But the other thing I love about the record is its tonal schizophrenia: It jumps from the fury of “You Oughta Know” to the almost lullaby-like first line of “Perfect.” That song is so brilliant in its juxtaposition of soft guitar chords and Alanis’s quiet, gentle voice with the lyrics, which are Dance Moms brutal: “If you’re flawless / Then you’ll win my love / Don’t forget to win first place / Don’t forget to keep that smile on your face.” Then her voice gets harsher, and the rest of the band jumps in. “I’ll live through you / I’ll make you what I never was / If you’re the best then maybe so am I / Compared to him / Compared to her.”

She’s already skewered pretentious boyfriends, abusive guardians (“Slap me with a splintered ruler”), feckless lovers, and pushy parents, and we’re only three songs in.

Kornhaber: The word “schizophrenia” and hints of craziness have come up a few times in this discussion and that’s totally fair; you have to be a little unhinged, at least temporarily, to want to voodoo-torment someone by scratching one’s nails down another’s back. But what’s remarkable is how lucid, precise, and totally logical she is even when she’s at her most volcanic. I mean, listen to how in-control she is on the opener “All I Really Want,” asking why you’re so afraid of silence, stopping the song—Beyonce replicated this trick on “Feeling Myself” last year—and then hitting you with the neurotic’s questionnaire: “Did you think about your bills, your ex, your deadlines? / Or when you think you're gonna die? / Or did you long for the next distraction?” The answer, Alanis, is yes! I did think of those things! All ye who would condemn Millennials as using technology to tune out the world, listen to Alanis; in 1995, she nailed the reason why people distract themselves, which maybe means it’s less generational than eternal.

I also love that song in particular for introducing listeners to that Alanis-y blend of existential crisis and matter-of-fact chit-chat. “All I really want is some peace, man,” she says, and the rest of the record follows up with a lot of other semi-mocking, semi-loving repurposings of the way people actually talk. “I hate to bug you in the middle of dinner …” “Yeah, I really do think.” The duality of the language, the roars next to the small talk, is just so fitting for what she’s singing about. I guess I’m trying to explain something that she explained perfectly herself on the thesis statement of the album, “One Hand In My Pocket.” High/grounded, sane/overwhelmed—“what it all boils down to is that no one’s really got it figured out just yet”

Garber: Totally—I love that duality not just because it helps make the album so musically and lyrically interesting, but also because it gives JLP the feeling of being, in ways tiny and huge, just … true. I sadly don’t have a specific Mr. Grahamian memory of the album (save for the fact that, at a certain point in my life, I was a fan of “Full House”); what I do remember, though, is how in a weird way I looked up to it, and to Alanis herself. The album was—just like Alanis, just like many of us—simultaneously sane and overwhelmed. It had this sense of life as this full and rich and fragile and occasionally infuriating thing, this thing that happens both with your help and spite of it. The songs, taken together, take for granted the basic idea that anger and frustration are part of life, and that sometimes, yes, you may find yourself sneering, to an ex who has disappointed you, "I'm sure she'd make a really excellent mother.” But they also, however, assume that the frustration will pass, that things will get better. And that they’ll get better both despite and because of the fact that your ex-boyfriend is kind of a jerk.