Alanis Morissette

Morissette says she repeatedly pressed her new business managers for financial information because her intuition told her something was wrong.

“into the new business manager's office over and over and saying, I need more information because something's up and I don't know what”

Call Her Daddy: Alanis Morissette: Anger, Attachment, & Postpartum (Sep 9, 2026) · Listen from 19:15

Morissette says radio stations of the era declined her songs on the grounds that they were already playing another woman artist.

“if we called a radio station to see if they would play one of my songs, they would say, we can't play it. We're playing Sinead”

Call Her Daddy: Alanis Morissette: Anger, Attachment, & Postpartum (Sep 9, 2026) · Listen from 14:55

Morissette characterizes the executives she dealt with as lacking empathy and hating the feminine, not only women.

“there was no attunement or empathy, a lot of personality disorders, a lot of misogyny, a lot of just hate of the feminine, not just women”

Call Her Daddy: Alanis Morissette: Anger, Attachment, & Postpartum (Sep 9, 2026) · Listen from 13:49

Morissette recalls being overwhelmed by rooms of a dozen men in suits and not understanding the contracts she signed at fourteen.

“Just a room full of, you know, 12 men in suits. And I just remember being really overwhelmed. Like, I didn't even know what the word publishing meant”

Call Her Daddy: Alanis Morissette: Anger, Attachment, & Postpartum (Sep 9, 2026) · Listen from 9:17

Morissette credits her parents with instilling confidence by telling her she could do anything.

“My parents knocked the confidence one out of the park. Definitely saying you can do anything you want”

Call Her Daddy: Alanis Morissette: Anger, Attachment, & Postpartum (Sep 9, 2026) · Listen from 8:03

Morissette says she formed a record company with a friend at age 11 because labels of that era would not sign children.

“And so I basically started a record company with my friend Lindsay and we put it out on the record company at, I was 11”

Call Her Daddy: Alanis Morissette: Anger, Attachment, & Postpartum (Sep 9, 2026) · Listen from 7:42

Morissette argues the solution for new mothers is communal care and honoring the female endocrine system as a spiritual practice.

“the solve for women is us going back to how we used to live. which is honoring the female endocrine system as a spiritual fricking practice”

Call Her Daddy: Alanis Morissette: Anger, Attachment, & Postpartum (Sep 9, 2026) · Listen from 51:21

Morissette says the hardest loss during postpartum depression was other people's trust in her sanity.

“And the bummer for me inside PPD was that I was losing people's trust in my sanity”

Call Her Daddy: Alanis Morissette: Anger, Attachment, & Postpartum (Sep 9, 2026) · Listen from 50:15

Morissette says she toured while experiencing postpartum psychosis and was called crazy by people in the business.

“but i still showed up like i was i dipped into psychosis it was a wild ride”

Call Her Daddy: Alanis Morissette: Anger, Attachment, & Postpartum (Sep 9, 2026) · Listen from 48:46

Morissette says she sought help progressively faster after each birth, waiting over a year the first time and three days the third.

“first time i waited a year and two months second time i waited eight months and third time i think i waited three days”

Call Her Daddy: Alanis Morissette: Anger, Attachment, & Postpartum (Sep 9, 2026) · Listen from 48:00

Morissette says she calls it postpartum activity because it involved invasive thoughts, anxiety and rage alongside depression.

“Invasive thoughts, anxiety, depression, rage, off the charts. I felt completely out of control”

Call Her Daddy: Alanis Morissette: Anger, Attachment, & Postpartum (Sep 9, 2026) · Listen from 44:57

Morissette says she examines only the criticisms that trigger her, using them as material for shadow work.

“I think Courtney Love was calling me fake, which is so funny. And she also apologized later and said very kind things”

Call Her Daddy: Alanis Morissette: Anger, Attachment, & Postpartum (Sep 9, 2026) · Listen from 30:43

Morissette says respected fellow artists disparaged her publicly and that Sinéad O'Connor later apologized.

“a lot of artists whom I respected and lived for were disparagingly speaking about me. Later, Sinead apologized, which was really classy”

Call Her Daddy: Alanis Morissette: Anger, Attachment, & Postpartum (Sep 9, 2026) · Listen from 30:03

Morissette says she faced severe hostility in the 1990s, including websites devoted to how to kill her.

“There were websites constructed to figure out how to murder me most elegantly”

Call Her Daddy: Alanis Morissette: Anger, Attachment, & Postpartum (Sep 9, 2026) · Listen from 29:44

Morissette argues that fame has shifted from being a means to an end to being pursued as an end in itself, and that it amplifies existing pain and trauma.

“fame used to be a means to an end, Joni Mitchell or commentary on the Vietnam War. Like it was a means to an end. Now fame is the end”

Call Her Daddy: Alanis Morissette: Anger, Attachment, & Postpartum (Sep 9, 2026) · Listen from 27:12

Morissette says she now wants women to pursue wholeness rather than wellness, including reclaiming denied parts of themselves.

“seeing wholeness as a goal versus wellness. And wholeness isn't always the prettiest, most linear path”

Call Her Daddy: Alanis Morissette: Anger, Attachment, & Postpartum (Sep 9, 2026) · Listen from 1:02:42

Morissette says aging has made her far less reactive and left more room for vulnerability and power.

