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But the admittedly unfair comparisons end there.
Alanis Morissette sang about blowjobs in theatres, became a generational icon and stayed in the city of angels.
Lynn Miles sang about lithium sunsets and rats in trees in a land where the temperature is always 76 degrees.
She came home.
"It's just two different paths. I think we're both successful, just in different ways," says Miles, emerging from nearly seven months of touring to perform tonight at the Bronson Centre Theatre.
TOTALLY DIFFERENT LIFE
"(Morissette's) got a totally different life than I do and she operates in a musical genre that I don't operate in. (Besides) I've always felt I was kind of a late bloomer and I think that's fine. I don't think I have to be successful at 20, although it's great for her."
Of course, Miles is not that late a bloomer. Though she is approaching middle-age, she's been writing songs since her pre-teens and making a living at it for a couple decades, including years spent haunting area coffee houses and night clubs.
For a long while, Miles was content just making enough money to cover the rent, fame and fortune was not even a consideration.
But in 1995, a year after Morissette's relocation, Miles also hitched a ride to L.A. with frequent collaborator JohnCody.
"It's very, very different from Ottawa in every way, in the way people deal with each other, the way they look, the priorities, the weather, everything's totally different."
HATED IT AT FIRST
At first she hated it, offset by the ever present superficiality and cynicism, her experiences resulted in Sunset Boulevard, an anti-L.A. song which would appear on her most recent album Night In A Strange Town.
Miles returned to Ottawa to record her 1996 debut Slightly Haunted which garnered raves from the New York Times and Billboard.
Her U.S. success brought Miles back to L.A. where she began realizing the positives of the modern day Babylon, remaining there off and on for a year and a half.
"It's a city of extremes, so there's extreme wealth and extreme poverty and if you put the entertainment industry on top off that, there's just a lot to write about," Miles explains.
"From a creative point of view, it was good to go to a place that was so totally different from Ottawa."
While she was there, Miles worked on her new record, released in Canada last fall, with Cody and Joni Mitchell's producer/ex-husband Larry Klein.
Night In A Strange Town is a tight, lyrical wonder, riding a fine line between folk and pop, washed with a slight western rootsy sheen.
While she occasionally demonstrates a Sarah McLachlanesque vocal dynamic, particularly on the chorus to The One You're Waiting For, Miles' voice is predominantly familiar only for its timelessness.
"In the music business, success is viewed as something that's on a much higher level than where I'm functioning," she admits. "But if you look at what I have, I get to do what I want, I have total artistic freedom, I have a publishing deal and a record deal and both of those support me emotionally, artistically and financially.
"I travel all over the place and get to meet interesting people and I get to make records with people I respect.
"I would say I'm very successful. Monetarily? No. But is that what success is?"