“Good try, Jon Voight, John Turturro, and Dennis Miller, but the closest thing we’ve got to Howard Cosell right now is Alanis. Much like even non-football fans used to be mesmerized by Cosell’s genius for never using two words when 23 would do, you don’t have to be a love-damaged 17-year-old girl to find Under Rug Swept‘s dense verbiage a trip. Words tumble forth and arrange themselves kaleidoscopically into all sorts of unusual categories. Multi-Syllable We-Can’t-Even-Think-of-a-Word-That-Rhymes Words: ‘communicative,’ ‘connectedness,’ ‘reciprocity,’ ‘vacillated.’ D-Verbs That Nobody Ever Really Uses: ‘derive,’ ‘divulge,’ ‘dispel,’ ‘disarm,’ ‘discern’ (what, no ‘delineate’?). Support-Group Thanks-for-Sharing Words: ‘engage in dialogue,’ ‘provide forums,’ ‘conflict resolution,’ ‘playing the victim,’ ‘survival mode,’ ‘midlife crisis.’ Ambivalence-Is-Maybe-Possibly-a-Sign-of-Wisdom Words: ‘not necessarily,’ ‘supposed,’ ‘so-called,’ ‘essentially,’ ‘conditional.’ Alanis-Must’ve-Made-These-Up Words: ‘ungood,’ ‘arms-lengthing.’ Perfectly useful, a lot of them, and the point definitely isn’t that dumb is better or purer than smart. I’m just not sure that pop music should come out of a thesaurus. ‘(I Can’t Derive No) Satisfaction,’ ‘Thank You for Engaging in Dialogue With Me Africa,’ ‘A Person I’ve Been Spending Time With in a Romantic Way’s Back’ — the world’s a better place without them.”
- Phil Dellio, Thesaurus in My Pocket, Village Voice (2002)

“Four albums in and she’d rather hurt you honestly than mislead you with a lie, ask her if she loves you and you’ll choke on her reply, but better her yodel than Shania’s yawn. Still torturing vowels like a helmetless goaltender from Chicoutimi, and as for sensitivity, James Hetfield should just go back to the firing range. (We can’t do that up here in Canada — they took away all our guns.) Romance and all its strategy leaves her battling with her pride, but through the insecurity some tenderness survives. Just another writer, trapped within her truths — a hesitant prizefighter, still trapped within her youth? This national institution would like to remind you that we’re having a national election north of the border, too, and while it might not be as significant as yours, it’s kind of cooler because of how amateurish the candidates are; they never face the cameras directly, and they stutter and forget their lines a lot while declaiming on issues like generating electricity from beaver treadmills.”
- Dave Queen, review of Alanis Morrissette’s So-Called Chaos, Seattle Weekly (2004)

“One story has it that after avant-garde tenor player Archie Shepp came off stage following a performance full of honks, squeals, and bleats, he told pained auditor Johnny Griffin that he was expressing what it felt like to be a black man in America. ‘I know it’s hard,’ said Griffin, a black saxophonist who was no enemy of the modernist vanguard, having played with Thelonious Monk, ‘but why do you have to take it out on the music?’ For others, there was great beauty in the ostensible ugliness. Amiri Baraka in particular heard in the music a new paradigm of aesthetic value that required new modes of listening and engagement.”
- John Gennari, Blowin’ Hot and Cool: Jazz and its Critics, 2006