Under Rug Swept - Themes

Themes

Morissette has said that during the writing and recording of the album, she noticed a unifying theme emerging of "the desire to mend unions and bridge gaps. Whether it be between genders or between human beings, between spirits." She said that when she began working on the album, she was at "the middle of the beginning of the end of a relationship", and that entering the studio and writing new material "would propel me to face some of the truths that were scaring me. Inevitably, we ended up breaking up, so the record kind of followed the grieving of it, then the proverbial phoenix rising and continuing to grow." Under Rug Swept was also influenced by the extensive travelling Morissette did between recording sessions, particularly her stay at a Navajo reservation: "The sense of community the Navajo people really focus on, there's a similar sense of community I felt when I traveled, when we toured through the Middle East", she explained. "It permeates what I yearn for and I try to create it as best as I can through the songs". She described the album as melodically and sonically "more structured" than her previous album, Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie (1998).

The first track, "21 Things I Want in a Lover", features Morissette listing the qualities she looks for in a partner. "There's a part of this song where I'm joking, but there's a whole part of this song where I'm dead serious", she said. "Because the palm sweating, heart palpitating beginnings of a relationship often result in a huge amount of incompatibility, so the concept of compatibility is so much more important to me as I get older." "Narcissus" describes, as Morissette puts it, "that dichotomy of loving someone and really wanting it to work and wanting to bridge the gap and bridge the chasm and, yet at the same time, being totally repulsed by the qualities that are being presented and the pain that comes from it." She said the intention of writing "Hands Clean" was "to get to a place where I could be as truthful and as honest as I possibly could be about certain relationships in my past ... oftentimes I feel by not speaking the truth, by being silent, there's an element of an untruth in that ... sometimes can feel just as horrible as a lie to me."

"Flinch", the fourth track, was written about an experience Morissette had during which she almost ran into a man who had a profound effect on her: "I was surprised at how many years had past but still I was responding to the situation as though I had been spending time with him two minutes earlier ... I do believe that I will be able to get to a point where hearing his name or even running into him or hearing from him won't trigger me as much as it did and still does." With "So Unsexy", Morissette said she was "really trying to get into the underbelly of some of my insecurities and why little tiny things that are innocuous and inconsequential are translated in my own mind as to be taken so personally ... as long as I have my own back, it's not as scary and it's not as horrifying." In "Precious Illusions" she discusses "the difference between really being alive and really embracing the reason why I'm here on this earth versus my just being asleep and sleep walking and accepting the status quo and accepting somewhat of a suffering mentality to being here. It really is my responsibility to distinguish the difference between the two and choose which one I want."

Track seven on the album, "That Particular Time", documents a breakup and "the three distinct chapters in the relationship" Morissette was going through. " took many different forms, and I was beating myself up for a long time for being in a relationship that just didn't feel right", she said. "But then I realized that it was a very loving act for me to stick it out for a minute or two to really kind of see whether there was something worth continuing to explore in a romantic way." She said of "A Man", which is written from a male point-of-view as a response to "Narcissus", "For once I try to feel a bit of empathy and to imagine how it feels being a man in these confusing times ... I try to react as an honourable man to the vibes of erroneous machos who are damaging the image of my sex." "You Owe Me Nothing in Return" is, in Morissette's words, "about the real definition of what love is ... wanting for someone that you love what they want for themselves. And at the same time not sacrificing my own life and my thoughts and my own beliefs. Supporting someone in their choices and at the same time being able to express what mine are, even if they differ, is the ultimate healthy, loving interaction."

The tenth and penultimate track, "Surrendering", was the last song Morissette wrote for the album. According to her, it is "about the gratitude that I feel for someone tapping into the courage that it takes to allow themselves to be loved and to drop the defenses and fears ... And how thrilling it is for me to be able to be let in that kind of way ... It's a very peaceful, joyful song". Morissette considers "Utopia" a summary of the feminine and masculine elements in the relationship chronicled in the album: "For me, it's like they're sitting together in the same car and are finally driving down the same road in the same direction and there's a meeting of both worlds." She said that when she wrote it, she knew it would be the last track.

Morissette wrote several political songs such as "Awakening Americans" and "Symptoms" during the making of the album, but she decided not to include such material in spite of an online petition lobbying for their release. Morissette said she doesn't "resonate" with overtly political songs because they are "removed too much" from her personal experiences: "I love sitting up at two in the morning talking religion, but when it comes to my songs, it's just rambling, soapbox, obnoxious", she said. ("Awakening Americans" and "Symptoms" were released as B-sides.)