3 things you oughta know about Alanis Morissette’s ACL Fest timewarp to the 1990s
What it all comes down to? Alanis Morissette is still pop music’s prophet of angst, her power is formidable, and woe to the joker who underestimates the Canadian hitmaker’s ability to form an army upon command.
During the first weekend of Austin City Limits Music Festival, Morissette played a golden hour set Saturday at the American Express stage. Her resume speaks for itself. She’s the creator of one of the best-selling albums of all time, “Jagged Little Pill,” which made her the first Canuck to go double diamond. She’s a cultural symbol of an entire decade of human history. She uses Grammys and Juno Awards as paperweights (or she could). She played God in a movie.
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The least shocking ACL Fest development, then, was that Morissette packed fans deep into Zilker Park, stretching from the stage to the ACL Eats food court, just about. Here are three of our favorite moments from the set.
All killer, just a little filler
If ACL Fest 2023 proves anything, it’s that the 1990s live among us once again as the reigning repository for our apocalypse-soothing nostalgia and our anniversary tour purchasing power. Heck, on Saturday alone, Foo Fighters and Shania Twain headlined the big stages. That actually does impress us much.
Dave Grohl and company never really went away, and Twain is in the middle of a resurgence involving Halloween shake-and-go wigs, but Morissette’s gig was all about giving the people what they wanted. Their heart’s desire was, of course, to go absolutely feral for a song about misusing a literary device.
The opening strings plinks of “Ironic” elicited roars from the crowd. Morissette hardly stood still for an hour, stalking across the stage like a shark in danger of dying. She made a lyrical modification to one iconic line: “It's meeting the man of my dreams/ And then meeting his beautiful husband.”
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Amid a couple newer songs, Morissette gave the fans the hits, and they gave them right back to her at full volume: “Hand In My Pocket,” “You Learn,” “Thank U” — the last one serving as a sweet closing number.
The artist didn’t spend much time connecting with the crowd, instead getting down to business. Her voice still sounds like the version we all hear on the radio 30 years on. She spun in circles to a guitar solo, those famous brunette tresses flying like a Tilt-O-Whirl. When she could bear to stay put at the mic stand, she sometimes grasped her hands as if in supplication.
Austin became the ‘City of Angels’
Before the “Thank U” finish, Morissette sang “Uninvited.” After “Jagged Little Pill” and before its follow-up album, “Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie,” she released the dark power ballad in 1998 as a single from the movie “City of Angels.”
You haven’t thought of that Nicolas Cage/Meg Ryan vehicle in 25 years — I know I haven’t. And yet “Uninvited” was the stirring, complex highlight of Morissette’s ACL Fest hour. As performed, it was a clattering, sinister cloud of sound descending on the park, with the singer unleashing vocals that sounded like cries of power. It was like the day dissolved into night within a couple minutes of goth-pop.
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A ‘You Oughta Know’ for the ages
No song Saturday erupted like “You Oughta Know,” the lead single of “Jagged Little Pill” and a song that more people know the words to than “The Star-Spangled Banner.” At the time of its release, the song marked an artistic pivot for Morissette, featuring fellow Clinton-era pillars Dave Navarro and Flea. It somehow only peaked at No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100; the top song of 1996 was “Macarena,” so, just consider where we were as a people.
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“You Oughta Know” has endured as the ultimate kiss-off anthem, though. Morissette’s voice, a vibrating ribbon of discontent, led ACL Fest in a singalong that probably gave some grimy, park-weary fans a needed catharsis. At one point, the big screen at the side of the stage cut to a fest-goer screaming so hard that their cowboy hat was slipping off their head.
Popular lore holds, though Morissette has never confirmed, that the song’s venom is directed at her ex, “Full House” actor Dave Coulier. One fan carried a pole with Uncle Joey’s head affixed to the top, as if he’d been hunted for sport and his skull placed on a pike as a warning to any future Mr. Duplicity.
I’m confident that a record was set Saturday: the most rage per capita ever directed at a 1990s sitcom star in Austin history.