A video montage precedes Alanis Morissette’s arrival, capturing the Canadian-American angst-rock godmother’s extraordinary pop culture resonance with clips of everything from her Curb Your Enthusiasm cameo to James Corden and Justin Bieber howling Ironic on Carpool Karaoke. French and Saunders’ memorable flesh-coloured body suit parody of the Thank U video might have featured too, for a flavour of the satirical backlash that followed the singer’s late-90s celebrity zenith, but the point nonetheless remains: however big you remember Morissette to have been, she was bigger.
A quarter-century later – large parts spent in self-imposed exile finding inner peace through spirituality, meditation and motherhood – Morissette has reengaged on her own terms with a music business that nearly killed her to mark a milestone for 1995’s totemic 33m-selling Jagged Little Pill. The 25th-anniversary celebrations of an album already several times rereleased, once rerecorded in acoustic form and now the subject of a hit jukebox musical have been stretched out for more than two years now. But who’s complaining? Let’s just say nobody is here in feverish anticipation of Morissette’s latest chakra-balancing ambient album The Storm Before the Calm.
