Alanis Morissette became one of music’s biggest stars with “Jagged Little Pill,” but behind the blockbuster success was a frightening wave of hostility that she says included websites plotting her murder.
Morissette, who skyrocketed to fame after the release of her 1995 album, opened up on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast about the hostility she faced at the time, including death threats and attacks from some fellow musicians.
“There was terror and resistance, but that’s just normal,” the singer recalled of the response she received from her lead single “You Oughta Know.”
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“But you know, at that point, project onto me all you want,” Morissette said. “Project that I’m the Antichrist. Project that I’m terrifying or … basically too much. My whole life I’ve just heard that I’m too much.”
But the backlash Morissette described went far beyond criticism of her music or personality. As her fame intensified, she recalled the hostility escalating to a chilling level.
“There was a lot of hate,” she told host Alex Cooper. “There were websites constructed to figure out how to murder me most elegantly.”
“Well, there was a lot of hate, and it was very, very out there. And a lot of people, a lot of artists whom I respected and lived for, were disparagingly speaking about me. Later, Sinéad apologized, which was really classy. But, yeah, I mean, it was not a girl squad. There were no girl squads.”
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Morissette said the hostility was particularly painful when it came from fellow artists, including musicians she admired. Among her vocal critics at the time was Courtney Love.
“I think Courtney Love was calling me fake, which is so funny,” she recalled. “And she also apologized later and said very kind things.”
Decades later, Morissette said she views the reaction through a different lens. She compared the resentment she encountered to modern-day jealousy surrounding Taylor Swift and argued that women were often made to feel there was room for only one at the top.
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“They were upset. I was, you know, it’s like people being jealous of Taylor Swift,” she explained. “And I think the implication there for me was that the presupposition on the planet was that there’s one throne. ‘Only Alex can sit in the throne, everybody. Everyone else, you fail. You lose. You’re ugly. Bye.’ What? That’s patriarchy. That’s scarcity mindset.”
Morissette started performing at a young age, including an early stint on the Canadian children’s television series “You Can’t Do That on Television.” She initially found success as a dance-pop singer in Canada, but her career changed dramatically with the 1995 release of “Jagged Little Pill.”
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The album shot to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and turned Morissette into an international star.
“Jagged Little Pill” also earned her Grammy Awards for Album of the Year and Best Rock Album, while “You Oughta Know” won Best Rock Song and Best Female Rock Vocal Performance.
Morissette was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2026.
