Alanis Morissette Trivia
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69 free Alanis Morissette trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Alanis Morissette trivia quiz follows the Queen of Alt-Rock Angst from Ottawa kids' TV and Canadian dance-pop to Jagged Little Pill, the 33-million-selling album that made her the youngest Album of the Year winner, and on to Broadway. The easy questions cover the album, "Ironic", Glen Ballard, God in Dogma and Ryan Reynolds. Medium questions dig into the Chili Peppers on "You Oughta Know", the India trip behind "Thank U", the Juno bathrobe stunt, the Starbucks exclusive and the "My Humps" prank. The hard and expert questions are for people who own the deluxe editions: the stolen Geffen demo, Lahr, "Too Hot", the Hungarian and French Prayer Cycle vocals, Willie Nelson's rhythm guitar, the 469,000 first-week record and the double-diamond certification. Every answer was checked against a reference page and each question carries its citation, so the dates, chart positions and names can be trusted. Difficulty is shown on every question, which makes it easy to build a round for a 90s music quiz night or play the whole set. When you finish, try our other 1990s alternative rock quizzes.
30 of 69 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which Canadian city was Alanis Morissette born?
Ottawa
Ottawa. As a child she sang at the city's hospitals and community centres alongside Dominic D'Arcy, a police officer known locally as the singing policeman.
Q 02Alanis's twin brother Wade built his own career teaching which discipline?
Yoga
Yoga. Wade, born 12 minutes before her, studied with yoga masters in his 20s and went on to tour, leading workshops and kirtan concerts where the audience chants mantras back to his guitar.
Q 03What was the title of Alanis Morissette's breakthrough 1995 album?
Jagged Little Pill
Jagged Little Pill. Her own team expected it to sell a few hundred thousand copies at best; it has sold about 33 million worldwide.
Q 04Which producer co-wrote and produced Alanis's 1995 breakthrough album?
Glen Ballard
Glen Ballard. In 1994 their shared music publisher asked him to try writing a song with an unknown 19-year-old from Canada, and he ended up giving her the run of his home studio.
Q 05The title of Alanis's 1995 album comes from a line in which of its songs?
You Learn
You Learn. People at her label tipped it as the obvious single before the album came out, yet other songs were released first; when its turn came it reached No. 1 on US pop radio.
Q 06Which label, co-founded by Madonna, released Alanis's 1995 breakthrough album?
Maverick
Maverick. Its young talent scout Guy Oseary was sold 30 seconds into the first song he heard, and the deal was done almost at once, after nearly every major label had passed.
Q 07Which two Red Hot Chili Peppers played on "You Oughta Know"?
Flea and Dave Navarro
Flea and Dave Navarro. Called in by her label once the song was written, they took its music apart and rebuilt it around her finished vocal; Flea thought the original bassline was weak.
Q 08Which Full House actor has claimed to be the ex who inspired Alanis's "You Oughta Know"?
Dave Coulier
Dave Coulier, who dated her in the early 1990s. He has both claimed and denied being the song's target, and she has always refused to say who it is about.
Q 09Which single was Alanis's biggest hit and her highest-charting on the Billboard Hot 100, at No. 4?
Ironic
Ironic. She has said she almost left it off the album: it was an early writing exercise that she kept only because the people around her insisted.
Q 10In the video for her biggest hit, Alanis drives through a winter landscape while playing whom?
Multiple passengers in the car
Multiple passengers in the car: she plays the driver and all three riders. She has said each stands for a side of her, and that the frolicking one in the green sweater is closest to the real her.
Q 11'Your House', the hidden track that ends Alanis's 1995 album, is performed in which style?
A cappella
A cappella. With no instruments behind her, she sings of letting herself into an absent lover's house, trying on his robe and playing his CDs, until she finds a love letter in someone else's handwriting.
Q 12Which band beat Alanis to the 1996 Best New Artist Grammy?
Hootie & the Blowfish
Hootie & the Blowfish. She was still the night's biggest winner, taking home four Grammys, Album of the Year among them.
Q 13Which instrument did Alanis try for the first time while recording her 1995 album, then play on 'Hand in My Pocket'?
Harmonica
Q 21Alanis played which role in Kevin Smith's 1999 film Dogma?
God
God. Kevin Smith first offered her the lead; she turned it down, later phoned to say she regretted it, and he handed her the one small part still open.
Q 22Which Police song did Alanis cover on her 1999 MTV Unplugged album?
