Today’s music video of the day is for a song that she wrote about not being able to tour during the COVID lockdowns. The song is all about how much she misses traveling with her band. When the song was released, it was used to raise money for Morissette’s backing band, who couldn’t work because the governments across the world tried to ban mass gatherings.
Seriously, I think some people have forgotten — or have chosen to pretend to forget — just how insane things got with the COVID lockdowns. We were all missing our friends, our family, our lives …. our band.
(Sorry, I’m not yet ready to forgive and forget. 15 Days To Slow The Spread because 48 Months To Do What You’re Told Or Else. I just spent a week and a half watching Clint Eastwood films so I’m definitely not in a rule-following mood right now.)
It’s another Canadian holiday that is on my calendar today. Thankfully there are more musicians from the Great White North than just Rush. Otherwise I’d run out of music videos very quickly for other Canadian holidays. It’s my understanding that this “Civic Holiday” is something called a “public holiday” that basically is a day set aside for whatever a particular place decides to celebrate. I am going to co-op this Canadian holiday to celebrate that Alanis Morissette decided to pull a Tori Amos in 1995, and we got the album Jagged Little Pill as a result. To be fair, she was a decent Paula Abdul knockoff before she changed her tune. I could have started with her earlier videos like I did with Ministry. However, I already did the equivalent by spotlighting the early 90s cheese fest of Nothing My Love Can’t Fix by Joey Lawrence back in July. That’s how her music videos used to look.
I remember back in 1995 when I was up in Lake Tahoe, CA with my parents, and saw this music video for the first time. I’m not sure how I wound up watching MTV considering I used to watch the Weather Channel all the time when I was up there for reasons beyond me. Kennedy was interviewing her late at night if memory serves. This was an odd time to release an album like Jagged Little Pill. 1994 saw the height, and deathblow to the early 90s musical renaissance. Kurt Cobain killed himself that year, which brought Nirvana to an end. We also saw the release of Dookie by Green Day, The Blue Album by Weezer, The Downward Spiral by Nine Inch Nails, Throwing Copper by Live, Purple by Stone Temple Pilots, Smash by The Offspring, and Superunkown by Soundgarden to name a few. The next few years we went through a transitional period, and this music video was at the center of it. It’s a great song and good music video, but just like bands such as Bush and Collective Soul, it was part of an aborted second wave of musicians following in the footsteps of Nirvana. A few years later we would be neck deep in boy bands, pop princesses, nu metal, and faux-punk/alt.
The video today looks like they took a standard “just put the musicians in front of the camera performing and add a few arty scenes elsewhere” then passed it through an Instagram filter. It’s a simple music video. The question is does it complement the anger of the song? Yes, it does. Does Alanis really look that angry? No, but that’s not really her fault. She isn’t the type that conveys that easily, which is probably why we’d get much more peaceful stuff from her after this. No, I’m not going to say it. Just enjoy this time capsule. I think 21 years is enough time for us to have gotten over it being played to death.
Through the Shattered Lens 