Alanis Morissette

Alanis Morissette

Photo: Terry O'Neill/Iconic Images/Getty Images

Feature

Alanis Morissette's 'Jagged Little Pill': For The Record

Facebook Twitter Email
Learn about the singer/songwriter's big GRAMMY night at the 38th GRAMMY Awards with her third studio album
Renée Fabian
GRAMMYs
Mar 22, 2018 - 4:10 pm

For a generation of music lovers, the '90s hosted a boon of hits that have now attained classic status. Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill is arguably at the top of the list.

Alanis Morissette: 'Jagged Little Pill'

Released June 13, 1995, as her third studio album, Morissette worked on the project exclusively with producer/writer Glen Ballard. She plumped the depth of raw emotion to craft the LP's 12 alt-rock tracks, marking a departure from her previous pop-centered releases.

The Canadian native's honest approach to Jagged Little Pill flipped the industry upside down. The album went on to reach No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and produce three No. 1 Billboard singles: "You Oughta Know," "Hand In My Pocket" and "Ironic."

As of 2015, sales of the album surpassed 15 million copies in the United States, making it one of only three albums to reach that milestone behind Metallica's self-titled album (16.1 million) and Shania Twain's Come On Over (15.6 million).

Further solidifying its legacy, a musical stage production based on the LP will premiere in spring 2018.

Jagged Little Pill also brought Morissette her first four career GRAMMY wins at the 38th GRAMMY Awards. She took home the coveted award for Album Of The Year and Best Rock Album, while "You Oughta Know" earned Best Female Rock Vocal Performance and Best Rock Song.

"I actually accept this on behalf of anyone who's ever written a song from a very pure place, a very spiritual place," Morissette said during her Album Of The Year acceptance speech after thanking Ballard. "And there's plenty of room for a lot of artists so there's no such thing as the best."

The Beatles circa 1966

The Beatles 

Photo: Central Press/Getty Images

News

The Beatles Take Aim With 1966's 'Revolver': For The Record

Facebook Twitter Email
Their final album before retiring from live shows, find out how the Fab Four's seventh studio album changed their sonic direction
Renée Fabian
GRAMMYs
Aug 2, 2018 - 11:07 am

By 1966, the Beatles — John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr —were ready for a change in their musical direction. Namely, they planned to retire from live performances. Before that, however, they released their seventh studio album on Aug. 5, 1966, Revolver.

Revisit The Beatles' 'Revolver'

Because Revolver was the final album the band made before retiring from live shows, the Fab Four never intended to perform it, so they freed up their creativity in the studio, incorporating groundbreaking techniques such as tape loops and backward recordings on "Tomorrow Never Knows." They also stretched their instrumentation, employing a string octet ("Eleanor Rigby"), French Horn ("For No One") and sitar on multiple tracks.

On the strength of these songs and other now classic Beatles hits such as "Yellow Submarine," "She Said She Said," "Good Day Sunshine," and "Got To Get You Into My Life," the album peaked at No. 1 on the Billboard 200.  

At the 9th GRAMMY Awards, Revolver earned the Beatles a GRAMMY nomination for Album Of The Year, while the album's cover designer Klaus Voormann won Best Album Cover, Graphic Arts for the LP's cover.

Revolver Album Cover

In 1999 Revolver was inducted into the GRAMMY Hall Of Fame, one of seven Beatles albums currently in the Hall. The track "Eleanor Rigby" was inducted in 2002.

Beach Boys

Beach Boys

Photo: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

News

Remembering The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds': For The Record

Facebook Twitter Email
Take a look back at the album that revolutionized the sound of the classic band
Renée Fabian
GRAMMYs
Jul 19, 2018 - 12:24 pm

If there's one band that could encapsulate the sound of summer it would be the aptly named Beach Boys. Since their inception in 1961, the GRAMMY-winning California band has taken us straight to the source of sun, sand and surfing with a string of hit albums. But with their 11th studio album, 1966's masterpiece Pet Songs, masterminded largely by Brian Wilson, the band created a new, more complex soundscape that cemented their place in music history.

Revisit The Beach Boys' 'Pet Sounds'

The story goes that Wilson had crafted much of what would become Pet Sounds by the time the rest of the band — comprising at the time vocalist Al Jardine, vocalist Bruce Johnston, vocalist/co-writer Mike Love, guitarist/vocalist Carl Wilson, and drummer/vocalist Dennis Wilson — returned from a tour of Japan and Hawaii.

The album's musical and lyrical direction marked a departure from the surf rock the Beach Boys had been known for, but Brian Wilson was adamant about the evolving direction of the band's sound, which included many orchestral instruments and unconventional sound effects using bicycle bells, Coca-Cola cans and barking dogs.

"The result was autobiographical, but it wasn't Wilson's autobiography," writes Liel Leibovitz about Wilson's masterpiece. "[It's] a collective autobiography of everything we all feel when we wake up in the morning and are moved by the mystery of how impossible it is, how inevitable, and how stupidly joyful just to try and reach out to another human being."

Commercially, however, the album initially didn't reach the same heights as previous efforts. It peaked at No. 10 on the Billboard 200 while popular tracks "Wouldn't It Be Nice," "God Only Knows" and "Caroline, No" achieved chart success in the U.S. and abroad. But as the rest of the world caught up with the genius of the album, it's now earned triple platinum sales status with the RIAA and is hailed as one of the best pop albums of all time.

