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9. Alanis Morissette: ‘You Oughta Know’, on Jagged Little Pill: Maverick 9362 45901 2.

Susan McClary, in her study of Madonna’s ‘Living to Tell’, suggests that the structures and musical forms of expression might not be in themselves gendered, but that the things Madonna does with them are decidedly feminine.
 

Liz Evan’s’ quest was much more general. She writes::
 

And Charlotte Greig is unequivocal:
 

But much more considered and carefully argued is Lucy Green’s ‘Music, Gender, Education’. In a deeply probing and extensively researched book she explores many of the issues pertinent to gendered musical meaning in popular music, jazz, classical and ‘art’ music and more. Her conclusions are not simple. She makes careful distinctions between the different contexts in which singing takes place. Similarly, she makes distinctions between the woman as composer and the woman as performer of music. She argues that the element of sexual display cannot be ignored from any understanding of the music, and that such display conforms to conventional, patriarchal understandings of sexuality. She writes:
 

This chapter concentrates on a specific and identifiable voice within women’s rock music - the song of the injured party, the song of the victim. The aim of the study is to discover if there are any musical stylistic constants that permeate the music of several artists who regularly produce victim-songs. Although there are countless hymns to the pain of love, the grief of the rejected and the anger of the deceived, in the last fifteen years the song of the woman-as-victim has flourished as a particular genre. This roughly coincides with the increasing public awareness of the feminism of the middle eighties. These songs are, in a way, explorations of the pain of heterosexual relationships viewed through the disclosing lens of the women’s movement. The rationale for this study is obvious, because here, if anywhere in contemporary pop, is a musical discourse which is articulated by women and about men. The fans of Tori Amos, Sinead O’ Connor, Polly Jean Harvey and Alanis Morissette are predominantly women. Here, if anywhere, might be the vital essence of something female - something within the music that is there because the author is female. Something to interest the questors.

The songs are written in the first person, and, by definition, the lyrics of victim-songs are about men. Sometimes they are addressed to the particular men, and at other times to a kind of genderless confessional. But the confessional, whether in a general sense or in a specifically Roman Catholic sense, is crucial to the function, and to the psychology of the songs. The singer may or may not want forgiveness, she may or may not feel implicated in the guilt of the dysfunctional relationship, but she does want release from suffering. In this way, the confessional is cathartic. Keith Negus writes of Sinead O’Connor:
 

However the very frequent reference to Roman Catholicism in this body of work prompts the conclusion that something quite focused and specifically relating to Roman Catholicism underpins the psychological dynamic of the songs. Tori Amos’ song ‘Crucify’ (as if the name didn’t say it all) is beset with lurid religious imagery oddly mixed with racy sexual biography.
 

And later, in ‘Precious Things’ the metaphor of blood ‘washing away’ sin is turned on its head:
 

Sinead O’Connor has made her opposition to the hierarchy of Roman Catholicism widely public; her lyrics are liberally peppered with references and allusions to the church, to priests and to the wonderful theatre of Roman Catholicism. Alanis Morissette explores the theme in ‘Forgiven’, stressing one of the positive aspects of religious guilt:
 

Indeed, the Roman Catholic Church has had a pervasive influence on women singer-songwriters. If, for a moment, we look beyond the confines of the woman-as-victim, a list of the artists who admit at one time or other to the influence of Roman Catholicism is disproportionately large to the influence of the church in Western society in general. Such a list would include Tori Amos, Sinead O’Connor, Alanis Morissette, Siobhan Fahey, Marianne Faithfull, Dolores O’Riordan, Madonna and more. There seems to be a specifically gendered context to Roman Catholicism. It does not speak equivocally to both men and women. Here, then, is a single point of departure: the confessional address functions in different ways for men and women respectively.

