Rocktober '90s Song #3: "You Oughta Know" by Alanis Morissette (1995)

One of the many things that was great about rock in the '90s is that there was a marked increase in the visibility and popularity of female rockers.  In the '80s, while there were plenty of female pop stars, when it came to hard rock, it was Joan Jett, Pat Benatar, Heart, Lita Ford, and a maybe a handful of others.

That all changed in the '90s, as the riot grrrl movement in the Pacific Northwest, grunge, and alternative rock helped thrust female rockers to the forefront, thanks to bands and artists like Hole, 4 Non Blondes, Veruca Salt, L7, Bikini Kill, Sleater-Kinney, The Breeders, Liz Phair, Elastica, Luscious Jackson, 7 Year Bitch, PJ Harvey, and many others.

One of the biggest female alt-rock frontwomen was former Canadian child actress and pop singer Alanis Morissette.  In the early '90s, she had a six Top 40 hits on the Canadian pop chart between 1991 and 1993, but hadn't broken through outside of the Great White North.

After her record deal was up, she changed musical directions, moved to Toronto and then LA, teamed up with producer Glen Ballard and, with Ballard, co-wrote one of the biggest albums ever.  Here third studio album, Jagged Little Pill, was released in 1995 and went to #1 on the Billboard album chart and various other album charts across the world.  It ended the decade as the #1 album on the Billboard decade-end album chart for the '90s and is #7 on the Billboard all-time album chart.  It has gone 15x platinum in the U.S. and sold over 33 million copies worldwide, making it one of the 15 best-selling albums of all-time.

Strangely, the album was supposed to just be kind of a go-between album for Morissette, as her record company was expecting it to make just enough money to allow her to make a follow-up album.  That all changed when LA rock station KROQ started playing "You Oughta Know," the lead single from Jagged Little Pill that featured Dave Navarro on guitar, Flea on bass, and Benmont Tench on organ.  It caught on like wildfire and eventually went to #6 on the Billboard Hot 100, as well as #1 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart for five weeks, which was the most for a female artist up to that point.

And what a scathing, angst-ridden song it was, with lyrics about scorned love aimed at an ex-lover.  This wasn't just some "oh he hurt me, now what am I gonna do?" type song that might have been more likely for a female singer to sing in the past.  This was a "fuck you, I bet your new girlfriend won't give you head in a movie theater like I did" song, quite literally.  I remember being blown away by the brutal honesty and sexuality of the song, and it's still an all-time post-break-up song 26 years later.  "And every time you speak her name / Does she know how you told me you'd hold me until you died? / Until you died / But you're still alive."  Anyone who's ever been dumped can relate to a line like that.

Of course, my favorite story about the song is the rumor that it's about Dave Coulier, who had previously dated Morissette.  The idea that Uncle Joey from Full House was getting a BJ in a theater was enough to rattle everything I had ever known or thought about him.  Morissette has never publicly said who the song is about, and there are a couple other possible subjects, but for me, I'm just going to always assume it's about the man behind the Jackalope.  

But anyway, "You Oughta Know" is one of the defining songs of the '90s, and the video is so purely '90s that I couldn't not feature in this year's Rocktober.