So-Called Chaos - Alanis Morissette
This album came out when I was in my mid-teens and all but ready to declare Alanis Morissette a living goddess. Ironically, the songs that have consistently persuaded me in this regard are the most self-aware, self-critical, and vulnerable ones. The album opens with Eight Easy Steps, where Morissette sarcastically declares herself a good role-model in various areas of expertise:
How to hate women when you’re supposed to be a feminist
how to play all pious when you’re really a hypocrite
how to hate God when you’re a prayer and a spiritualist
how to sabotage your fantasies by fear of success
Yet for all of these frailties and faults and foibles, there’s this indomitable will to reach for more. It’s clear that admitting failure is always the first step (and ONLY the first step) in self-improvement. Out is Through describes the painful but worthwhile process of sticking it out with someone when things get dicey, and This Grudge acknowledges the need to finally, for sanity’s sake, let go.
And then there’s the songs that acknowledge that although we have faults, although we have far to go, we can still be loved and loving:
You see everything, you see every part
You see all my light and you love my dark
You dig everything of which I'm ashamed
There's not anything to which you can't relate
And you're still here
If I had to pick just one song to represent why I love Alanis Morissette, it would be Everything.
Next: Flavors of Entanglement
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