Your House

Album: Jagged Little Pill (1995)
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Songfacts®:

  • This a cappella song is a hidden track on Jagged Little Pill, which in America sold 16 million copies in the '90s. This was a time when CD was by far the most popular format; compact discs could hold well over an hour of music, so some artists would use this extra space to add an extra song - often one with merit but deemed unworthy of the tracklist - after a few minutes of silence so listeners would hear it if they didn't eject the disc. Alanis liked "Your House" as a hidden track because it's a cappella, making it sound unfinished.
  • In this song, Morissette sings about snooping around a guy's house, trying on his robe, going through his drawers, playing his CDs. She embellished the details, but it was inspired by a true story: she was "pseudo-dating" a man who often left town and let Alanis stay at his place while he was gone. She told Spotify: "I was interested in this gentleman, so I didn't want to look anywhere, but I did want to look. It felt like I was invading, but at the same time, I'd been welcomed."
  • Morissette was just 19 when she started working on Jagged Little Pill in 1994 with producer Glen Ballard, who is 21 years older. They wrote one song each day they worked.

    "Your House" came about when Ballard played something on guitar. Alanis started singing, and when Ballard stopped playing, she just kept going. "The whole song just wrote itself," she said.
  • Ballard and Morissette recorded a version with a full track, but decided it worked better a cappella.
  • When Morissette started performing this song, her band members would exit the stage, leaving her alone to sing it. After a while, she had them stay. "There was something powerful about them having played so intently and intensely throughout the show and then being able to stop and put their instruments down," she told Spotify. "Those were often my favorite moments because they were so painstakingly vulnerable and intimate. I didn't look at anybody in the audience for 15 years because those lyrics were too intense for me to lock eyes with anyone. I hid behind my hair."

Comments: 1

  • Angel from Fountain FloridaPlease tell me the name of the song before the hidden song "your house" comes on..
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