Hands Clean

Like her breakout hit "You Oughta Know," this song finds Alanis Morissette lashing out at a former love. She has never said who either song is about, but has confirmed that she had specific guys in mind. "Hands Clean" implies a relationship with an older man who was a kind of mentor to her ("You're a kind of my protégé and one day you'll say you learned all you know from me"). She started writing songs and recording when she was just 10 years old, and was 16 when her first album, Alanis, was released in her native Canada. During this time she was constantly surrounded by older men who worked with her and guided her career. Alanis found herself attracted to many of these men, whom she found more intellectually stimulating than her younger peers. Relationships developed thanks to a combination of nebulous boundaries and a maturity that belied her age. "I always felt like I was much older than I was chronologically, so it was a quandary for me, because I needed to date older men," she told the journalist Gavin Martin in 2004. Asked how she felt about these guys, Alanis replied: "I feel sadness, empathy. I think, 'Wow, what were you doing dating a 17 year old?' I get it too. When I think back to who I was as a 17 year old, I completely understand why they would have been drawn to me."

Alanis explained that she was still at least on speaking terms with the person she is singing about in this song. "I haven't spoken with him about it, but I will one day," she said in 2004. "It's not a closed door."

This was the lead single from Morissette's highly anticipated fifth album, Under Rug Swept (her previous studio effort, Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie, was issued in 1998). The song became her sixth Canadian #1 hit, and her last Top 40 entry on the US Hot 100.