Still not over Alanis

My obsession with Alanis Morissette stuff was reignited some two weeks ago when my ex-car-pool mate Intan bought a new collection of the singer's work throughout her angst-happy-theatre-angst years.

Today I had a chance to take a two-hour trip for work and I listened to You Oughta Know like 15 times.

Yes. Back in 1996 I was hooked on that song, listened to it hundreds of times a day. Now more than 10 years later, I'm reliving it. Kinda made me feel young.

There's just so much to savour. So much to ponder. So much to take in and so much to appreciate. All from this one song.

It's not like I've ever been left heart-broken before. Nope, never had that chance of unrequited love, don't want to. But Alanis - and Glenn Ballard, Flea, David Navarro and Matt Laug - took me there and made me want to know what that kind of world can do to a person.

Ohh.. Flea was in his baddest ass in that song. In terms of musical expression and style, his work matched Alanis and Ballard's words and notes crochet to crochet, attack to attack.

No disrespect to Navarro nor Laug, but the bulk of the time I was relistening to that song, I was looking out for even the tiniest finger to string contact from Flea. Maybe I'm a bias when it comes to bass. I just love the sound.

(A bassist I know, Linda, once said, "Some bassists feels insecure because they think people think they're playing the easiest instrument. Kinda true when it comes to playing today's kind of song. And it was the easiest instrument I've ever picked up. So why not - yes, I'm insecure. But I never feel insecure whenever I managed to copy even a few bars of what Flea does." Hear hear Linda!)

Maybe I'm just too much of a Flea fan - tis cause of him that I bought RHCP albums without thinking. Though credits as high as they can get still goes to Kiedis (Anthony you're my man too!) as well.

Back to this song Alanis and Ballard wrote. The lyrics - oh the lyrics. It's femme anger on a different level - it felt like Alanis was championing her rights to be infuriated, unreasonable, bitter, sullen, enraged, exasperated. I could envision people coming to stand behind her and rooting for her cause.

And she's telling why shouldn't people be mad if they think they've been wronged? And how could anyone who's done such a thing to a person would even think of saying sorry or "Please don't be mad." cause when you reach the kind of anger Alanis is singing about, you don't really care what that person do or say anymore. You just want to be mad, really mad, at him and everything about him, now.

It's about the sheer contempt on a former lover in all sense thinkable. The way she antagonised both her relationship with him as well as his new one is both heart-wrenching yet elating, acidic yet you still want to swallow it. Hey that's me and my jagged lil pill.

As Alanis sings her thoughts on what her replacement is like, I felt that cold, sleek knife that she was digging into her own virtual self. That she knew she was only hurting herself yet it's not that she couldn't help it, rather, she wouldn't.

And sarcasm is at its best - I love it to bits that the song started with a well-wish and ended with a lace of a threat. She knew him too well to know he's hating the fact that she's making her grudge show. She knew it would make him cringe with guilt and she knows he knows that this was only a tip of her menacing baggage iceberg... and he is Titanic... I say "Crash! You sucker!"

Mr Duplicity - ooooooh, this has got to be one of my most favourite spots in the song. Name-calling! No one else can go down to that level yet still come out on top like this!

I remember being happy when the song was hailed as Grammy's Best Rock Song and Best Female Rock Vocal Performance. Too bad it lost to Seal's Kiss from a Rose for Song of the Year, but that Batman OST is another track to be reckoned with as well. But Beyonce covered You Oughta Know during her 2009 tour, not the Song of the Year so guess whose song left a bigger impact?

I'm keeping my toes warm for Alanis' next gut-ripping, eradicating-garbage-out-of-your-system song. Oh, I love her happy songs, Head Over Feet and all, but I just think Alanis knows angst so well.