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scious for the main characters as they grapple with their day-to-day difficulties. “Alanis was so into this idea of the chorus illuminating all the fractured cells of every character, the psyche of every character,” Paulus says. So while Mary Jane claims everything is placid on the surface of her life, the chorus surrounds the sofa and sings the truth: “I see right through you.”

“Right Through You,” the fifth song on the original Jagged Little Pill album, was Morissette’s not-so-subtle way of speaking to the predatory, misogynistic music executives she encountered in Canada as a teenage pop star. “You took me for a joke/You took me for a child,” she sings. “You took a long, hard look at my ass/And then played golf for a while.” It is an openly angry, growling song, as Morissette claims to see right through all of the men who want to infantilize her and capitalize on her talent. In an album full of so many emotions—bliss, humility, vengeance, acceptance,

enlightenment, love—“Right Through You” is a song about seething, righteous anger. But it isn’t just an angry song; it is deeply funny as well (it gave us the phrase “wine, dine, sixty-nine me,” after all). Morissette took her exasperation with exploitative men and learned how to laugh in its face, and in doing so, she created an anthem for women everywhere who are fed up with the way they are being treated. “I walk right through you,” Morissette wailed. And the rest of us learned how to keep going.