The title alone sounded like a confession: Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie. Alanis Morissette, the Canadian singer-songwriter whose previous album had made her one of the biggest voices of the 90s, was describing someone who had been hooked on falling in love and, supposedly, had moved past that stage. On November 3, 1998, the record came out in the US on Maverick Records. It was her fourth studio album, and it arrived with a question hanging over it: how do you follow a phenomenon?
A tour that broke the singer
The answer, it turned out, was to stop chasing the phenomenon altogether. Morissette had spent eighteen months on a grueling world tour in support of Jagged Little Pill, a run that ended in Hawaii. The experience left her with post-traumatic stress disorder. In late 1996 or early 1997, she went to India to recover. The trip was not a promotional stunt or a vacation; it was a way to put herself back together after the machinery of fame had worn her down.
That journey became the album's core. The concept for Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie grew directly out of her time in India. She wrote the songs 'Thank U' and 'Baba' after the trip, and the lyrics across the record circle around personal growth, self-reflection and spiritual searching. The title phrase itself comes from a line in 'So Pure'. On the cover, Morissette placed phrases from eight Buddhist vows, the basic ethical code of the tradition. The album was not hiding its intentions.
Recording with Glen Ballard
The music was as sprawling as the themes. Morissette produced the album with Glen Ballard, the collaborator who had shaped her breakthrough. They recorded it at Royaltone Studios in Los Angeles across 1997 and 1998. The finished record was a long, winding listen that moved through rock, alternative textures and electronic edges. It was the sound of someone thinking out loud, not chasing radio formulas.
Radio came anyway. The first single, 'Thank U', hit American airwaves in October 1998, a few weeks before the album. When the full record arrived, it debuted at number one on the Billboard 200. First-week sales reached 469,054 copies, a record for a female artist at that moment. The number was staggering for an album so inward-looking. That record stood for two years, until Britney Spears outsold it with Oops!... I Did It Again.
Chart success beyond the US
The commercial success spread beyond the US. The album topped charts in Canada, New Zealand, Germany and Norway. It was a global statement that a record about healing and doubt could still move huge numbers of people. In France, the album earned a double gold award by 2002. Morissette had not repeated Jagged Little Pill's sales, but she had proven that her audience would follow her into stranger, more contemplative territory.
Not everything about the era was quiet. Morissette opened most of her concerts for the album's tour with 'Baba', a song whose heroine makes a spiritual pilgrimage to India and meets a guru called Baba. In Hindi, the word means 'father'. She also opened her MTV Unplugged performance in 1999 with the song, though it did not make the CD version of that show. Another live take of 'Baba' appeared on a benefit compilation for Kosovar refugees.
The album's afterlife kept unfolding. In 2023, Morissette announced the Triple Moon Tour, with 33 US concerts in summer 2024 to mark the album's 25th anniversary. It was a reminder that Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie had become its own kind of touchstone. The record that began with a burned-out singer seeking peace in India had turned into a body of work that fans wanted to revisit, and that Morissette was ready to celebrate onstage.