Modern Rock #1 Hits of 1995

fucked a teenager and then left her for someone his own age? "an older version of me" is a pretty striking reversal of the way this kind of thing usually plays out.

dude, you oughta know.

a friend of my wife used to ponder what the "cross-eyed bear that you gave to me" line was abuot

http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/imagebuzz/web03/2010/12/7/9/alanis-morissettes-cross-eyed-bear-7410-1291733575-7.jpg

<3 my mom used to asset that the old hymn was really a lovely children's song called "Gladly, the Cross-Eyed Bear"

is that really what she says, though - "it's not fair to deny me of the cross I bear"? thought I was done seething with hatred for Alanis years ago but Jesus fuckin Christ the absolute barrel-bottom most simpering weak-ass shitty-intonation navel-gazing funk-free smug-joke '95 post-Athens electric indie rock is better than that

i never paid attention to the lyrics because the sound was bad enough and you're all just ruining it more for me

Ha, OK, I do remember the odd pronunciation of "baby" and happy". (And yeah, I think it's "It's not fair to deny me of the cross I bear that you gave to me", which is pretty ridiculous when I think about it.)

2xposts

alanis/courtney love/jewel/etc really did ruin singing for a whole generation of white women

ok because I think you rule I dialed up this video on YouTube and it took literally 15 seconds before she said "I'm...hah...pee for you" which is just depressingly bad phrasing & before I could even finish registering my outrage she'd put the emphasis on the 2nd syllable of "baby." what a truly terrible singer, it's not like she's unique in this - the nineties was kind of the death of phrasing, but she's a shining example of how far you can go without knowing what really are the basics

also does she say "deny me of the cross I bear" or "deny me, oh, the cross I bear," that's terrible too either way

let me take a moment to talk about how you are 100% wrong here

The whole point of the first four lines is to communicate barely controlled, unhinged rage, which is why they start out clipped, staccato quarter notes with weird accents on the wrong syllables of the words. Once the words start flowing on the eighth notes, you notice the important syllable of each line is on the first whole step down, which is also gets a stress in the vocal line. Then, the dam really starts to burst in the pre-chorus with the muttered, rushed-sounding 16th notes tumbling over each other that open up into the howled chorus.

Every vocal inflection in that song reinforces the idea that the person singing it is really fucking pissed and slightly unbalanced, which also plays to the pathos of the situation (teen girl in a relationship with a much older dude who gets dumped penning a hate letter to her ex). This also fits in with the awkwardness of the lyrics, which veer from self-pitying purple prose (aforementioned cross line) to prosaic, straightforward venom ("Every time I scratch my nails down someone else's back I hope you feel it" oh btw this crazy person is going to be taking the fallout of this relationship out on everyone else she gets with; kudos exploitative dude).

Alanis has done some really stupid, shitty songs but "You Oughta Know" isn't one of them.

Has this come up yet?

http://brunching.com/alanislyrics.html

yeah "You Oughta Know" for all its faults did make a lot of her tics that seemed so dippy on later upbeat singles feel like part and parcel of that song's rage at the time

I'll admit that I'm not really that fussy about singers accenting normally unaccented syllables for the sake of music (e.g. Avril's "frustrated).

I guess I was just surprised that people found the pronunciation of "theatre" odd.

xpost to myself

I wrote an Alanis song! Thanks, Jer.

I feel miserable
Rice make me ill
I feel miserable
Forks tear at my foundations
I feel miserable
Spoons are dragging me down to the depths of misery
I want to die

Is it because of pinto beans that I feel this way?
With the yellow rays of misery pounding on my brain?
Or am I lost in tale of Keats, adrift far from home
I don't think so, I don't think so.

YPatrck Broke My Will to Live
YPatrck Broke My Will to Live
YPatrck Broke My Will to Live
I was getting better but then
YPatrck Broke My Will to Live

I feel miserable
Avocados rot the flesh from my bones
I feel miserable
Tomatoes defeat my purpose
I feel miserable
Garlic cloves are doing their best to impale my soul
I want to die

Is it because of pinto beans that I feel this way?
With the yellow rays of misery pounding on my brain?
Am I lost in tale of Keats, adrift far from home
I don't think so, I don't think so.

YPatrck Broke My Will to Live
YPatrck Broke My Will to Live
Oh God, Patrck Broke My Will to Live
I was getting better but then
YPatrck Broke My Will to Live

bitching about syllable emphasis in "You Oughta Know" makes about as much sense as bitching about syllable emphasis in the "O Fortuna" movement of Carmina Burana

i wrote an Alanis song from my son's perspective re: bath time

"Why"

Rubber duckies, shampoo, toy boat
Why God, Why?
Shampoo, towel, bath time
Why God, Why?

What have I done to deserve this red horror?
Surrounded on all sides with the Hell of bath time
Like a Dr. Seuss character, I'm wordy and alone
Why God, Why?

Drain plug, rubber duckies, water
Why God, Why?
Bath time, water, toy boat
Why God, Why?

What have I done to deserve this red disaster that is my life?
Surrounded on all sides with the Hell of bath time
Like a Dr. Seuss character, I'm wordy and alone
Why God, Why?

What have I done to deserve this red misery?
Surrounded on all sides with the Hell of bath time
Like a Dr. Seuss character, I'm wordy and alone
Why God, Why?

Why God, Why?
Why God, Why?
Why God, Why?
Why God, Why?

