When it comes to Canadian music, few names are more iconic than Alanis. The Ottawa singer has sold over 60 million albums worldwide, and her landmark 1996 record Jagged Little Pill is widely ranked among the greatest of all time. Morissette started out on television and in dance-pop before that history-making album, which held the No. 1 spot on the Billboard 200 for a whopping 12 weeks. She became the youngest-ever winner of Album of the Year at the Grammys and internationally recognizable by name and by voice.

In the early ‘90s, alt-rock’s heroes were predominantly angsty men. Alanis’ massive breakthrough forever shattered the idea that artful anger belonged to the boys. Since her watershed moment, Alanis has established herself as an enduring force. Her next two albums after Jagged Little Pill also hit No. 1 and she’s released four more LPs since, as well as focusing on acting, activism, spirituality and more. In 2015, she was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, and in 2018, Jagged Little Pill was adapted into a musical.

Over 30 years into her career, Alanis remains an icon to young women coming up in the industry, like Olivia Rodrigo, one of many who has cited her as an inspiration. And “You Oughta Know,” persists as an anthem for pissed-off girls the world over, a reminder that there’s good reason to get mad. “Anger underlies every great activism on the planet,” Morissette said last year. “So I’ll never apologize about anger.”

At Billboard Women in Music 2019, she talked about how anger was part of a spectrum of emotions and dimensions that songwriters like her could embody all at once. "These roles and archetypes are within all of us, all the women in the room and all the women I’ve worked with.”