Music: Over the Humps

In the 12 years since the album "Jagged Little Pill" began its relentless march to four Grammys and more than 30 million in worldwide sales, the public has seen several different sides of Alanis Morissette.

There's the independent singer/songwriter who shook off rumors that she owed her success more to producer Glen Ballard than her own talents, scoring subsequent hits such as "Hands Clean" under her own steam. There's the budding actor who played God in director Kevin Smith's controversial film "Dogma" and parlayed small roles in quirky TV fare such as "Curb Your Enthusiasm" into water-cooler buzz.

And then there's the star of the no-budget video for her spare, stripped-down reinvention of the Black Eyed Peas single "My Humps" -- the alt-pop songstress impersonating urban club diva Fergie, alternately shimmying and playfully pounding on the pimped-out dudes who get too grabby with her lady parts.

"I was literally sitting in the studio, writing with [producer] Guy Sigsworth, and I remember at one point thinking I wanted to write something really simple," she says. "I turned to him and said, 'I wish I could write a song like "My Humps" ' -- that I could sing it, but I couldn't write it. And there was this long pause, and he said, 'So sing it.'"

Some actor and comedian friends from the Canadian-born artist's adopted hometown of Los Angeles came over and filmed the tune's hilarious images in her garage.

"It was that simple," says Morissette. "We threw it up [on YouTube] to see if 600 people would get a kick out of it."

She laughs off the idea that the viral video was anything other than a lark aimed at relieving some studio-session stress. Some of the 11 million people who watched it during the past nine months, however, undoubtedly had trouble reconciling its decidedly not-so-serious Morissette with the vengeful scorned lover of her late-'90s signature "You Oughta Know."

Some new 'Flavors'

Her forthcoming fifth CD of all-new material, "Flavors of Entanglement," should reassure fans that a knack for penning provocative, baldly confessional songs remains among Morissette's many creative talents. More musically eclectic and laced with more exotic instrumentation than some previous efforts, "Flavors," planned for April release, sounds in keeping with its au thor's obvious need to keep challenging herself. Yet the hooks are still there, as are the lyrics that shrink the big questions down to resonant internal monologue, equal parts candor and wonder.

Morissette credits the album's new stylistic touches to her collaboration with Sigsworth (whose résumé boasts names like Björk and Seal), and its existential crises and breakthroughs to looking to her present, rather than incidents past, for inspiration (much of "Flavors" is rumored to have come from the dissolution of her engagement to actor Ryan Reynolds).

She found the experience more difficult, but ultimately more therapeutic.

"Yes, because I was in the midst of the grief and the brokenness," she says. "To be honest, it was a life raft for me. If I didn't have the structure of showing up at the studio every day, it would've been ugly. Well, it was ugly, but it would've been uglier."

Despite its characteristic intimacies, listeners in search of a return to the Alanis of old won't find much beyond a sort of kindred spirituality and, of course, her inimitable voice. There's plenty of what she's always done so well, but Morissette has no intention of covering familiar territory when so much remains unexplored.

"Ultimately, I always write songs to entertain me," she says. "It's the sharing that becomes a social act or a service. For me, the act of songwriting is very self-indulgent, very self-entertaining."

In fact, she isn't sure she could do again exactly what she's done before even if she wanted to.

"It's like you're an Indian woman, and somebody says, 'I really need you to be from the U.K. right now,'" says Morissette with a laugh. "You go, 'Uh, well, I'd like to help you out, but I really can't do that,' and it stops there."

Scott Harrell is a musician and writer from St. Petersburg, Fla.