Alanis Morissette 1993-1998

In 1993, Morissette moved from Ottawa to Toronto. Living alone for the first time in her life, she met with a bevy of songwriters, but the results frustrated her.A visit to Nashville a few months later also proved fruitless. Morissette began making trips to Los Angeles and working with as many musicians as possible, in the hopes of meeting a collaborator. During this time, she met producer and songwriter Glen Ballard.

According to Ballard,the connection was "instant", and within thirty minutes of meeting each other they had begun experimenting with different sounds in Ballard's home studio. Ballard and Morissette penned their first song together, called "The Bottom Line". The turning point in their sessions was the song "Perfect", written and recorded in twenty minutes. Morissette improvised the lyrics on the spot, while Ballard played guitar. The version that appeared on Jagged Little Pill, Morissette's next album, was the only take the pair recorded. Ballard and Morissette recorded the songs on Jagged Little Pill literally as they wrote the tunes. According to Morissette, Ballard was the first collaborator who encouraged her to express her emotions. By the spring of 1995, Morissette had signed a deal with Maverick Records.

As she later revealed, during her stay in L.A., a man with a gun confronted and robbed her on a deserted street, although the thief did not take the writing and brainstorming notes in her purse: the scribblings that soon made up Jagged Little Pill. Morissette subsequently developed an intense and general angst, which manifested in random daily panic attacks, even on planes. She checked herself into a hospital and attended psychotherapy sessions, but with no improvement. She focused all her inner problems on the soul-baring lyrics of the album for her own health.

Maverick Records released Morissette's first international album, Jagged Little Pill, in 1995. Scott Welsh, Morissette's manager and long-time friend, and executives at Maverick expected the album to sell at very best around 250,000 copies.The album debuted at number 118 on the U.S. Billboard 200 album chart, but the situation changed quickly when a Los Angeles DJ from an influential radio station began playing "You Oughta Know", the album's first single.The song instantly garnered attention and a subsequent music video went into heavy rotation on MTV and MuchMusic. Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers plays bass on the track, along with then-bandmate Dave Navarro on guitar.

After the success of "You Oughta Know", the album's other hit singles helped send Jagged Little Pill to the top of the charts. "All I Really Want" and "Hand in My Pocket" followed, but the fourth U.S. single, "Ironic", became Morissette's biggest hit. "You Learn" and "Head over Feet", the fifth and sixth singles, respectively, kept Jagged Little Pill in the top twenty on the Billboard 200 for over a year.

According to the RIAA, Jagged Little Pill is the best-selling debut album of all time by a female artist, with over fourteen million copies sold in the U.S. As of 2005, it had sold thirty million worldwide.In Ireland, when the album Under Rug Swept was released in 2002, Jagged Little Pill re-entered the album chart on February 21 at number seventy-two and reached nineteen on March 7.It took nine weeks for it to depart the chart again.

Morissette was attacked for collaborating with producer and supposed image-maker Ballard,although she was responsible for all of Jagged Little Pill's lyrics and much of the album's music.[citation needed] The album was nominated for six Grammy Awards in 1996, and Morissette won "Best Female Rock Vocal Performance" and "Best Rock Song" for "You Oughta Know", and "Best Rock Album" and "Album of the Year" for Jagged Little Pill (she lost "Best New Artist" and "Song of the Year").

Later in 1996, Morissette embarked on an eighteen-month world tour in support of Jagged Little Pill, beginning in small clubs and ending in large venues. Taylor Hawkins, currently with the Foo Fighters, was the tour's drummer. "Ironic" was nominated for two 1997 Grammy Awards: "Record of the Year" and "Best Music Video, Short Form". The video Jagged Little Pill, Live, which chronicled the bulk of the tour, won a 1998 Grammy Award for "Best Music Video, Long Form".

During the tour, Morissette became disillusioned with the music industry and declared being tired of constant travelling, quick and superficial relationships and parties full of drugs – subjects which made her think of ditching her career. She started practicing Iyengar Yoga for balancing, and after the last December 1996 show in Hawaii, she headed to India for six weeks, accompanied by her mother, two aunts and two female friends.