Alanis Morissette is set to become the Guardian's Weekend magazine's new advice columnist, succeeding Molly Ringwald in the same spot .
Ahead of her first column - which will appear on 16 January - Morissette spoke to Rory Carroll in an exclusive interview which will appear in tomorrow's Weekend magazine, covering everything from her early life, her phenomenal rise to stardom at the age of 21 , to working with the likes of Justin Bieber, Taylor Swift and Demi Lovato.
The artist once labelled “an angry young woman" feels that she is a born agony aunt , and has recently started recording podcasts about relationships and wellbeing on her own site . Talking about her family life growing up in Ottawa, Morissette claims that 'family therapist' has “[...] been the role I’ve played my whole life – parents, brothers, even extended family members, that was the role I took on, because I suppose I had this combination of intuition and empathy. I cut my teeth, basically, listening for a living.” Talking about her own use of therapists she says “I’m definitely a therapy girl – I think that’s quite obvious. I don’t want to say everyone should [have therapy], but do I think everyone might benefit from it? Yes. But I’m aware that a lot of people have great resistance to it ."
When speaking about her music, Morissette explains how her hit-song Ironic has haunted her: “I’ve certainly had my ass kicked for a very long time over the malapropism” of the word. Not anticipating the song's success, she and her co-writer thought "let’s not be precious about it. But perhaps, in retrospect, we should have been.”
Despite her success, Morissette talks about an epiphany 10 years ago when she realised she didn’t want to be “that woman who, at 70, has all these awards and is dying alone”. Opening up about her marriage to rapper and DJ Mario “Souleye” Treadway, she describes how “anyone who meets us often marvels at how different we are ."
The full interview is out in this edition of the Guardian’s Weekend magazine. Alanis Morissette’s new advice column begins on 16 January. Readers can email their problems about life, love, work and everything else to ask.alanis@theguardian.com