This study will focus on Alanis Morissette’s song ‘You Oughta Know’ - which is a vitriolic song addressed to man who has abandoned the singer in favour of a new relationship. The examination of songs of other singers where the woman (as singer-songwriter) declares herself a victim is useful because all the songs have a similar intention. It is tempting to see to what extent there exist common strategies within the composition of the songs, common dispositions of musical material and any other similarities that, when combined, are distinctive and recognisable. Once isolated, it will be seen that these musical formulations are not unique to the genre - indeed, they are part-and-parcel of the common language of commercial pop music - but when articulated by a woman in extremis, and when brought together in the victim

-song, these formulations assume a specific and immediately recognisable function.

Anger permeates such songs. Tori Amos’ ‘Precious Things’ and Alanis Morissette’s ‘You Oughta Know’ are certainly good examples of songs in which bitterness bubbles beneath the surface at the beginning of the song, and then erupts powerfully at the chorus. P.J.Harvey, however, has perfected the trick of lulling the listener, and by extension, the person to whom the song is addressed, into a false sense of security. The beginning of ‘Rid of Me’ seethes quietly. P.J.Harvey cajoles her lover to stay:
 

However, this invitation is not all that it seems to be. As the chorus approaches, the mood of the song changes radically. The anger which was barely contained explodes uncompromisingly. P.J.Harvey becomes a dangerous woman.
 

P.J.Harvey threatens to ‘twist your head off, see’. Tori Amos visualises being ‘ripped to pieces’ (‘Little Earthquakes’), and Alanis Morissette wants to ‘kill the killer’ (‘All I really want’). The mythic stereotype of the woman who can do great damage to a man (Medea, Clytemnestra, Electra) is given a further twist here by the outspoken physicality of the threat. They resemble harpies - mythic predatory birds with women’s faces - both in their danger to men and in their otherness. You can’t argue with a bird; the terror of Hitchcock’s The Birds lay in their lack of human reason or capability of dialogue. This explosion of anger at the chorus of the song becomes a dynamic and formal musical characteristic underlining the rage of the victim.

A frequent characteristic of the musical accompaniments to the verses in victim-songs is a simple two- or three-chord repetitive sequence. In Sinead O’Connor’s ‘You cause so much sorrow’ the simple two-chord alternating pattern suggests an obsessive preoccupation with the subject matter: it suggests a brooding intensity which is controlled by the to and fro oscillation of the accompaniment. And of Sinead O’Connor’s ‘Three Babies’, Keith Negus remarks:
 

The addressee of the lyric of ‘Three Babies’ is still the absent lover ( " ...each of these / my babies / have brought you closer to me [...] and it’s ‘cos you’ve thrilled me / silenced me / stilled me / proved things I never believed / the face on you / the smell of you / will always be with me"), although the singer could easily be imagined in the act of singing a lullaby to the babies whilst preoccupied with thoughts about the absent lover. In this way, the alternating repetitive chordal accompaniment can effectively underpin the fixation on the lover, and the sleep inducing mesmerism of the lullaby. The musical formulations under scrutiny here are basic and fundamental to popular music, and no convincing case could be made to suggest that they are gendered expressions. However, our understanding of them when heard in the context of a song addressed to both lover and babies is gendered. Lucy Green remarks:
 

P.J.Harvey’s accompaniments similarly are made up of simple chordal alternations. In ‘Rid of Me’ the oscillating pattern is Cm-Am-Cm-Am etc.: In ‘Rub ‘til it bleeds’ the pattern in C7-Bbsus-C7-Bbsus. These harmonies seem to derive from guitar based figurations, and suggest that the songs are composed with the guitar. In a formal way, these songs resemble the ‘folk songs’ of Dylan in that the accompaniments very clearly support the words which are the primary focus of the songs. The melodies are part improvised and highly idiosyncratic. This is formula which has occupied a central position in the iconography of popular music, used primarily to articulate the plight of oppressed and suffering people. In adopting this formula for her songs, P.J.Harvey announces herself as victim.

