In Alanis Morissette’s case, the answer is trading altitude for depth — digging deeply into yourself, unearthing all manner of neuroses, questions and thorny realities in the process.
It’s saying something that Morissette followed up 1995’s seismic, multiplatinum Jagged Little Pill with a record even more psychologically and emotionally bracing, but she did just that with 1998’s Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie, which marks its 25th anniversary on Nov. 3.
Rather than acidic one-liners and serrated guitars, the Canadian singer-songwriter embraced a more eclectic sonic presentation here, drawing upon influences from India, where she traveled in late 1996 and early 1997 in the wake of Pill’s life-altering success. She revealed a warmer, glimmering pop sensibility — best exemplified by lead single “Thank U,” which ultimately cracked the Billboard Hot 100’s top 20 — one she would expand on and refine on subsequent albums.
What’s most striking about Junkie, particularly if listening in close proximity to Pill, is how profoundly the then-24-year-old Morissette grew as an artist from one record to the next. The ferocity coursing through Pill hasn’t diminished, but it’s channeled much more effectively here, and, often as not, turned inward, with Morissette castigating herself as much as she lashes out.
Morissette again teamed with producer Glen Ballard to craft this 17-track follow-up, which runs a full 20 minutes longer than Pill. There’s the sense Morissette understood she wouldn’t necessarily get this chance a second time, so she swung for the fences — Junkie is as sprawling, messy and textured as Pill is vibrant, tight, and ferocious.
Critics largely embraced Morissette’s ambitious follow-up: “One of the things that sets Morissette apart from the other twentysomething singer-songwriters with whom she is often and inaccurately lumped is that she writes from the point of view of someone searching for meaning in a meaningful, rather than a meaningless, world,” wrote Mim Udovitch in Rolling Stone.
Robert Christgau offered backhanded praise in the Village Voice: “The mammoth riffs, diaristic self-analysis, and pretentious Middle Eastern sonorities of this music mark it as ‘rock,’ albeit rock with tunes. And in this context I suck it up, feeling privileged to listen along with all the young women whose struggles Morissette blows up to such a scale.”
Christgau’s analysis, in particular, feels pithy to the point of condescension, especially when considering how masterfully Morissette synthesizes different perspectives. Take the juxtaposition of “Are You Still Mad” and “Sympathetic Character,” which find Morissette in the former acknowledging her complicity in withdrawing herself from a relationship “long before you did,” against a quietly stormy backdrop of strings, piano and electric guitar.
“Character,” by comparison, does a 180, and puts Morissette (who has sole writing credit for the track) in a harrowing, nightmarishly abusive scenario: “I was afraid you’d hit me if I’d spoken up,” begins the song, as a sinister guitar and menacing percussion flicker across the background.
That sort of to-and-fro continues throughout the record, giving it a peculiar, hypnotic rhythm — Morissette almost seems to vacillate between regretful perpetrator and defiant victim, walking that tightrope from first track to last. That knotty complexity — that a woman can both antagonize and be antagonized — gives Junkie a profound depth, as it allows a pop star at the apex of her fame to scrutinize herself and her relationships in a way that feels more authentic and vulnerable than a simple regurgitation of Pill would have.
Bucking audience and industry expectations wasn’t without its costs. Junkie did debut at No. 1 and eclipsed The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill in first-week sales, but ultimately sold a fraction of what Pill did, moving (to date) roughly seven million copies worldwide to Pill’s 33 million. Integrity has its price.
Still, the catharsis is enduringly potent — particularly as Morissette reaches the late album highlight “Joining You,” which almost perfectly encapsulates the album’s light and dark dichotomy, moving from grim, downtuned verses to a purely joyous chorus.
That “You” is a song built around the idea of Morissette talking a friend out of suicidal tendencies feels like both an ironic joke and a deeply poignant slice of life.That knotty complexity — that a woman can both antagonize and be antagonized — gives Junkie a profound depth, as it allows a pop star at the apex of her fame to scrutinize herself and her relationships in a way that feels more authentic and vulnerable than a simple regurgitation of Pill would have.
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The afterglow of Pill lasted through much of Junkie’s promotional cycle — Morissette would make an appearance on MTV Unplugged in late 1999 that yielded a record blending tracks from Pill and Junkie to winning effect.
With Junkie’s follow-up (2002’s Under Rug Swept), Morissette began to settle into the next phase of her career, steering away from the confrontational, guitar-charged angst and bombast of Pill (and, to a lesser extent, Junkie) toward something more delicate, pop-inflected and disarming.
Morissette has continued to steadily tour and record in the decades since, most recently releasing her eighth studio album, The Storm Before the Calm, in mid-2022.
For her part, the gradual receding of the spotlight’s glare suited Morissette just fine. As she told The Guardian in 2020, “The white-hot heat of fame waned, which is what made everything OK, actually. Fame is not a circumstance I want to sustain.”
Indeed, the evanescence of fame can obscure, in the moment, the value and durability of a work, particularly in the pop music realm. With the passage of time and the ability to return to an album, again and again, those initial surface pleasures can deepen and intensify, giving a richness to the words and sounds therein.
Morissette, whether instinctively or intellectually, understood the moment in which she found herself in the mid-1990s. All eyes were on her, and the expectation was undoubtedly that she would continue along the path of Angry Young Woman until either the audience lost interest or she simply burned herself out.
Knowing such an approach was unsustainable, Morissette instead harnessed that fury as just another color on her palette, and painted herself out of the corner in which the music industry tried to trap her.
What was true then is true today: There’s no greater value for an artist than being faithful to oneself. After all, once the attention fades, that’s all that one is left with. Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie is the sound of a singer-songwriter finding grace in that reality, and generously sharing it with us.
