Thus started a few months of my flying back and forth from Canada to L.A., and each time I was with Glen in his studio, the ante was upped. “Really!?” he half-laughed in his kind, Southern way.
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Glen’s presence with me had no agenda… This presence and this lack of projecting onto me “what I should be” was the ultimate freedom and support I needed to crack open. Where I let up, Glen would dive in where he would linger with a harmonic idea, I would jump on it like I would a wave with my surfboard and imply a breathless “come with me!” This continued for many minutes, and when the dust and confetti of giddiness cleared, we were left with a song called “ The Bottom Line.” Apt for how I knew in my soul what I wanted.
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The music and lyrics flowed quickly, and there was an aikido to our working together. And most importantly to my deeply sensual and sensitive self and nose: everything SMELLED GOOD.Īfter exchanging pleasantries and realizing the several areas of compatibility we had, we decided to go into the studio and write. I had a good feeling.Ī couple of days later, I walk into Glen Ballard’s studio in Encino, and his space is impeccable and glowing with a golden hue. I had been writing with so many kind peeps that it became an adventure, these meetings, with the pilot light of knowing I wouldn’t stop until who I WAS was being honored, not who the person sitting across from me WANTED me to be - still burning brightly and steadfastly within my chest. I have NO idea if you will hit it off creatively, you might not even write one song, but I DO know that the both of you will really like each other.” “Really?” I say while eating spaghetti (this is long before carbs were shunned in L.A. “There is someone I want you to meet,” Kurt says to me, his blue eyes sparkling like he knew what I was getting for my birthday, and kinda loved that I had no idea. I had not a penny to my name, but I had enough certainty and passion in me to crush worlds. But I knew in my stomach within moments (not unlike when you are on a blind date) that my artist had not found her “home.” That is, until Kurt Denny, who was representing me at MCA publishing at the time, sat with me for dinner one night. All of them talented in unique ways, all of them compelling, and some of them funny as eff. I worked with countless collaborators in Canada and, eventually, Los Angeles. In my mouse-infested apartment, I promised myself that I WOULD NOT STOP until I was in a room with someone whose very interaction with me begged the question: “Who ARE you, Alanis?” I wasn’t going to stop until I listened back to songs I had written and co-written, and truly felt that this entire record was the PERFECT snapshot of what was going on for me.
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And for the outlet that it created for me. Having written my first songs at 9 years old, and produced them at 10 and 11, and having formed my own record company (for the fact that no one would sign a 10-year-old in 1985)…I knew that this journey of art-making would be a long one, for how RIGHT it felt. (I did - and do - like, very much, so many of the people I had been working with and giggling with for a handful of my tender teen years.) But this anticipated despair never came. The “pain of being dumped.” The realization that my current “team” was not going on this evolution ride with me, and that somehow that meant I was worthless, abandoned, alone. So when I was informed that I was a “free agent,” I waited for the despair. In fact, NOT doing it seemed like certain death to me. But nothing about evolving publicly and expressing my FULL life seemed dangerous. “Brand” changing (and this was before this crass yet effective word was even tossed around) was dangerous business.
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This “pushing for more”…by wanting to participate in the writing more, in the non-rhyming lyrics, in the full real-time expression of ME was not something anyone seemed to be interested in at the time. Perhaps my burgeoning sexuality and coming-of-age were being made evident through the imagery in videos I started to shoot - nothing wildly gratuitous, but an indication of the sorts of places I wanted to further explore in my art, in my music. I wasn’t aware that I was writing my songs and expressing myself to make sure my manager was happy. But my growing desire to write in the no-holds-barred way that I now dwell in was being discouraged…under the guise that “no one wants to hear this from you, not the least of whom is your manager.” Oh. Certainly I had snuck some autobiographical shares in some of the lyrics, here and there. There had been much said about my evolving (catapulting?) out of what I had been known for…pop. I remember getting the news that I was being dropped from MCA Records in Canada.