The whole point of the first four lines is to communicate barely controlled, unhinged rage

i lol'd

Every vocal inflection in that song reinforces the idea that the person singing it is really fucking pissed and slightly unbalanced

yeah, we part ways hard here - you're a considerably better singer than I am, but every vocal inflection in this song reinforces how badly written the lyric is & how the singer isn't smart enough to know what to do about that imo. it doesn't convey pissed & unbalance to me - it conveys "maybe if I sell this as pissed & unbalanced by using rookie garbage technique like putting the wrong stress on the -by in 'baby,' that'll compensate for what a shitshow this is"

(Btw, thanks, J0hn! You rule too!)

not be all 'lol sheeple' but a lot of the millions of people who flocked to alanis when that song came out are probably just as dumb and musically/gramatically ignorant as her

the nineties was kind of the death of phrasing

And the advent of all vowels sounding like a fucked-up schwa.

but also the cross line isn't "purple prose" - it's literally senseless, and it'd be disingenuous to say "she's so pissed she's throwing in extra prepositions." She's just singing a very badly written line. I can't deny you of anything. I deny you a things directly: deny you the cross, deny you a sandwich, deny you a new Alanis Morissette record. If I try to deny you of a sandwich you will say, "Fuck off dude I'm going to eat of this sandwich" and you'll still be righter than me

ah the affective fallacy!

i was not a happy camper in 1995 and all these songs are a small but important fraction of the reason

fwiw i don't think she's saying "deny me of" but don't know what the consensus is on that line

so basically in summation, you hate the song and don't actually give a flying fuck about why people might like it

it's definitely "deny me of the cross i bear that you gave to me" which is truly amazing construction

courtney love does not deserve to be lumped in with alanis and jewel as a singer

all these years later it is still mysterious and amazing that anybody likes alanis morissette

the U2 song is all right; secretly the most improved imo is "name", haha

but really this is a dire lineup

i don't dislike courtney's singing but it has had a negative influence imo

so basically in summation, you hate the song and don't actually give a flying fuck about why people might like it

no, I found your defensio really interesting and good, I just don't buy it as an explanation of what's going on - I can be interested in what you're saying and still disagree ffs! tho yeah my visceral "ugh, this" to this song is unlikely to be swayed by any argument

wait FLEA is playing bass on you oughta know?

yes. which shouldn't surprise me so much because that little "doot-doo-doo-doo" after the first chorus is my favorite part of the song.

so until today i had never listened to this song on anything other than like a car stereo or computer speakers and i was like "oh wow theres some cool stuff going on w/the bass there" and off to wikipedia and now i'm like how did i never know that?

The guys playing behind her in the video look like JC Penny models or something.

it's a song i'm v. ambivalent towards; i think the first half of the chorus bails out everything else.

for a long time i thought "bear" was "baby" and the song was in part about getting knocked up

cross-eyed baby you gave to me?

yeah, what do you want i was 11 in 1995

cross-eyed babies on some serious 1995 shit. it's cool.

lol otm

anyway alanis always has a place in my heart for "uninvited" from her unplugged album, that shit is sick

Y'all, particularly DJP's long post (which i feel proud of myself for identifying as DJP two sentences in) are making me want to swing around and defend "You Oughta Know," don't really get the level of vitriol towards it. It's not my favorite thing on the album but it's well-delivered and effective post-breakup spleen-rock that connected with an audience convincingly and had some really memorable passages, yes partly because they were delivered in such a nonconventional (some would say "bad") way, but also because there were striking turns of phrase that were in fact pretty boundary-pushing for radio-oriented rock at the time. By the standards of indie/college stuff this is not a groundbreaking song, but by the standards of "we're trying really hard to have a giant hit record here" it's pretty gutsy to throw "would she go down on you in a theater" in the face of alt-rock's lingering macho bullshit. Amos or Phair it ain't (though the vocal tics make a lot of sense as an attempt to absorb the former) but it's not totally stupid.

If I don't go out of my way to hear it today it's because other aspects of it grate increasingly over time - - the wordless bridge in particular carried affective connotations of angst and the saturated sweep of overexposed wastelands at the time but the tactic has been so beaten into the ground that it just doesn't deliver anymore. On the other hand, Ballard's production generally kind of straddles the line between grunge and the busy, shimmery corporate folk-pop sound of the rest of the record (where I think it's pretty solid), meaning that the sound often seems insufficiently thick - - you sort of look around wondering "where'd the rhythm guitar go?" and you're left with clattering but muffled drums, echoing spooky leads (also muffled), and a hapless Flea. Not to say it should have been more "by the numbers" but I'd love to hear it done more in the style of, I dunno...Bush. Or L7 or Nirvana for that matter.

Singing this at karaoke once got me laid, although according to the girl my dancing had more to do with it but I still have a soft spot for the song. Stand by my Silverchair vote though.

A Hapless Flea is the name of my dog.

fwiw btw, "You Learn" is my favorite off this, closely followed by "All I Really Want" and "Hand In My Pocket," so just to be clear I am not hating on Ballard's radio-ready shine, just saying "You Oughta Know" is an awkward hybrid, although I could also buy somebody saying that's what's nice about it, it doesn't sound like a totally generic '94/95 rock radio song.

I like "Hand Over Feet" for the way her voice plays off the guitar licks. On the other hand the vocal on "All I Really Want" is grossgrossgross

*Head Over Feet, heh

"Hand over the feet and nobody gets hurt!"

Singing this at karaoke once got me laid, although according to the girl my dancing had more to do with it but I still have a soft spot for the song.

― Doctor Casino, Thursday, May 24, 2012 1:11 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

really cracking up trying to picture a dude singing YOK at karaoke while dancing seductively

A Hapless Flea is the name of my dog.

yo rong thread

xp Now I know how badly clouded my judgement is by the hype around a film I didn't see 17 years ago I wish I could take back my vote.