Alanis Morissette on the song that captures the “best possible version of me”
Canadian singer-songwriter Alanis Morissette was thrust into the limelight in her native country as a teenager. Fame can be a complex beast for anybody, especially for somebody as young as Morissette, who was still learning the ropes of life.
While her initial success in Canada offered a glimpse of what was to come in her future, nothing could have prepared Morissette for the global success of Jagged Little Pill in 1995. The album became bigger than she could have ever imagined, selling over 33 million copies worldwide, taking the singer global, and winning her five Grammy Awards, including the prestigious ‘Album of the Year’.
Although she should have been basking in her time in the limelight, there was no time to pause and soak up the moment. Her schedule was beyond intense, with Morissette performing 262 shows throughout 1996. However, once the 18-month global tour had finally come to a close, she finally had time to reflect and stopped taking her success for granted.
In desperate need of a quiet moment to relax, Morissette took herself to India, which allowed her to finally feel normal again. “I felt that I lived in a culture that told me that I had to consistently and constantly look outside myself to feel this elusive bliss. And I achieved a lot of what society had told me to achieve, and I still didn’t feel peaceful,” she later reflected on VH1’s Storytellers.
Morissette was discussing the creation of her song ‘Thank U’, released as the lead single on her 1998 album Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie. Explaining the inspiration for the gratuitous song, she said: “I stopped for the first time, and I was overcome with a huge sense of compassion for myself first, and then naturally that translated into my feeling and compassion for everyone around me and a huge amount of gratitude that I had never felt before to this extent.”
“And that’s why I had to write this song, ‘Thank U,’ because I had to express how exciting this was and how scary it was and all of these opportunities for us to define who we are,” she added.
Although ‘Thank U’ never became as widely known as ‘Ironic’, it matters more to Morissette. She named it the song that best represents her as a person during an interview with The Guardian in 2012.
Discussing why she chose ‘Thank U’, Morissette said: “I wrote it when I came back from India after the tour for Jagged Little Pill. It was the first time that I actually had space to think and process, and I wasn’t claustrophobic and overcome and overwhelmed with too much stimuli. And I find that when I have time alone, I immediately feel grateful. So, ‘Thank You’ was written from a place of stillness, and that song captures the best possible version of me. If I want to recapture that moment, I play the song, and it works every time.”
For the two years before writing ‘Thank U’, Morissette was on an extraordinary journey but didn’t have the time to enjoy the ride. However, once she was in India, the Canadian could finally step back and gaze at her wild experience.
