I remember exactly where I was the first time I heard this powerful, stirring song by one of the giants of the nineties, Alanis Morissette. You Oughtta Know is an anthem for any woman, any person, who’d ever been lied to and left for someone else, or maybe had been otherwise scorned. She was a ragged mess of a woman in the video, and it matched the tone of the song – threatening and confident. It meant something to me too, and at the time it was hard for me to admit that because the truth was, I was technically the bad guy AND I was in a new relationship myself. But you know me, the past-dweller. So I focused on the anger and the lyrics of this song. (Did you forget about me, Mr. Duplicity? I hate to bug you in the middle of dinner. There was a slap in the face, how quickly I was replaced And are you thinking of me when you fuck her??) I think not since Heart had we been exposed to such raw, emotional vocals in a hard rock style song. It was a woman’s answer to what Nirvana had ushered in a few years before and the timing was perfect, as we were all ready for this onslaught of uber-talented rock chicks that would follow.
From the historical writing archive. Original date: November 25, 2017. Recovered from local source material; editorial review is still in progress.
