Alanis Morissette made a bold debut with her 1995 single "You Oughta Know," but she's been
somewhat absent from the public eye in the last few years.
Here's what she's been up to.
While the identity of the bad boyfriend who inspired Morissette's "You Oughta Know" remains
a secret, there are some likely candidates.
Dave Coulier, aka Joey Gladstone on Full House, dated Morissette in the early '90s, and he
thought the song was about him because of the lyric "I hate to bug you in the middle
of dinner."
In 2013, he told HuffPost Live that after they'd broken up, Morissette called and he
said,
"Hey, you know, I'm right in the middle of dinner.
Can I just call you right back?"
On a 2014 episode of Watch What Happens Live, Coulier's Full House co-star Bob Saget lent
some weight to this theory.
"You have to know this, I was at his house and he said, 'Alanis just hung up on me and
said sorry for calling you during dinner.'
I was at his house when she said that to him."
Rumors have also swirled around some of Morissette's other former flames, including hockey player
Mike Peluso and actor Matt LeBlanc, who played the love interest in Morissette's "Walk Away"
video a few years before Friends came along.
But the complete answer to this mystery will probably die with Morissette.
As she told Access Hollywood,
"There's probably 12 other people who have told the whole world it's about them.
I'm not even going to corroborate any of it because they'll never know and I'll never
say."
The release of Jagged Little Pill in 1995 and the explosive popularity of the hit singles
it spawned meant that for a spell of about two years, nobody was bigger than Alanis Morissette.
But with that success came a great deal of scrutiny and criticism.
The singer took fame and success for exactly what it was then: a double-edged sword.
She told The Guardian in 2012,
"I think fame became exciting for me in the late '90s because I could actually use it
as a means to an end.
I could actually have it help me service my vocationfulness.
I could offer comfort and upliftment."
On the other hand, life became a living nightmare for her during Alanis-mania.
Morissette has said she suffers from PTSD from that time in her life.
And when you hear the sorts of things she was going through, that's not entirely surprising.
She also told The Guardian,
"It felt like every millisecond I was attempting to set a boundary and say no and people were
breaking into my hotel rooms and going through my suitcase and pulling my hair and jumping
on my car."
In 1999, Morissette agreed to endorse streaming music pioneer MP3.com, a company that record
labels later accused of illegally distributing copyrighted music for which it had not completely
secured the rights.
As part of her compensation package for promoting the site, MP3.com gave Morissette's management
company the chance to buy its stock at an attractive, bargain-basement rate of just
33 cents per share.
The singer spent a little over $100,000 to buy nearly 330,000 shares.
Just before MP3.com completely fell apart in 2000, Morissette sold off a huge chunk
of it for $1.2 million.
That means she grew her investment by nearly tenfold, making the "Ironic" singer a full-fledged
internet millionaire.
Unfortunately, Morissette lost any extra cash she earned during her quick turn as an MP3.com
investor, and then some.
In May 2016, she filed suit against Jonathan Schwartz and GSO Business Management, her
one-time business manager and his company.
Alleging breach of fiduciary duty, fraud, and negligence, she said that Schwartz stole
well over $4 million from her.
Morissette claims that Schwartz led her to believe that her finances were in spectacular
shape, but that in actuality he and GSO were draining her assets and leading her to, quote,
"financial ruin."
It began after Morissette fired Schwartz in March 2016 for his unresponsiveness to her
queries about financial matters, and his replacement discovered records of more than 100 cash transfers
from Morissette's accounts to Schwartz, totalling more than $4.7 million.
She didn't authorize or even know about those transfers.
Schwartz ultimately pleaded guilty to various financial crimes in 2017 and received a six-year
prison sentence.
He also issued a public apology to Morissette and other clients he wronged.
Alanis Morissette is a true pioneer.
While many other female singers before her made honest, emotionally driven music that
rocked, she did so for as wide an audience as possible.
Subsequent female singer-songwriters that have followed Morissette into music, baring
their souls along the way, owe a debt to her.
Taylor Swift is well aware that her career might not have been so wildly successful if
not for Morissette.
And she returned the favor at an August 2015 concert in Los Angeles, when she brought out
Morissette as a surprise guest.
They performed "You Oughta Know" together with Morissette taking lead and Swift doing
backup.
According to Jezebel's reporting, some fans just lost it for the special duet.
But many others, like those who weren't alive when Morissette hit the big time in 1995,
took out their phones mid-song to vent on Twitter about this random 40-something woman.
Some of them also just plain didn't know who Alanis Morissette was.
How's that for irony?
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