six packs of coke & sneak watching TRL

or, just how long I've loved Alanis' song 'Thank U' and why I decided to cover it

TL;DR

I released a cover of Alanis Morissette’s ‘Thank U’ and you can hear it here!

In 1998, I was fifteen and covered in zits, probably due to the fact that I used to frequently split six packs of coke and full boxes of Entenmann’s chocolate covered donuts with my best friend at our sleepovers—this functioned almost like an evangelical kid’s substitute for booger sugar. Our trash binge kept us up til all hours as we wrote and rewrote ‘The List’ of what we were looking for in a husband. This list contained things such as ‘has nice eyes but doesn’t seem to know it,’ and ‘attempts unsuccessfully to bring me breakfast in bed, but looks cute failing.’ 🤔 Your guess is as good as mine as to why that second one in particular made the cut, tbh.

Sometimes in those days of caffeine-fueled idealism I would try to sneak down to our cold, dark basement to watch TRL. (sorry, mom & dad. or maybe you knew?) I wasn’t an idiot, so I always had my index finger poised and hovering over the ‘last’ button on the remote to navigate quickly over to the Food Network if I happened to hear footsteps in the kitchen above me. IYKYK. I’d say I was a reasonably sheltered kid. I’d never so much as watched Clueless or the Smurfs, but thanks to the magic of cable television, I *had* snuck glimpses of all sorts of off-limits music videos, from Rammstein’s Du Hast to Marcy Playground’s Sex & Candy to Korn’s Follow The Leader. Scandalous.

One day a video came on where Alanis Morissette walked around naked in a bustling city, seemingly attempting to connect emotionally with strangers. Her long, wavy brown hair flowed down her body, covering her boobs, only sort of. Her lady cave was blurred out just enough to make it safe for television. A, I was awestruck by this, because at this point I had never so much as seen The Breakfast Club, so even a blurry naked body on television was a lot to take in for me tbh. I did already know Alanis’ music somewhat. I mean who among us in that era, even MTV-starved little Plymouth Brethren kids, could possibly have escaped hearing Jagged Little Pill? I probably first heard Ironic playing over the sh*tty little ceiling speakers in the ceiling of the CVS in our tiny New Jersey town, honestly. But Thank U was new to me, and after the initial shock of seeing Alanis mostly naked wore off, I remember thinking that she sort of looked like the pictures I’d seen of Eve in my childhood Sunday School coloring sheets, and yes I absolutely practiced telling my mom that in my head in case she ever caught me watching the video. 🤣

I’m not gonna lie to you, the nakedness did leave quite an impression on young and incredibly easy-to-scandalize teenage me. But what ultimately stuck with me about the song was its profound and life-interrupting lyrics, which have never quite left my mind since. I don’t want to be too specific or long-winded here about what these lyrics have come to mean to me personally, because I don’t want to risk dulling their time honored and semi-sacred shine for myself. But I will tell you that, even as a devout and pious evangelical kid who couldn’t quite yet hang with the expansive language of this late 90s gem, something about the song’s message of returning to the center of things really spoke to me even then, there in my parents’ jade-green-carpeted, wood-paneled, cool dark basement. I could feel what she was speaking of, even if I couldn’t yet understand it. That’s the power of great songwriting, and incidentally, it still floors me that Alanis wrote this when she was something like twenty two years old! When I was twenty two, I was pretty much the TEMU version of Jane Austen, writing many angst-riddled, flowery entries in my journal about young men who I thought of as perfect husband material but who didn’t even have any idea I existed, so…yeah. Color me impressed, Alanis.

As I’ve had such a long and deep relationship to this one, covering it felt a little scary. I wanted to pay tribute to it and yet transform it. I’ve even made several attempts to begin covers of it over the years, but thankfully none of those versions came into being. Because this year,  Jeremi Clive came along and truly helped me crack the code. I couldn’t be prouder or more thankful to share this version with you. It’s introspective and sparkling and trulymadlydeeply special to me. (My fellow ~*MiLlEnIaLs*~, do u c what I did there) 

Thank you Alanis (and India, and terror, and disillusionment, etc) for the chance to encounter and interpret this meaningful, gorgeous song. 

If you’ve never read the lyrics or listened to them deeply as they’ve passed you by in the original song, here they are: if they inspire any thoughts in you, I’d love to read your comment. <3

How 'bout getting off of these antibiotics?
How 'bout stopping eating when I'm full up?
How 'bout them transparent dangling carrots?
How 'bout that ever-elusive kudo?

Thank you, India
Thank you, terror
Thank you, disillusionment
Thank you, frailty
Thank you, consequence
Thank you, thank you, silence

How 'bout me not blaming you for everything?
How 'bout me enjoying the moment for once?
How 'bout how good it feels to finally forgive you?
How 'bout grieving it all one at a time?

Thank you, India
Thank you, terror
Thank you, disillusionment
Thank you, frailty
Thank you, consequence
Thank you, thank you, silence

The moment I let go of it
Was the moment I got more than I could handle
The moment I jumped off of it
Was the moment I touched down

How 'bout no longer being masochistic?
How 'bout remembering your divinity?
How 'bout unabashedly bawling your eyes out?
How 'bout not equating death with stopping?

Thank you, India
Thank you, providence
Thank you, disillusionment
Thank you, nothingness
Thank you, clarity
Thank you, thank you, silence