Accordingly, Pet Sounds was inducted into the GRAMMY Hall Of Fame in 1998. In 2001 the Beach Boys were also honored with the Recording Academy's Lifetime Achievement Award for the indelible mark they have made on the music industry.

Carlos Santana

Carlos Santana

Photo: Kevin Winter/WireImage

News

Santana, 'Abraxas': For The Record

Facebook Twitter Email
Revisit the album that proved rock music's emerging ability to experiment could integrate diverse traditions and intoxicate young audiences
Philip Merrill
GRAMMYs
Sep 28, 2018 - 5:42 pm

After their success at the summer rock festival Woodstock in Aug. 1969 and the contemporary release of their debut self-titled album, guitarist Carlos Santana and his band Santana put out their follow-up, Abraxas, in Sept. 1970. His lead guitar and the album's eclectic combination of rock, Latin rhythms and experimental creativity captured the spirit of the times, filled with a sense of potential new experiences.

For The Record: Santana's 'Abraxas'

By Oct. 1970, Abraxas reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200. On the Hot 100 in early 1971, its single "Black Magic Woman" peaked at No. 4, and "Oye Como Va" reached No. 13 a few months later — reinterpreting the Tito Puente cha-cha as rock and helping to prove the flourishing genre's ability to bring new relevance to compositions from other musical traditions.

A San Francisco Bay local, Carlos Santana got his break from Fillmore promoter Bill Graham. An origin myth Santana doesn't remember the same way has Graham discovering the youngster after he snuck into the venue's office. "I was a kid right out of high school and nobody else was putting on shows like Bill did then," he remembered, explaining why he was always around.

As locals, they could fill in for missing bands on the schedule in a flash. Graham wrote in his autobiography, "To this day, Santana is still the only band ever to headline the Fillmore without having made a record."

Thanks to their excellence and reflecting the cultural moment, happenstance became legend. The band's second album was added to the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry in 2016. Shortly before the close of the millennium, Abraxas was inducted into the GRAMMY Hall Of Fame, in 1999 — the year Carlos Santana's album Supernatural was released, taking him to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 for the third time, from a career-total of four times so far. At the 42nd GRAMMY Awards, he won in eight categories, including Album Of The Year and Best Rock Album.

Marvin Gaye 'Let's Get It On' | For The Record

GRAMMYs

Sex Pistols

Photo: John Mead/Mirrorpix/Getty Images

News

Sex Pistols 'Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols' | For The Record

Facebook Twitter Email
Credited with kicking off the punk phenomenon in the U.K., this GRAMMY Hall Of Fame album ignited controversy and censorship
Philip Merrill
GRAMMYs
Aug 23, 2018 - 5:09 pm

In the year 1977, the Sex Pistols' album Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols arrived world-wide, surrounded by violence, controversy and censorship in the United Kingdom. The lineup of drummer Paul Cook, guitarist Steve Jones, frontman Johnny Rotten, and replacement bass player Sid Vicious ushered in the era of British Punk with an amateurish and confrontational sound and attitude. In the end, the LP influenced nearly everything done subsequently in rock and is hailed as one of the genre's greatest albums of all time.

Sex Pistols 'Never Mind …' | For The Record

"God Save The Queen" was the first single that preceded release of the album. The title provides the first four words of the song, followed by the lyric "the fascist regime." For many offended Brits, the song was all downhill from there.  As the band continued work on their album that year — recording "Holidays In The Sun" on June 18 — they adjourned that night to a pub and got beat up badly enough to make the newspapers. Like the lyrics to that lead single, the action became even more intense thereafter.

The album's producer, Chris Thomas, has since shaped many rockers' sounds, winning one of his GRAMMYs at the 48th GRAMMY Awards when U2's How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb took Album Of The Year. His detailed overdubs on Never Mind The Bollocks…, punching in and out patiently with Cook and Jones, produced a furious and exuberant finished work superficially at odds with the craft invested in its creation. Meanwhile the band's other hit singles produced punk's signature controversy. As a result the only label that would have them was Virgin Records. Richard Branson hand-picked the tracklist.

Looking back, it seems only fitting that the Sex Pistols' gusto got them in trouble. "Banned In Britain" is one of rock history's quaint phrases in the U.S., but every major retailer in England was prevented from selling the album. Since it debuted at No. 1 in the U.K., this was a boon for independent outlets. A Virgin Records outlet was raided and its manager arrested for displaying the album's text-only graphic-art cover in his window. While "Never mind the bollocks" is a phrase that makes the word mean "nonsense," the potentially obscene implications of the word brought the band before the British bar, while news headlines made the most of the sensational controversy.

At Nottingham Magistrates' Court, the use of the word "bollocks" was considered objectionable but not illegally "obscene." For example, major newspapers had included the LP's title in their coverage but the papers were not put on trial. The hearing's chairman described the now-classic album as "vulgar exploitation of the worst instincts of human nature for the purchases of commercial profits." He said the not guilty verdict was delivered "reluctantly." Rock was f***ing transformed.

In a 2016 Pitchfork interview, John Lydon (a.k.a. Johnny Rotten) made headlines again for "forgiving" Nirvana for reflecting the Sex Pistols' sound. But the Sex Pistols' musically riveting flare and defiance had the heavy influence of greatness on what hundreds if not thousands of other musicians chose to do with their art.

In 2015 Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols was inducted into the Recording Academy's GRAMMY Hall Of Fame. It was both the Sex Pistols' debut as well as the only studio album they recorded, ever.

Catching Up On Music News Powered By The Recording Academy Just Got Easier. Have A Google Home Device? "Talk To GRAMMYs"