Alanis Morissette talks about sudden fame at 21, says it was a "rough time" to be a young woman in the industry

Nicknamed the 'Queen of Alt Rock Angst,' Canadian-American musician Alanis Morissette was catapulted to fame in the '90s. Widely popular for her unique confessional songwriting and her mezzo-soprano voice, the 51-year-old Alanis Morissette opened up to The Guardian in a recent interview about how it was for her to be a 21-year-old in the music industry. She confessed it was a "rough time" to be that young in this particular industry.

It was Rolling Stone that nicknamed Alanis Morissette the 'Queen of Alt Rock Angst,' mainly because of her impact on the alternative rock scene and her unique songwriting that explored themes like heartbreak, anger, and frustration. One of her biggest albums, Jagged Little Pill, released in 1995, brought her major attention and turned her into a rock star, gaining her worldwide fame.

Morissette was 21 at the time, and it was surely difficult for her to navigate the music industry at that age and also deal with fame. Besides being a well-established musician, Alanis is also an actress who has appeared in a bunch of movies. During her interview with The Guardian, Alanis, while talking about her time in the music industry as a young woman who had just gained major popularity, said:

"There was no one to hide behind."

She went ahead and continued:

"What I found in terms of the lovely patriarchy, was that at that time if men couldn’t f*ck me, they didn’t know what to do with me."

Alanis Morissette claims she identifies as 'highly sensitive' and calls herself an empath

The You Oughta Know hitmaker Morissette, while she identifies as 'highly sensitive' and someone who considers herself an empath, continued struggling as a young woman, even after winning four Grammy awards. As she talked about her fame at that age, Alanis Morissette also mentioned and discussed the '90s trend of unnecessarily hyper-sexualizing women. She added:

"I have an anxious, depressive tendency. Those who are sensitive are much more susceptible to their environmental information."

Morissette went ahead and said:

"If you put a highly sensitive person in an environment where they’re browbeaten or reduced, they’ll basically want to kill themselves. It’s the worst. If you put a highly sensitive person in an environment where they’re supported, championed and listened to, they thrive."

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As she opened up to The Guardian about her time as a famous young woman in the music industry, in her documentary Jagged, which was released in 2021, Alanis Morissette revealed that she had been a victim of statutory rape while she was growing up as a teenager. Morissette said:

"I just thought it was my fault because almost every single person that I would work with, there'd be some turning point where the camera would go Dutch angle. I'd just wait for it, like, okay, this won't happen in the first week for this one, but it'll happen. Sure enough, it would, and it would either end the relationship or then there'd be some big secret that we'd keep forever."

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