ALANIS MORISSETTE
talks about songs from
'UNDER RUG SWEPT'

21 THINGS I WANT IN A LOVER: "There's a part of this song where I'm joking, but there's a whole part of this song where I'm dead serious. The more aware of the qualities I am looking for, the more I'm able to recognize them when they appear, as opposed to having the initial meeting romantically be singularly dependent on chemical reaction or some intangible, indefinable, heart-palpitating, palm- sweating thing. Because the palm sweating, heart palpitating beginnings of a relationship often result in a huge amount of incompatibility, so the concept of compatibility is so much more important to me as I get older."

NARCISSUS: "The verses represent my trying to speak as truthfully as I possibly can about what I see, but there's no such thing as objective truth, so they (men) could probably sing the same kind of song right back at me. It's the part of me that allows myself to feel like a victim and the part of me that allows myself to just be angry and not apologize for it. And yet in the choruses I feel like I do take responsibility, I feel like I'm calling it what it is, but I'm also saying, 'And yet here I am, still wanting to connect with you.' So, it's that dichotomy of loving someone and really wanting it to work and wanting to bridge the gap and bridge the chasm and, yet at the same time, being totally repulsed by the qualities that are being presented and the pain that comes from it."

HANDS CLEAN: "My intention in writing this song was to get to a place where I could be as truthful and as honest as I possibly could be about certain relationships in my past. It's definitely not with the intention of seeking any sort of revenge for the person who is at the heart of the song that I'm singing about, but it was in my silencing myself to protect somebody else that I was ultimately completely abandoning myself. And any time I speak untruths in my life, and often-times I feel by not speaking the truth, by being silent, there's an element of an untruth in that. Withholding the truth sometimes can feel just as horrible as a lie to me. So as I get older, I think I want more and more to introduce the bliss of speaking transparently and truthfully and as honestly as I possibly can, knowing that the truth in this case is my truth only."

FLINCH: "I wrote 'Flinch' right after an experience I had in Canada where I almost ran into the person that I'm singing about and drove away. I was surprised at how many years had past but still I was responding to the situation as though I had been spending time with him two minutes earlier. I was kind of ashamed and a little embarrassed, but it was where I was at: just really being curious about how someone can have that much of an effect on me and attributing some of it to the fact that I was very, very young when I was in contact with him. I do believe that I will be able to get to a point where hearing his name or even running into him or hearing from him won't trigger me as much as it did and still does. I don't know when that day will come but I'm singing about it hopefully coming."

SO UNSEXY: "I was really trying to get into the underbelly of some of my insecurities and why little tiny things that are innocuous and inconsequential are translated in my own mind as to be taken so personally. And that has happened and still happens a lot, and while I think it's very human, it's exhausting. But as long as I have my own back, it's not as scary and it's not as horrifying."

PRECIOUS ILLUSIONS: "There's a lyric in the middle of the song that says, 'I want to decide between survival and bliss.' Basically I'm talking about the difference between really being alive and really embracing the reason why I'm here on this earth versus my just being asleep and sleep walking and accepting the status quo and accepting somewhat of a suffering mentality to being here. It really is my responsibility to distinguish the difference between the two and choose which one I want. It's so easy for me to want to not take responsibility for my life and relinquish it and look outside of myself for the answers that I know very well are within me. It's so scary to be silent and it's so scary to go within, until I do it. And once I'm doing it, I just wonder why I wasn't doing this all the time. So that decision to be fully alive is one that is preceded by some pretty intense decisions and some choices and responsibility-taking that at times can be very intimidating, again, before I do it."

THAT PARTICULAR TIME: "There were three distinct chapters in the relationship I was in when I wrote 'That Particular Time' that I really wanted to share. And I remember saying to him at the time--because we were talking about breaking up--'Love stays, love stays!' And he would kind of look at me like, huh? Then I remember stepping back from that and thinking, 'you know what? Love doesn't always stay, sometimes love leaves, sometimes love stays, sometimes love steps back and there are so many different forms that love can take in a relationship.' And it did, it took many different forms, and I was beating myself up for a long time for being in a relationship that just didn't feel right. But then I realized that it was a very loving act for me to stick it out for a minute or two to really kind of see whether there was something worth continuing to explore in a romantic way. And when I wrote that song and recorded it--because I wrote it and recorded it the same time--I just couldn't stop crying because I wrote it right at the time where the last verse was applicable to that moment. The other two verses were more written in retrospect, but I couldn't stop crying and the sweet engineers that I was working with, they just came into the room with a box of Kleenex and put it down and I said, 'I'll be back in a second.' And then that was it, that was the take. So it was a very emotional recording of that song. I really wanted to keep that vocal and keep as much of the energy of that song as I possibly could, and we wound up keeping a lot of it."

A MAN:

"And I have been shamed/And I have repented/I'm working my way toward our union mended/we don't fare well with endless reprimands/we don't do well with a life served as a sentence."
--ALANIS lyrics from the song

YOU OWE ME NOTHING IN RETURN: "The heart of that song is about the real definition of what love is. And what love is to me is wanting for someone that you love what they want for themselves. And at the same time not sacrificing my own life and my thoughts and my own beliefs. Supporting someone in their choices and at the same time being able to express what mine are, even if they differ, is the ultimate healthy, loving interaction. And there were a few lyrics that I changed in the song because it was kind of hinting at myself sacrificially, loving someone at the cost of myself, which is definitely not the case and really not the sentiment that I was trying to get across in the song. So, having changed some of the lines that were kind of hinting at that, the song finally addressed what I was trying to communicate, which is: the highest form of love is to really listen to someone and honor them and accept them and have my own version and definition of who it is that I am. And if they can both cohabitate or spend time together or feel compatible, great. And if they don't, that's okay too--there's still a lotta love--but maybe the form of the relationship would change."

SURRENDERING: "'Surrendering' is about the gratitude that I feel for someone tapping into the courage that it takes to allow themselves to be loved and to drop the defenses and fears--actually not drop the fears, but listen to the fears and still move through them. And how thrilling it is for me to be able to be let in in that kind of way. And how healing it is ultimately for both the person I'm singing about and myself. It's a very peaceful, joyful song and this was the last one that I wrote for the record."

UTOPIA: "From the second I wrote 'Utopia,' I knew that it was going to be the last song on the record. When I think of the album, I think about the questions and the conflicts and then the responses and the rebuttals and there's sort of this crazy little walk through this dynamic, this relationship. And at the end, it has the feminine and the masculine elements, whether that's taken literally or figuratively. For me, it's like they're sitting together in the same car and are finally driving down the same road in the same direction and there's a meeting of both worlds."

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