Remember when you were a teenager and you got your heart broken? You were sure you would never get over it -- but you did. That, in a nutshell, is the difference between you and Alanis Morissette.

Living, breathing proof that global fame, vast fortune and unparalleled success do not buy happiness, Alanis spends much of her enjoyable but unexceptional fourth studio album So-Called Chaos dwelling on the same topics she was obsessed with nearly 10 years ago on her first album -- including, apparently, that same sitcom dude who inspired You Oughta Know.

"Fourteen years, 30 minutes, 15 seconds I've held this grudge," she tells us. "Eleven songs, four full journals ... a piece of every record." Not that she's counting or anything.

Now, granted, the song in question -- a surprisingly soothing ballad called This Grudge -- is her attempt to finally, thankfully, let it go once and for all. "I wanna forgive for the both of us," she says. And that, as Stuart Smalley would say, is OK. Moreover, if whatshisname were Alanis's only outstanding issue, we'd be happy to forgive, forget and move on with her.

But no. On the 10 relentlessly confessional tracks of So-Called Chaos, Morissette is still hauling around more baggage than J.Lo on safari. The low self-esteem, the self-abasing desire to please, the romantic insecurity, the insistence on defining herself through her relationships -- they all surface over and again in her typically wordy, repetitive lyrics to Excuses, Doth I Protest Too Much, and the tellingly titled Spineless.

Musically, things are also pretty much what you'd expect, with the usual assortment of stylish and professionally constructed jawbreaker rockers, lightly crunchy pop and soft-centred ballads -- though there seem to be a few more synthesizers squiggling on these tunes than we remember hearing on her last album Under Rug Swept.

Admittedly, Alanis does make a few baby steps of progress on the lyrical side -- Knees of My Bees is an innocently giddy expression of love, Out is Through sees the light at the end of the tunnel, and Everything is about embracing the good in your lover (and your life) along with the bad.

Thing is, these are the sorts of emotional epiphanies you're supposed to have when you're a teenager, not when you're a woman pushing 30.

That's another big difference between you and Alanis. (More on Alanis Morissette)

Track Listing
1. Eight Easy Steps
2. Out Is Through
3. Excuses
4. Doth I Protest Too Much
5. Knees Of My Bees
6. Not All Me
7. So-Called Chaos
8. This Grudge
9. Spineless
10. Everything