You Oughta Know

This is the last old school Christmas in the music business. Never again will you see the media industrial complex rallying around the product of a superstar trying to gin up fourth quarter revenue. Because it's no longer about sales, but streams. Did you see Jason Aldean quietly caved and put his music back on Spotify? It's just a matter of time before the Beatles and Taylor Swift are there too, because sales are shrinking to a de minimis proportion of exposure, never mind revenue. You have to be where the action is. And now the action in the music business is in the long term, a hit is something people listen to, not that which they buy, and they're not necessarily the same thing.

But the book business has not learned this lesson. This fall has been inundated with the release of celebrity tomes, as if we care about the lives of everybody from Cindy Crawford to Beverly Johnson to David Spade. This is the last dash for cash, when you've got no projects in the pipeline, when there's a lull in your career, when you're trying to keep yourself in the public eye. And as Leah Remini said, no one on TV will ask hard questions, because it's sell, sell, sell all the time.

I heard her say this on Howard Stern, where I heard all of the above personages hyping their books. And it was somewhat interesting, but these hacks have no center, there's no there there, and then I heard "You Oughta Know."

That's right, Alanis Morissette is on the sales trail too, it's the twentieth anniversary of "Jagged Little Pill," it's her moment to illustrate she's still relevant, when the truth is anything but. She had that album and "Uninvited" and then she was done, overwhelmed by her initial success.

And we could say that's sad.

Yet unlike so many musicians, Alanis is intelligent. But she exudes too much touchy-feely sentiment, and then she opens her pipes and sings "You Oughta Know."

It was different in 1995, most people had never heard of the internet, radio still ruled, you could dominate the public conversation if you were good enough, and Alanis was. Like Nirvana nearly half a decade before, Alanis went from obscurity to ubiquity in an instant, and it was all about "You Oughta Know".

"I want you to know, that I'm happy for you
I wish nothing but the best for you both"

She's being facetious, putting up a good front. Just a good girl doing the right thing. And then...

"An older version of me
Is she perverted like me
Would she go down on you in a theatre"

Probably the most famous lyric of the nineties. We were shocked, BJ's were not part of public conversation. As for doing it in a public place, all of us playing the home game thought...THAT NEVER HAPPENED TO ME! Who is this chick?

"You seem very well, things look peaceful
I'm not quite as well, I thought you should know"

Honesty, it's absent from the landscape. While the rabble-rousers spew hate online those with a profile love everybody and everything, they're totally together...do you know anybody like this? No one admits fault, no one is guilty, no one is depressed, unless it's part of their world domination program. How do you expect people to relate?

They don't.

That's why music is in the dumper. Oh sure, plenty of people listen, but it doesn't resonate in quite the same way, it's lost the je ne sais quoi that makes it the hottest artistic medium. And then you hear something like the live performance of "You Oughta Know" on yesterday's Stern show.

"Well, I'm here to remind you"

That I was genius back then and I still am. That unlike the auto-tuned celebs I had the pipes and still do. In an era where even Mariah Carey struggles live we expect little from faded icons, but then Alanis Morissette hits us right between the eyes and we remember the revelation she once was.

"Did you forget about me Mr. Duplicity"

You needed a dictionary to make sense of the lyrics. Instead of dumbing down, Alanis was educating.

"And every time you speak her name
Does she know how you told me you'd hold me
Until you died, til you died"

That's what they don't tell you, how painful it will be when you see them with someone else, when everything you had between you is shredded. How do you make sense of all this? Does time heal all wounds? Did the original words mean that little? And will time wound all heels?

"'cause the joke that you laid on the bed that was me
And I'm not gonna fade"

This is not Glenn Close in "Fatal Attraction," this is no joke, no crazy broad painted broadly that we can instantly dismiss, rather this is me and you, and we're PISSED!

It's happened to all of us. Unless you married your first date. Unless you took no risks or didn't date at all. Things are going along swimmingly, you might even be married, but then your beloved does a one-eighty and not only dumps you but replaces you, how do you make sense of all that?

You can't!

So you put on a record and look for the connection.

And that's what Alanis was selling.

When you broke the shrinkwrap, you found out it wasn't only "You Oughta Know," the opening cut "All I Really Want" was just as intense, angry and honest. Everybody playing the home game, alone in their abode, could relate, they'd found their icon.

"And what I wouldn't give to find a soulmate
Someone else to catch this drift
And what I wouldn't give to meet a kindred"

That's the essence of existence, the communication with like-minded people, not the dollars in your bank account. You're open, you're honest, but you just can't connect, you just can't find your tribe, never mind that special someone. You believe it's gonna come, but then it doesn't. Just like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow you were planning on acquiring evaporated when the 1% laughed in your face and claimed you just weren't working hard enough. Used to be artists pushed back, back before Jay Z took Samsung's money and thought he won. If you aren't pushing against the corporate industrial complex your words are not worth listening to.

And as downbeat and intense as "You Oughta Know" and "All I Really Want" were, that's how upbeat and hopeful "Hand In Pocket" was...because no matter how bad life is, there are their moments when it's fine, fine, fine.

And Alanis told Howard that she didn't love "Ironic" because Glen Ballard cowrote the lyrics, she had an urge to make her own statement, she wanted it to be her autobiography and just hers.

And that's what makes "You Oughta Know" so great. There's no committee involved, there's there there, it became a gargantuan success because it was exactly what we were looking for, something made for its own excellence, pandering never came into the equation.

Kind of like HBO.

That's why that outlet is so vaunted, it doesn't meddle, it sets the artists free, something the music business did for decades, until there became too much money involved, until the execs thought they were smarter and more important than the artists.

I want you to know that when I heard Alanis Morissette sing "You Oughta Know" on Howard Stern's Sirius XM show I was stopped in my tracks, tears came to my eyes, because this was and still is the experience I'm looking for, the truth, straight from the heart.

You oughta know.

"Alanis Morissette Performs 'You Oughta Know' On The Howard Stern Show": http://bit.ly/1Ngfqpq


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