The World in Her Pocket : Alanis Morissette Credits Early Brush With Fame With Helping Her Handle Success

Six Grammy nominations, including album of the year . . . More than 4.2 million albums sold . . . Runner-up in both the Rolling Stone reader and critics’ polls.

Those are enough accomplishments for a career resume, so it’s easy to see how having all of that happen to you in just 12 months could overwhelm a 21-year-old.

But, then again, you oughta know Alanis Morissette.

The Canadian singer-songwriter, whose raw, exclamatory song “You Oughta Know” was one of the defining moments in 1995 pop, appears relaxed as she sits on a bench in a women’s locker room at UC Irvine.

It’s just past 6 p.m. Thursday and the room has been cleared for her to use as a backstage headquarters in the hours before her sold-out concert at adjacent Crawford Hall. Fans have already begun lining up outside for the 8 p.m. show--part of a tour that has gone virtually nonstop since April.

The disarmingly down-to-earth singer could easily be mistaken for a student herself, dressed in a white T-shirt and warmup pants.

A show-biz veteran who began writing songs when she was 9 and was acting in a Nickelodeon cable-TV series for kids by age 10, Morissette comes across as extremely precocious and confident--yet without an ounce of pretentiousness.

Morissette, who now lives in Los Angeles, is as eager to talk about her favorite artists--who include PJ Harvey and the rock group Shudder to Think--as her own music.

“I can see how people in this business get freaked out by success, but one reason I think I have been able to avoid that is that I already went through it on a much smaller scale in Canada,” she says, referring to her teen pop stardom in Canada, where she recorded two earlier albums.

“I saw how unfulfilling it was--the whole fame, celebrity part. That’s why the best thing I ever did was just walk away and start over. In those days, I wrote music to entertain people as opposed to communicate with them.”

The fact that Morissette is playing a small, unglamorous multipurpose room on the night she received six Grammy nominations is one sign that she and her management team of Bob Cavallo and Scott Welch are trying to build a career, not simply cash in on the sudden, extraordinary success of “You Oughta Know” and the album it came from, “Jagged Little Pill.”

Given the impact of “You Oughta Know,” most young pop and rock artists would have followed the money and acclaim to more prestigious 6,000- to 10,000-seat halls by now.

By doing this marathon series of shows in small venues, Morissette is not only learning her craft as a performer, but she is also giving fans a chance to discover her in intimate surroundings. There is something special about bonding with performers in a club or small hall rather than seeing them for the first time in a vast, impersonal venue.

The decision not to release “You Oughta Know” as a commercial single also underscores Morissette’s patient approach. The emotional content of the explosive song, which expresses a woman’s fury after romantic betrayal, was so strong that there was fear the singer would be stereotyped by its angry-young-woman tone, Welch says.

Because anyone who liked the record enough on the radio would have to buy the album to get it, the chances of stereotyping would be lessened because listeners would be exposed to a wide range of emotions. The themes on the Maverick Records collection range from the self-affirmation of “Hand in My Pocket” to the tender childhood anxiety of “Perfect.”

Even so, Morissette has had to battle against the image of the “angry white female,” which is how Rolling Stone described her in a recent cover photo. Morissette acknowledges moments of frustration when the song--with its fiery, R-rated language--started getting attention last year.

“Most of my music is at least partly autobiographical, but no one song is all of me,” she says. “Each one is just a piece. For instance, I wrote ‘You Oughta Know’ in an afternoon, an afternoon when I must have been trying to come to terms with that dysfunctional part of my subconscious.”

Realizing the enormous expectations now surrounding her, the dark-haired singer is in no rush to finish a second album. She doesn’t expect to go into the studio with producer and songwriting partner Glen Ballard until the fall and may not have a new album ready until next year.

Onstage a few hours later, Morissette is transformed into a performer of remarkable energy and intensity as she performs “You Oughta Know,” “Hand in My Pocket” and other songs from the album before an eager, enthusiastic audience. But the most striking moments are when she and her band introduce two new songs.

“King of Intimidation” and “Death of Cinderella” showcase the alternative pop-rock bite and mainstream accessibility that characterize the hit album, and both are well received.

Perhaps the most encouraging thing about Morissette’s success is that it may show record company executives and radio programmers that there is a wider mainstream interest in artists with an alternative edge--a group that includes such vital female writers as PJ Harvey and Liz Phair.

Although Morissette’s success stamps her as a mainstream artist in some people’s eyes, her music and instincts share a kinship with the alternative camp. As with Harvey and the other challenging artists, there is a sense of mission about Morissette.

“I’m very excited about what is happening in music these days,” she said before going onstage. “I don’t see it as a gender issue--just a lot of artists, many of whom happen to be women, who are trying to express their feelings with complete honesty and without apology. You might say they are just trying to be human.”