the singer/songwriter, who first hit it big with "Jagged Little Pill," a coming-of-age manifesto released in 1995. "But I also know that every song I've ever written has been a real snapshot of my life, so there's no one song I feel more connected to than the others."

"Hands Clean," the first single from her new CD, "Under Rug Swept," due Tuesday, is already one of the top five most-played songs on adult top-40 and modern adult-contemporary radio and is poised to enter the top 20 in the larger mainstream top-40 format. The song might seem to have particular personal resonance: It was inspired by a relationship with a much older man whom Morissette, 27, met during her years as a fledgling teen star in Canada. The man's voice is represented in the song's verses, attempting to justify what could be viewed as exploitative behavior: "If it weren't for your maturity/None of this would have happened ... /Just make sure you don't tell on me/Especially to members of your family."

"I had been silencing myself about it at the request of the person who the song's about for a very long time," Morissette says. "I wasn't motivated by seeking revenge. It was a way for me to liberate myself from pushing something away."

Morissette does not disclose the name of the man in the song or in conversation. "It was just someone I worked with in the industry," she says.

"The relationship was professional and creative if I can call some of it that, and sexual and everything. It was all sort of connected together in ways that make me think, in retrospect, 'OK, that's a little complicated for an emotionally young person to deal with.' "

The singer is heartened by the obvious connection others have made with her story. "I haven't spoken to many people about the song, but the very thought of having a young woman — or young man, for that matter — feel validated in an experience that is at all similar to what I went through, and not feel isolated or like a freak, is gratifying beyond words."

Morissette also is pleased with the progress that "Under Rug Swept" represents in general. Her last album, she says, "was written under such pressure. There was such a rebellion on my end in terms of how I structured (songs). It was my way of saying, 'I know what everyone expects of me, but I'm just gonna do what I want.' And I did that with a vengeance. I was also embracing spirituality in a way that I had never done. Now there's this sense of integration and an acceptance that today is today. I don't have to worry about who I was 15 years ago or who I'm going to be in seven years. I can just focus on who I am right now and allow that to be what it is."