I'm Mad About You

I recollect that when Canadian recording artist Alanis Morissette blew up the charts in the mid-1990s with her breakthrough album “Jagged Little Pill”, people immediately tagged her as an “angry woman”. As if being angry is somehow a bad thing, and not appropriate for a female pop singer. Geesh. I hope we have progressed since then.

Yes, some of Alanis’s songs express anger, even contempt, for certain people and situations, but they are not without justification.

For example, the gloriously relevant song from that album - “Perfect” (co-written with her producer Glen Ballard) - is a tour de force of a believable character speaking to us through song. The lyrics are a one-sided conversation between a parent and her kids who never seem to rise to Mom’s expectations of perfection in whatever they are trying to do. Sound familiar?

And although the verses and choruses are generally softly rendered in an almost plaintive tone, their undercurrent of disgust is cutting. Alanis never breaks character, not even once. And in the song’s bridge, her voice rises to a shout. It crackles and scratches as the parent unloads on her children, telling them - with a good dose of guilt trippin’ thrown in - that their performance must make up for her own shortcomings. You can almost visualize a withering child finally breaking down in sobs as Mom ends the bridge yelling “What’s the problem, why are you crying?”

The melody, the cadence, the song form, and the arrangement all support - and never get in the way of - the impactful lyrics of this song. I rather dig the chord progression of “Perfect” with its II minor chord (kind of underused in pop music, IMHO) and its sprinkling of “sus” and “add9” chords, too. That palette of chords gives the song a deceptive gentleness that contrasts sharply with the biting lyrics.

So, yes, this is an “angry” song. And why not? The song has a lot to say about an almost abusive need for some offspring to make their parents proud of them. Anger is as valid a human emotion as love, despair, loneliness, joy, fear, nostalgia… Being mad now and then is just being human. And as a songwriter, it’s our humble privilege to reflect this complexity of the human experience back to the listener.

Madness. Thank you, Ms. Morissette.