So as I have alluded to, Grey's Anatomy is the show that has always been able to explain of define my life in some way. I am currently listening to the album that has done just that as well. Jagged Little Pill from Alanis Morissette, the album that has always been able to define my life in some way.
I am such a child of the 90s. That was the decade where I started to come of age, grow up, and understand my life through music. I can't say that this is always my favourite album, (that would go to something from Dylan or Zeppelin) or even my favourite Alanis album (which is Under Rug Swept). But it has this gut-wrenching ability to hit to the core of how I feel at any given time.
And it has been with me for a long time, covering a huge range of life experiences. From when I first heard of it as an elementary school kid, this huge album with explicit lyrics that my mom wouldn't buy for me. I taped songs off the radio until I finally bought myself a copy at the age of thirteen, a time when I really needed angry chick rock. Alanis and the other 90s rock women gave me some of my first glimpses of feminism even though my young self didn't really get it. But I did get the anger and the pain behind the songs. The album's first track, "All I Really Want" quickly became my anthem. Probably a fairly typical teenage girl experience in the 90s, but to me, it meant something.
Fast forward a few years and you could find me blasting "You Oughta Know" almost daily while driving my family's little Neon around the city. My high school persona. Smart, quiet, with a little bit of edge. I had these songs with me while I tried to figure out how to grow up.
Skip ahead a little more to university. There are so many nights that a good friend (you know who you are) and I drank Boone's and sang at the top of our lungs along to Alanis. These were our songs. They described our lives somehow, so perfectly. I found myself and I saw myself reflected in her lyrics. It sounds so silly now but it helped to feel understood. After a broken heart that left me hurt and angry, it helped me to scream the lyrics to "You Oughta Know" as loud as I could. When I was crumbing under the pressure of my parents' and my own expectations, "Perfect" seemed to sum it all up. When I was fighting for myself, fighting to live with the darkness in my mind, "Mary Jane" gave m some small comfort. When I thought maybe I had messed everything up because my life had veered so far away from what I had planned, "You Learn" and "One Hand in my Pocket" gave me some clarity.
Is it a little silly that the cliched angry chick rock album of the 90s defines me and my life? Maybe it is. But what is music for if not to help us feel understood, to help us feel better? Even now, the songs make me feel better. There is an understanding, a connection with the lyrics and the feelings behind them. Every song reminds me of something or someone. It also reminds me of how much I have changed and grown up over the years. I am not the same girl who played the album on her discman in her parents' basement or the girl who blared the music driving to high school, or even the girl who sang along at the bar. I am now an adult who hears the music from her youth and remembers why it mattered so much at the time.