Tori Amos uses the formula in a different way. ‘Crucify’, ‘Tear in your Hand’ and ‘Precious Things’ are all examples of simple oscillating chordal accompaniments, but, as an accomplished pianist, she uses the piano in distinctive ways. The impeccable credentials of the guitar cannot so easily be claimed for the piano which has not had such a clearly delineated association with folk music. However, Tori Amos’ accompaniments, with their ‘sus-chord’ seconds and fourths and passing notes strongly suggest the American country tradition. (The way that the piano features in American country music is arguably derived from the highly sophisticated banjo style with its ‘perpetuum mobile’ 8th notes and complex inner voices.) In triggering the association of country music, Tori Amos is able to cast herself in a role alongside the ‘bruised-but-surviving’ deep Southern belle, perhaps as exemplified by Tammy Wynette or Dolly Parton. In this musical tradition, women survivors have enormous dignity and are powerful cultural icons

The oscillating chordal accompaniment, then, can suggest various shades of meaning depending on the context and precise musical delivery. It can resemble a lullaby, it can remind us of the authenticity of the folk movement with its essential alignment with the underdog, and it can tap into the reverence for the music of the deep South. However this feature is arrived at, the freely improvised vocal style over an oscillating chordal accompaniment exaggerates the brooding or, in some instances, obsessive quality of the lyrics, as if the singer, in refusing to move beyond the orbit of two or three related chords, cannot progress beyond a neurotic sticking point in her imagination. Only in songs where there is a chorus, which effectively refocuses the song from the specific to the general can the obsessive cycle be broken.

These two musical characteristics of songs in which women adopt the role of victim are not exclusive: choruses that explode in anger and obsessive accompaniments occur everywhere in music, but used in this gendered context, they assume a gendered meaning. Yodelling, however, is different.

Sinead, Tori, Alanis and Polly Jean all slip effortlessly between chest-voice and head-voice (yodelling). They do it in their own distinctive ways. Keith Negus writes of Sinead O’Connor:
 

It is important to realise that ‘yodelling’, although achieved by a similar physiological process in men and women, is interpreted very differently. The Tyrolean yodel - the rapid interchange between the developed male bass or baritone range and the falsetto head-voice - has none of the associations encountered in female singer-songwriters. In women, the interchange is between chest-voice and head-voice. What’s the difference? Does it matter?

The difference between women’s chest- and head-voice singing is evidenced in the distinction between the choral traditions of Western Europe and America respectively. American choirs, from schoolkid onward, sound different to Western European choirs. The European choir, historically, has evolved within the Christian tradition where the praises of a ‘sky-cult’ god were sung in head-voice register. The American tradition, whether it derives from the Africanisms of blues and jazz, or from the street credible anthems of vaudeville and 42nd street, is popularist, vernacular and chest-voice oriented. The chest-voice does not feature anywhere in the European art tradition; in the secular and the sacred traditions of Western Europe, the chest-voice is considered vulgar and coarse. The head-voice does feature in the various American traditions, especially when the intention is to signify something ‘refined’, ‘childlike’, or when singing music from the European repertoire. However, these two registers, the head- and the chest-voice, both inhabit women’s pop music and when a singer makes a pointed and deliberate stylistic feature of changing between registers, something of the respective semantic ‘etymologies’ of the two voices is touched upon. We hear the head-voice as unthreatening and contemplative (coming from a gentrified or Christian tradition), and we hear the chest-voice as assertive, brash and potentially threatening (coming from a vernacular tradition).

So much for the origins of the styles: when P.J.Harvey, Sinead O’Connor, Tori Amos and Alanis Morissette use this distinctive yodel, what does it mean? How is it interpreted by the listener? Flipping freely between the voice of control and the voice of vulnerability perfectly underlines the politics of victim-songs. The freedom and ease with which this is done suggests a kind of instability within the personae of the singers; they do not occupy a static position. We gather that they are powerless to adopt the consistent chest-voice of control of an Annie Lennox or Madonna. From time to time the mask slips and they reveal themselves as vulnerable and child-like. In this respect, P.J.Harvey is extreme. She goes off the rails. Musically her madness is represented by a voice which careens about seemingly out of control, as if going off the rails in the psychological sense can be suggested by ignoring the accepted conventions of harmonic or melodic structure. There are weighty implications here. Susan McClary, a feminist musicologist, has attempted to establish that the ‘inherited’ rules of musical construction in the West are in themselves gendered because they are the musical expressions of a male-dominated bourgeois culture. This being the case, she argues, it is instructive to look at musical depictions of women who set themselves at variance with male hegemony. Of Schoenberg’s ‘Erwartung’, a dramatic sequence of songs in which a progressively more unstable madwoman waits for the arrival of the husband she has murdered, McClary says the following:
 

