The 2023 CMT Music Awards' slate of performances included multiple odes to sounds outside of country that influence many of the genre's top current stars. Beyond Cody Johnson helping front a pair of Lynyrd Skynyrd covers, Darius Rucker collaborating with the Black Crowes and Carly Pearce going ska-punk alongside Gwen Stefani, a quartet of country music's most gifted women joined Alanis Morissette on Sunday night (April 2) in reviving folksy alt-rock's mainstream moment from the '90s.
Morissette proved she's still got it by performing her global 1995 hit "You Oughta Know" with Lainey Wilson, Madeline Edwards, Morgan Wade and Ingrid Andress. After the four country stars took turns delivering the opening lines into a fisheye lens, Morissette popped the crowd by singing lead for the makeshift five-piece.
The genre boundary-blurring moment was in celebration of the 10th anniversary of CMT's Next Women of Country initiative, which spotlights an annual class of rising artists.
"Anytime I can support women expressing themselves, and feeling safe in a world that isn't always the safest," Morissette told Entertainment Tonight. "Every industry, in general, is seen through the male lens, so to have a female lens be presented as a gang is really... I'll show up!"
Morissette's groundbreaking 1995 album Jagged Little Pill has sold over 30 million copies, putting it in the same rare air as iconic releases by the Beatles, Michael Jackson, Led Zeppelin, the Eagles and Shania Twain. Such songs as "You Oughta Know" and "Ironic" would've been unavoidable nearly 28 years ago for country fans and artists, even if they didn't follow other styles of popular music. It's no surprise, then, that a song dripping with righteous indignation and soaring guitar hooks had the live crowd in Austin on its feet for a singalong.
