Alanis Morissette comes out as pansexual

This story originally appeared on Them.

Alanis Morissette, the singer-songwriter whose breakout 1995 album Jagged Little Pill earned her a legion of LGBTQ+ fans, casually came out as pansexual in the final minutes of a podcast interview earlier this week.

The revelation came near the end of the November 3 episode of the Handsome podcast, co-hosted by Tig Notaro, Fortune Feimster, and Mae Martin. As the episode was shifting into its outro, in which guests typically promote their projects, Feimster said, “I’m sorry for the men that hurt you, but I’m not sorry for the songs that came from it.”

Feimster then joked, “Did it make you want to be a lesbian at any point?” to which the “Ironic” singer responded, “I’m pansexual, so yeah.”

Unsure if Morissette was joking, Notaro clarified, “Wait, you’re not really pansexual, are you?”

Morissette responded seriously, “I am.”

That, in turn, prompted Notaro to hilariously complain that the show’s first-ever in-person guest had waited until the hour mark to drop a headline-making comment. “You’re supposed to come into the Handsome podcast leading with, ‘I’m pansexual.’”

“You know, I like to leave it for the epilogue,” Morissette said.

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Morissette, a trailblazing staple of ’90s alternative rock, is one of the most famous female solo artists on the planet, with seven Grammy Awards and 14 Juno Awards under her belt. She has previously spoken about relationships with women, elaborating in an interview with The Advocate in 2008 about contemporaneous comments she had made on Howard Stern’s radio show about sexual experimentation. “What can I tell you about it?” she told The Advocate. “I think it's a beautiful rite of passage for everyone to play with their sexuality at some point, so I did exactly that. And it was great!”

Morissette did not expressly label her sexuality at the time, telling Stern that she considered herself “pretty heterosexual,” according to an archived show summary.

This is not the first time Morissette has made a sapphic revelation on a popular podcast. In September of this year, Morissette told Call Her Daddy host Alex Cooper that she herself came up with the idea to kiss Sarah Jessica Parker during her 2000 guest appearance on Sex and the City. “I reached out to them and I said, ‘Might it be a nice time for Carrie to experience a lesbian moment?’” Morissette recalled. “And they said, ‘Why, yes. We were thinking the same thing.’”

Pansexuality, a term many consider to be related to bisexuality, can refer to feeling attraction to all genders or to attraction that does not take gender into account. The term has come into more widespread usage since the 2010s; actress Gillian Anderson notably adopted the label earlier this year. Morissette has been married to the hip-hop artist Souleye since 2010. The couple have three children.

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