Songoftheday 12/14/19 - An older version of me Is she perverted like me? Would she go down on you in a theater?
from the album Jagged Little Pill (1995)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #6 (live version as the B-Side of "You Learn")
Billboard Hot 100 Airplay peak (initial run): #13 (one week)
Weeks in the Hot 100 Airplay Top-40: 24
Today's song of the day comes from Canadian child actress turned modern rock singer Alanis Morissette, Born in Ottawa, she first appeared as a cast member on the children's sketch comedy show You Can't Do That On Television in 1986. The show, infamous for pouring "slime" on its cast and guests, didn't spare Alanis during her short stay on the Canadian TV Show (ironically done after the person says "I Don't Know"). After trying to get a music career off the ground since the late 1980s, Alanis finally released her debut dance-pop record in Canada in 1991. From it three singles reached the Canadian Top-40, with lead track "Too Hot" peaking at #14. A year later, she followed up with another excursion into dance-pop music, Now Is The Time. Although the record also scored three top-40 hit in her homeland, with the more mature ballad "No Apologies" matching its rank at #14, the album sold consideraby less, and Alanis was let go from the label.
After a year of just existing on her own, Alanis was signed to Madonna's "boutique label" Maverick Records, where she would record her landmark "debut" (to most of America") album Jagged Little Pill. The song was written by Alanis with producer Glen Ballard about breaking up in such a dramatic way that it defines the record. Alleged pointing to a time when she dated comedian Dave Coulier (from Full House), the emotional and pretty graphic delivery set Alanis way apart from anything else going on at the time. And with no commercial single put out, the song was soon attached to buying the Jagged Litle Pill, where I got my first big taste of female fury, and soon enough, "You Oughta Know" was all over pop and rock radio. Red Hot Chili Peppers members Flea and Dave Navarro help put the real "punch" into this record.
On its initial promotion to radio, "You Oughta Know" climbed into the American pop Top-40 airplay chart in September of 1995. Since it wasn't released commercially as a singe (yew), it was not able to place on Billboard magazine's "official" Hot 100 chart. The song did tremendously well at rock radio, spending five weeks at #1 on their Modern Rock list and three weeks at #3 on the Mainstream Rock radio format tally. Internationally, the record reached the top ten in Australia (#4) and Canada (#6), and made the top-40 in Iceland (#11), The Netherlands (#17), the UK (#22), New Zealand (#25), Sweden (#38), and Belgium (#39F). At the upcoming Grammy Awards the following year. At the Grammy Awards in 1996, "You Oughta Know" won awards for Best Rock Song and Best Female Rock Vocal Performance, but lost on the "biggie", Song of the Year, to Seal's "Kiss From A Rose". Meanwhile the Jagged Little Pill album won Album of the Year and Best Rock Album, while she lost "Best New Artist" to Hootie & The Blowfish.
In 1996, since "You Oughta Know" never got a proper single release in the U.S., its inclusion as the "B-Side" on her single "You Learn" in the form of her live performance at the Grammy Awards made it possible for it to be listed on the Hot 100 chart (thanks to Billboard's convoluted rules at the time).
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Here is Alanis debuting the song on American television on the Late Show With David Letterman in 1995. I watched this on TV at its broadcast and let me tell you, I was a fucking puddle at the end...
Next up, live on a televised show in her native Canada in 1995...
Also from that year Alanis appeared on the MTV Video Music Awards...
Her stripped down version that Alanis performed at the Grammy Awards in 1996 became the B-side of "You Learn" and subsequently charted on the Hot 100...
Now here's Alanis in concert in London's Hyde Park that same year...
She also performed the song at Woodstock 99...
In 2003, on her concert DVD Soundstage, Alanis took the song in a little different direction...
Here she is at Montreaux in 2012...
At the American Music Awards in 2015, Alanis paired up with Demi Lovato to celebrate the twenty-year anniversary of the album...
Just as she is bringing her Jagged Little Pill Broadway show to the stage, here she is just a couple weeks ago at the Apollo theater...
and as a bonus, a clip from Sunday Morning about the song....
On a sidenote, I have to say I can't think of a song that had carried me through a tough time in my life as well as this one did. Screaming it with all windows down in the car was more cathartic than a hundred therapy sessions.
Up tomorrow: Indian Outlaw has a growing fondness.
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