Alanis Morisette’s break up with her fiancé is the stuff of her latest album

Alanis Morissette has felt heartbreak before, as anyone who’s listened to her ripped-from-life songs knows. But last year’s split with her fiance, actor Ryan Reynolds, turned out to be the big one.

“I was a full-blown love addict, so it was like, ‘I can’t keep doing this; my body can’t take it.’ Breakups are a horrible thing for almost everybody I know. For someone who is a love addict, it’s debilitating,” said Morisette, “So this was a huge, critical juncture for me. Everything broke, and it was an amazing and horrifying time.”

You can hear all about it on Morissette’s recent album, Flavors of Entanglement. Although it touches on other themes and isn’t framed as a literal blow-by-blow account, the 11 songs describe knotty conflicts and the pain of separation.“I miss your warmth and the thought of us bringing up our kids /And the part of you that walks with your stick-tied handkerchief,” she sings in “Torch,” dealing out vivid details in her distinctively conversational style.

But more of the songs — “Not as We”, “Moratorium”, “Giggling Again for No Reason” — are drawn from the aftermath of the breakup, a process leading to what she calls “the Phoenix rising”. “ I went to therapy five days a week. I journaled. I had a lot of support from this incredible group of friends. It was just really moment by moment, step by step, snail’s pace.”

She also gutted and remodeled her Los Angeles house (one of her favorite forms of expression, she says), rode motorcycles, worked on a book and designed jewellery.

... contd.