McClary is making a point here that has implications beyond the specific instance of Schoenberg. All victim-songs are songs about men who, in some sense or other, are absent. In many of the songs, the women express murderous intentions. McClary’s suggestion that the accepted rules of music in some way encode the social norms of a male dominated culture, and that the absence of them marks a departure from these cultural norms into a kind of feminised freedom is a plausible and instructive interpretation of P.J.Harvey’s vocalised instabilities.

Any categorisation of an artist’s work is unsatisfactory because any particular artist produces a range of work which refuses sit comfortably in the straightjacket of the chosen categorisation. But the process of identifying, labelling and scrutinising is a necessary one if we wish to understand what we confront. The trick is to remember that all categories have exceptions, and the lines of demarcation are arbitrary. All the sets have fuzzy edges.

Liz Phair constructs songs just like the victim-women. Like Sinead, she uses a phaser to modify her voice, and like all victim-singers, she improvises freely over fairly simple oscillating chords. All her songs are ‘first person singular’, and usually addressed to men. But despite all of these formal similarities, she evades the stereotype of victim; her songs are celebratory and sometimes funny. She has perspective on her situation which, in itself, distances her from the angst-ridden self-absorption of the victim-women. Diamanda Galas, too, has developed the portrayal of madwomen into a species of post-punk music theatre. Her obsessions cover some of the same ground as the victim-women - especially in respect of the rich religious symbolism afforded by the more theatrical rituals of the church - but somehow she remains in control. Galas is a singer, actress, composer and performance artist who manipulates the audience with conscious artistry. In contrast to this measured control, P.J.Harvey offers us a stylised autobiography set loosely to music, Sinead O’Connor seems sometimes involved in the most public of confessional therapies, and Tori Amos romanticises herself albeit with great artistry and skill. Which leads, finally, to Alanis Morissette.

In ‘You Oughta Know’, Alanis adopts the role of a rejected and bruised woman whose emotional energy turns to fire and vitriol at the thought of her former partner installed with a new woman. It’s a familiar situation. Indeed, the appeal and power of Alanis’ lyrics stem from her ability to transform the pathos and banality of these everyday events into punchy and effective pop songs.

It is the archetypal victim-song. It starts at a low level of intensity - "I want to know that I’m happy for you / I wish nothing but the best for you both". Alanis’ barely whispered words are accompanied mainly by a snare drum. The ominous, militaristic rhythm suggests the ultimate fateful demise of the former lover. The fateful inference here is entirely appropriate: Alanis has come back "in the middle of dinner" rather like Don Giovanni’s guest, to raise hell, to take him up on his word, to ensure that he doesn’t escape scot-free.

The chordal accompaniment for all the verse section consists of two alternating chords, F#minor and B, all over a pedal F#. Although at the opening there is barely enough pitched music to perceive chordal harmony in the piece, as the chorus approaches the harmony becomes thicker, and there is a contrapuntal weave between the bass and inner parts, all within the confines of the two chords. The harmonic element in the accompaniment is fixed on these two closely related chords ... nothing is going to shift Alanis from her trajectory: any extra chordal interest or harmonic excursions would admit other parameters into her argument, which would weaken it by suggesting the possibility of reason, or the existence of another point-of-view. Alanis wants none of that. In terms of musical pitch, the verse starts slowly, quietly, and the contour of the melody goes downward. As the verse progresses, the lyrics become more breathless, and gradually the pitch rises. When the chorus explodes - "And I’m here to remind you / of the mess you left when you went away / It’s not fair to deny me / of the cross I bear that you gave to me / You, you, you oughta know" - it is with the highest pitch in the music so far, and the F#minor is swept away by the here-and-now of F#major.

