Alanis Morissette identifies as pansexual, she revealed in a podcast appearance earlier this week. The hitmaker — who just dropped her first holiday album, Good Weather for Immaculate Conception, featuring new single “To an Empath at Christmas Time” — visited the Handsome Podcast as the podcast trio’s first in-person guest for an episode that was uploaded on Nov. 3.
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“I’m sorry for the men that hurt you, but I’m not sorry for the songs that came from it. Those are pretty amazing,” comedian Fortune Feimster, who co-hosts the show with Tig Notaro and Mae Martin, said at one point toward the end of the episode, adding, “Did it make you want to be a lesbian at any point?”
“I’m pansexual, so yeah,” Morissette shared in reply. “I get everything.”
GLAAD defines someone who identifies as pansexual as “a person who has the capacity to form enduring physical, romantic, and/ or emotional attractions to any person, regardless of gender identity.” The term is different than the term bisexual, which means that a person is attracted to people of more than one gender (whereas pansexual means gender is not a determining factor in attraction).
Notaro then asked, “Wait, you’re not really pansexual, are you?” to which Morissette confirmed, “I am.”
Joking that they should’ve launched the episode with this tidbit, Notaro said, “How did I not know this?”
“You know, I like to leave it for the epilogue,” quipped Morissette. “I like to confuse people on the way out. Is it confusing?”
Morissette, who’s got three Billboard 200 No. 1 albums under her belt and whose top hit “Ironic” soared to No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1996, is married to husband Mario Treadway, aka the artist Souleye. The couple wed in 2010 and are parents to three children.
Her 14-track holiday album, Good Weather for Immaculate Conception, arrived on Friday (Nov. 6). The set was led by her recording of “Beautiful Star of Bethlehem,” featuring Brandi Carlile and Steve Martin; Morissette gets snowed-in in a music video for second single “To an Empath at Christmas Time,” released on Saturday.
“The lights are green and red and shimmering white/ These days are super dark and even quieter nights/ All this time to sense what all year felt not right/ Nothing to distract us from this heavy ride,” she sings on the opening of the midtempo “Empath.”
On the song’s chorus, Morissette says, “You don’t have to smile big for us/ Nor have a joyous time/ You won’t have to hold your breath until New Year time/ Your precious sensitivity has felt like curse and crime/ But you’re not alone with your SOS inside/ To an empath at Christmas time.”
Watch her full conversation on the Handsome Podcast below.