“For me, my reactivity has gotten less and less and less. Like almost there's just more room for humanity”

Call Her Daddy: Alanis Morissette: Anger, Attachment, & Postpartum (Sep 9, 2026) · Listen from 57:06

Morissette describes menopause as an uprooting of the whole tree rather than a turning of individual leaves.

“No, for me, it feels like the tree itself was ripped out of the ground and the roots are everywhere and like, good luck”

Call Her Daddy: Alanis Morissette: Anger, Attachment, & Postpartum (Sep 9, 2026) · Listen from 56:08

Morissette says Glen Ballard encouraged her not to censor the explicit lyric in 'You Oughta Know'.

“there was a moment while writing you ought to know where i thought oh i'll just let's just write it don't edit don't censor as always”

Call Her Daddy: Alanis Morissette: Anger, Attachment, & Postpartum (Sep 9, 2026) · Listen from 25:53

Morissette recalls her label calling the record caustic and her retort that they should sign Steely Dan if they wanted that kind of album.

“when they first got the record, they said, this is a little caustic. It's a little intense for us. And I said, well, if you want a Dan Steely record, why don't you sign a Dan Steely?”

Call Her Daddy: Alanis Morissette: Anger, Attachment, & Postpartum (Sep 9, 2026) · Listen from 22:31

Morissette says she insisted on releasing 'You Oughta Know' first rather than 'Ironic' or 'Hand in My Pocket' because she had too much energy to lead with anything else.

“And I remember thinking, no, we just have to just put You Oughta Know out and then we talk. Because I had too much rajas”

Call Her Daddy: Alanis Morissette: Anger, Attachment, & Postpartum (Sep 9, 2026) · Listen from 22:01

Morissette says the residency is built around grappling with her 'too muchness' and learning, with Anne Randolph's help, that her stories matter.

“The whole show is about me grappling with the too muchness and telling stories that I didn't care about stories because I didn't care about myself”

Call Her Daddy: Alanis Morissette: Anger, Attachment, & Postpartum (Sep 9, 2026) · Listen from 1:00:08

Morissette contrasts the 1990s demand that women stay in one lane with her current aim to express multiple intelligences on stage.

“the credo was stay in your lane and especially if you're a woman, stay in the reductive one, whatever one we ascribe to you, stay in that one”

Call Her Daddy: Alanis Morissette: Anger, Attachment, & Postpartum (Sep 9, 2026) · Listen from 59:23

Morissette describes the toll of codependency as total self-annihilation followed by years of recovery.

“A complete self-annihilation and obliteration and years of coming back into who you barely were before you began”

Call Her Daddy: Alanis Morissette: Anger, Attachment, & Postpartum (Sep 9, 2026) · Listen from 40:31

Morissette says that as an empath she was drawn to narcissistic partners and cites Harville Hendrix's book on unconscious attraction.

“I was attracted to narcissism, shocker. And as an empath, we tend to be a magnet for narcissists. It's not uncommon. And there's a beautiful book called Keeping the Love You Find by Harville Hendrix”

Call Her Daddy: Alanis Morissette: Anger, Attachment, & Postpartum (Sep 9, 2026) · Listen from 39:26

Morissette says men call young women wise beyond their years in order to justify predatory sexual behavior.

“Why they tell a young person that they're poised and wise beyond their years to justify their sexual predatory actions?”

Call Her Daddy: Alanis Morissette: Anger, Attachment, & Postpartum (Sep 9, 2026) · Listen from 16:46

Morissette distinguishes anger, which she calls beautiful, from rage, which she views as a sign of trauma.

“I think anger is beautiful. I think rage is trauma. If we're raging, we're traumatized”

Call Her Daddy: Alanis Morissette: Anger, Attachment, & Postpartum (Sep 9, 2026) · Listen from 16:02

Morissette says her holiday record grew from annual one-off songs and includes two new originals.

“So a song called To an Empathic Christmastime and a song called Christmas on the Dance Floor”

Call Her Daddy: Alanis Morissette: Anger, Attachment, & Postpartum (Sep 9, 2026) · Listen from 1:01:19

Morissette says being raised in narcissism left her without a felt sense of self and oriented toward serving others.

“Raised in narcissism, my existence meant beholding other, being supply for narcissism. I don't even exist. There's not even a person here”

Call Her Daddy: Alanis Morissette: Anger, Attachment, & Postpartum (Sep 9, 2026) · Listen from 34:43

Morissette says she approached the Sex and the City producers with the idea of Carrie having a same-sex kiss and they had independently had the same thought.

“reached out to them and I said, might it be a nice time for Carrie to experience a lesbian moment?”

Call Her Daddy: Alanis Morissette: Anger, Attachment, & Postpartum (Sep 9, 2026) · Listen from 5:28

Morissette says fan response to her music gave her, as an introvert, a reason to remain in the public eye.

“I saw quickly that people were using this music in a way that felt inspiring for me to stay in the public eye as an introvert”

Call Her Daddy: Alanis Morissette: Anger, Attachment, & Postpartum (Sep 9, 2026) · Listen from 1:43