CSPC: Alanis Morissette Popularity Analysis
Back in mid-1995, Canadian singer-songwriter Alanis Morissette was unknown outside of her native country. A couple of years later, her global debut had outsold career peaks of Madonna, Mariah Carey and Janet Jackson. As a definitive evidence of that success, this album, Jagged Little Pill, has now been adapted into a musical.
The career of Morissette hasn’t always been an evergreen story though. After debuting in 1991 in Canada, she crossed over the main audience 4 years later. Suddenly, she was all over the place. Songs You Oughta Know, Hand in My Pocket, Ironic, You Learn, Head over Feet and All I Really Want made the LP the anthem of the decade. Apart from her 1995 blockbuster yet, her catalog seems fairly unknown. Has she gone through the 90s as a comet or is she simply not too visible on media because of her anti-star persona?
As usual, I’ll be using the Commensurate Sales to Popularity Concept in order to relevantly gauge her results. This concept will not only bring you sales information for all Morissette‘s albums, physical and download singles, as well as audio and video streaming. In fact, it will also determine their true popularity. If you are not yet familiar with the CSPC method, the next page explains it with a short video. I fully recommend watching the video before getting into the sales figures. Of course, if you are a regular visitor feel free to skip the video and get into the figures.
Great article! It’s a shame Alanis hasn’t seen much success after Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie, it’s also very curious and impressive how much Jagged Little Pill still stands up the test of time. I’m curious to see if her new album will, at least, generate higher numbers than Havoc and Bright Lights. I’d love to, it’s a very good album!
On a sidenote: can you analyze Nelly Furtado’s career? Considering she went indie a few years ago I think it’d be an interesting study case.
2020 is the year Alanis will release her first studio album in 8 years. It also marks the 25th anniversary of her breakthrough smash album “Jagged Little Pill”. Looking at Spotify the album still holds up well: All I Really Want – 16.8M You Oughta Know – 99.2M Perfect – 9.0M Hand In My Pocket – 78.8M Right Through You – 9.4M Forgiven – 7.1M You Learn – 61.3M Head Over Feet – 51.5M Mary Jane – 7.0M Ironic – 205.9M Not the Doctor – 7.3M Wake Up – 5.1M Your House – 7.2M Total – 565.7M The big one… Read more »
Alanis Morissette announces new album. ‘Such Pretty Forks in the Road’ will be released on May 1, 2020′. I would really like to see a major turnaround happening for Alanis.
Hi MJD
According to Korea’s local magazine, JLP shipped 150k in 1996 (article in 11/12/1996). Although catalog sales may be tiny, it would also end up a bit higher than 150k, right? Also, Falling Into you (Korean name: Because You Loved Me) shipped 300k in 1996 according the the same article, and Let’s Talk About Love shipped 310k in 1998 (article in 11/12/1998). Maybe you already have some of these figures, what is your eventual estimates for these albums there?
Music Box by Mariah Carey actually reached 1 million in South Korea by 11/12/1996.The same article that onfirmed Daydream sold 600k, Because You Love Me sold 300k, JLP sold 150k, etc. Other articles also can be found on chosun.com.
http://m.chosun.com/svc/article.html?sname=news&contid=1996121170222
No doubt higher than 150k then! On their communication listing all her sales awards, it was shown as Platinum in SK, so anything from 100k to 200k, while Supposed missed Gold the status, so 150k was the safest estimate to avoid large errors, but it seems that it sold a bit more.
[…] femininas mais bem sucedidas da História, tendo o seu álbum de estreia internacional movido mais de 40 milhões de unidades equivalentes a álbuns. Tais números tornaram Jagged Little Pill num dos maiores e mais bem sucedidos títulos de sempre. […]
It would be great to seeTina Turner “chartmasters” analys.
The sales of Now is the Time are different on page 5 and 12, which one is the correct?
Hi Jorge!
It’s the one on page 12, the typo is now fixed, thanks!