How ‘Jagged Little Pill’ Dominated 1996

There was no escaping Alanis Morissette‘s Jagged Little Pill in 1996. Just about everywhere one looked — the charts, the Grammys, etc. — Pill was there.

Morissette had written the album from a place of deep determination. She wasn’t even 21 years old yet, but was facing the sort of artistic confinement that so many artists dread and resent — label executives insisting she make a certain type of music, belittling her talent and autonomy as a creator.

“These people didn’t get it — they didn’t understand my evolution and what music meant to me,” Morissette recalled to Elle in 2025, 30 years on from the release of Jagged Little Pill. “I wanted to write a record that marked what was actually happening. I said to myself I’m writing a record that is a direct f***ing reflection of where I’m at or bust.”

That’s precisely what she did and that’s precisely why the album resonated with so many listeners, particularly women. Here was proof that it was okay, even necessary sometimes, to get angry with the world around you and the people who want to box you in. It could be argued that not since Joni Mitchell‘s Blue had a woman so rawly expressed themselves on an album.

The Release

Upon release on June 13, 1995, Jagged Little Pill was an almost immediate success all around the world. Within four months, it was No. 1 on the Billboard 200. This was a whirlwind for Morissette given that she’d been scraping by in Los Angeles not that long before Pill took off.

“I guess in a way, I am Miss Thing right now,” she said to Rolling Stone that year. “I laugh now when I sing the song on stage because the whole things so ironic. When I wrote those words, I was the furthest thing in the world from it.”

One thing was absolutely clear: the fans related to the album and made sure Morissette knew it at her shows.

“The reaction of the audience has been so amazing and open,” Morissette continued. “It’s comforting and bittersweet to know that I’m not the only one who’s gone through these things.”

That was frankly just the beginning for Jagged Little Pill.

‘Jagged Little Pill”s Huge Year: 1996

It was the following year that things got even crazier. By 1996, six million copies were sold, making the 21-year-old Morissette a record-holder for youngest artist to be certified diamond in America, until Britney Spears came along.

And if you tuned into any award shows, you saw Morissette’s face. Pill won five Juno Awards in 1996: Album of the Year, Single of the Year for “You Oughta Know,” Female Vocalist of the Year, Songwriter of the Year and Best Rock Album.

“People’s growth is done in private, and artists’s growth…an artist’s growth is done in public and I thank Canada, as a country, for accepting that in me,” she said at that ceremony.

Watch Alanis Morissette at the 1996 Juno Awards

Then there was the Grammys, at which Pill took home another four awards: Best Female Rock Vocal Performance, Best Rock Song (both for “You Oughta Know”), Best Rock Album and Album of the Year. At that time, only two other women in history had won that many Grammys in one night, Carole King and Bonnie Raitt.

“This award does not represent the fact that I am better than any other woman nominated with me,” Morissette said (via the Saskatoon StarPhoenix and jonimitchell.com) after winning Best Rock Album. (Other women nominated throughout the evening included Joan Osborne, Shania Twain, Emmylou Harris, Joni Mitchell, Mariah Carey, Annie Lennox, Madonna and more.) “But it does represent that a lot of people connected with what I wrote.”

We can’t forget the MTV Awards, too, where Jagged Little Pill won in three out of the six categories it was nominated in, including Best Female Video. And this was all happening while songs from the album kept their steady presence at the top of various international charts.

An 18-month tour followed, with support from Radiohead. (“My main memory of that tour,” Jonny Greenwood recalled to Rolling Stone in 2017, “is playing interminable Hammond organ solos to an audience full of quietly despairing teenage girls.”)

That tour was filmed, resulting in Jagged Little Pill, Live which won yet another Grammy for Best Long Form Music Video.

Watch the Music Video for ‘You Oughta Know’

It’s worth noting though that for however huge Jagged Little Pill was, it also thrust Morissette into a world that had its share of pros and cons.

“The disadvantage,” she said to Rolling Stone in 1998, “not so much now as when I was adjusting to it, was in certain cities — especially where I was playing — not being able to walk down the street and look people in the eye and keep my head up. It was something I so much enjoyed doing — being able to walk down streets and just connect with people and look at them, and when they’d be looking at me, they’d be looking at me for a myriad of different reasons and not because they recognized me. Now when people look at me, I always wonder whether they recognize me or whether they’re just looking at some brunette woman walking down the street. I miss the sense of community where you all feel equal.”

Arguably one of the best outcomes was how influential a release Pill ultimately became for future generations of female singer-songwriters.

“I remember having my mind blown when I was 13,” Olivia Rodrigo shared in one of Rolling Stone‘s Musicians on Musicians features in 2021. “I was in the car with my parents listening to Jagged Little Pill. I remember hearing ‘Perfect,’ and I was like, ‘Oh, my God.’ I told my music teacher a couple days after: ‘You can write songs like that?’ I just looked at music and songwriting in a completely different way.”

Participants will run the gamut of genre and background, including but not limited to Chappell Roan, Bikini Kill, Garbage, the Breeders, Stevie Nicks, Karen O and Sarah McLachlan, among others. McLachlan, of course, was the person who launched the famous Lilith Fair back in the late ’90s, a touring festival that exclusively highlighted solo female artists and women-led bands, something Rodigo has called “a huge inspiration” for organizing Daisy Chain Fields.

READ MORE: How We’d Build an All-Women Rock Festival

For Morissette herself, the extreme success of Pill meant she could continue her path on her own terms.

“It was enough for me to keep going,” she said to Elle, considering how 30 years has made a difference in how women craft, release and stand by their work. “I feel like if we’re paying attention, and if we’re learning everything we can about patriarchy and gaslighting and narcissism — the more I learn, the feistier I am.”