King of Pain
King of Pain. Sting wrote it in Jamaica just after his first marriage broke up, when a black spot on the sun struck him as a picture of the state he was in.
Q 23Alanis's 2005 greatest-hits album led with her cover of which Seal song?
Crazy
Crazy. She first sang it for a Gap advert, and said choosing it as a single poked fun at how she had been seen since the 1990s: first angry, then spiritual and 'kinda crazy'.
Harmonica. She says her producer simply handed her one in the studio, and the demo take of 'Hand in My Pocket', her first go at the instrument, is the version on the album.
Q 14Which future Foo Fighters drummer played on Alanis's 1995–96 world tour?
Taylor Hawkins
Taylor Hawkins. When Dave Grohl needed a drummer in 1997 he assumed Hawkins would never leave her far bigger tour, but Hawkins volunteered and stayed with the band for 25 years.
Q 15Which band opened for Alanis on her summer 1996 tour of US amphitheatres?
Radiohead
Radiohead. They used the slot to try out unreleased songs such as 'Paranoid Android'; Jonny Greenwood later recalled playing to 'an audience full of quietly despairing teenage girls'.
Q 16Where did Alanis travel after her 18-month world tour, a trip that inspired "Thank U"?
India
India. She went with her mother, two aunts and two friends to recover from the strain of sudden fame, and the song's chorus thanks the country by name.
Q 17How does Alanis appear throughout her "Thank U" video as she walks city streets and rides the subway?
Completely nude
Completely nude, with her long hair covering her chest. The idea came to her in the shower; she called it a symbol of being raw and unguarded in places where people usually want protection.
Q 18Alanis's "Uninvited", which won two Grammys, was recorded for the soundtrack of which 1998 film?
City of Angels
City of Angels. A bootleg copy reached a Los Angeles radio station and the internet weeks before release, so the label rushed the whole soundtrack to stations to stop them airing pirated versions.
Q 19What was the title of Alanis's 1998 follow-up to her breakthrough album?
Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie
Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie. She made it after stepping away for about 18 months once her world tour ended, and its 17 tracks traded the fury of her breakthrough for introspective songs tinged with Eastern sounds.
Q 20In 2000, which star nearly tripled Alanis's 1998 US first-week sales record for a woman?
Britney Spears
Britney Spears, whose Oops!... I Did It Again sold 1.3 million in a week against Alanis's 469,000. Alanis's fast start soon faded, and the album sold a fraction of what her 1995 breakthrough had.
Q 24With which singer-songwriter did Alanis co-headline the 5 and a Half Weeks Tour in 1999?
Tori Amos
Tori Amos. A year earlier Amos had said she liked Alanis but could hardly listen to her 1995 album, complaining that its sound 'would make a dog's ears hurt'.
Q 25Which 2002 album was the first Alanis wrote and produced entirely on her own?
Under Rug Swept
Under Rug Swept. Its lead single 'Hands Clean', widely read as her account of a secret teenage relationship with a much older music-business figure, won her a Juno as producer.
Q 26What did Alanis reveal under her bathrobe while hosting the 2004 Juno Awards, in a jab at US broadcast censorship?
A flesh-coloured bodysuit
A flesh-coloured bodysuit, adorned with fake body parts. Two months after Janet Jackson's Super Bowl exposure, she told the crowd that Canadians 'still think the human body is beautiful'.
Q 27US radio refused Alanis's 2004 single 'Everything' until she swapped a swear word in its first line for which word?
Nightmare
Nightmare. Canadian stations kept playing the original, and when she hosted Canada's Juno Awards weeks later she said US radio was living in an era of fear.
Q 28Alanis's 2005 acoustic re-recording of her 1995 album was sold exclusively through which coffee chain?
Starbucks
Starbucks had the album to itself for six weeks, and the HMV chain in Canada hit back by pulling her other albums from its shelves.
Q 29Alanis's 2005 song "Wunderkind" earned a Golden Globe nomination for which film?
The Chronicles of Narnia
The Chronicles of Narnia. After seeing a rough cut of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe she wrote the song on a Friday and recorded it the next day, singing as the youngest sibling, Lucy.
Q 30Alanis's April Fools' Day 2007 viral video was a mournful piano cover of which Black Eyed Peas song?
My Humps
My Humps. Fergie of the Black Eyed Peas found the slow, sorrowful version hilarious and sent her a cake shaped like a pair of buttocks.