9.1.

(click the diagram for a better image)

Alanis makes the harmonic logic of the song support the lyrical meaning. The syllable ‘here’ hits the newly raised third, making the modal change abundantly clear, and the chorus lays aside the routine of the two-chord oscillation in favour of a brighter, more optimistic four-chord sequence for the chorus, signifying, perhaps that the two-chord oscillation represents what has happened - the stuff of the past - whereas the vitality and energy of the F#major chorus, with its lyrical emphasis on the here-an-now seems to represent the present, the reality of what we’re left with.

A visit to an Alanis web-site will confirm that her fans love her voice. There is something in the timbre and texture of the voice that lends conviction and drama to the songs. In this song, her voice is pained. The characteristic victim-song yodel is there, but transformed into stylised crying. She’s at the brink of tears, and this is evidence by the unsteadiness of the voice. This dramatically underlines the rage of the lyric, and has become a feature of Alanis’ style.

‘You Oughta Know’ departs from the stereotype of the lonely woman at the microphone, isolated actually and metaphorically from means of musical support. Jagged Little Pill is a highly produced album in which Alanis’ decidedly feminist projections are supported by a cast of male musicians. The musical result, consequently, departs significantly from the soloistic outpourings of Sinead O’Connor, Tori Amos and other, even when they are assisted by other musicians. Jagged Little Pill is a produced album in every sense. A particularly distinctive flavour is given to ‘You Oughta Know’ by Flea’s bass playing (he only plays on this track on the album), with a fretless technique that resembles Jaco Pastorius in inventiveness and sound. Here is an interesting conundrum: if Alanis Morissette is the author of the music as a whole, does the inclusion of elements by male supporting musicians confuse and confound any inquiry into gendered sound? The example, cited above, of Flea’s bass playing might serve to illustrate the point, but the paradox applies equally to other members of her outfit, including co-songwriter Glen Ballard. Flea’s bass playing might be described as:
 

All of the above are suggested in some way by the bass. Only some of these support the purpose and intention of the song as a whole. It is irrelevant that Flea sounds like Jaco, since many Alanis fans have never heard of Jaco and couldn’t care less. Similarly, it’s hard to make much connection between 70’s reggae and ‘You Oughta Know’, so that’s another redundant attribute. But all of those qualities that could conceivably illuminate the drama a Alanis bringing the bad news to her erstwhile lover will feature prominently in the map of meaning of ‘You Oughta Know’. For instance, the agility and athleticism of the bass playing will suggest that Alanis is ‘hopping mad’, that her rage is fuelled by a physical energy. If the tactile experience of playing the bass like Flea sounds like ‘fun’, then the ‘fun’ transfers into the on-stage drama: we conclude that Alanis is positively deriving some satisfaction from the persecution of her man. Although these musical formulations have been assembled so that they accompany and underpin a feminist statement, they cannot be judged to be, of themselves, gendered or feminist since they exist elsewhere.

If, as has been seen, the music of victim-songs uses very much the musical materials that exist elsewhere in pop, then is there any case for attempting to describe a gendered music vocabulary? Certainly, almost all of the formulae that have been described in this study permeate many different styles of pop music, however the characteristic yodel might be an exception, since, heard in this way, on the cusp between power and vulnerability, or on the verge of tears, it is a uniquely female sound. When men yodel, it means something else. However, predominantly, the gendered elements of the songs are in the lyrics, and the musical accompaniments which have become stylistically linked to the victim-song (the characteristic use of the piano or guitar, the folksiness, the two- or three-chord strategies, the regulation of rage within the formal framework of verse and chorus, etc.) exist everywhere in music, although they adopt a specific meaning when applied to the particular drama of the woman-as-victim.

Lucy Green writes:
 

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