Alanis Morissette Talks Starring With Her Husband & Kids in Gap Holiday Campaign, New Christmas EP
Billboard spoke with the singer about working with family in Gap's holiday campaign.
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Family fun for the holidays. Alanis Morissette is used to being center stage but the Canadian singer stepped outside the box in a “heartwarming” new holiday campaign for Gap.
Morissette, who previously appeared in a 2005 Gap commercial with John Legend, Keith Urban and Jason Mraz, stars in the brand’s latest holiday campaign alongside her husband, Mario “Souleye” Treadway, and their three kids.
“Integrating my family into the campaign made it all the more heartwarming for me,” Morissette told Billboard in an email interview earlier this week.
“I gently warned everyone that the shoot might be an exercise in organized chaos,” she said of working with her family. “I have a pretty clear boundary between work and personal life. This was an example of us stepping outside of the more private approach we take and allowed for us to express how important relationships are in each of our lives.”
Gap commissioned a group of “gifted individuals” for the campaign, which celebrates the “holiday season as a gift.” Besides Morissette and her family, the campaign features podcaster, author and purpose coach Jay Shetty with his wife, cookbook author Radhi Devlukia; composer/songwriter and folk artist Diana Gordon; model, singer and actress Rola; Lester Walker, Pierre Serrao and Jon Gray founders of the chef collective Ghetto Gastro; model Florence Huntington-Whiteley; model and designer Elsa Hosk with her daughter Tuuli; and body-positive model Sabina Karlsson with her family.
Staying true to her personal style, Morissette sports loose-fitting, comfortable clothing in the Gap campaign, including men’s ’90s Loose Denim Jeans ($79.95) paired with Gap’s Velvet Boyfriend Shirt ($34). The look matches Morissette’s “androgynous approach” to styling herself.
“I love the idea of combining glam with casual. Haute with leisure, dirty with fancy. This was a perfect example of care combined with mellow, classic pieces. Perfectly set up for personalizing with jewelry pieces or accessories.”
In music news, Morissette released a cover of George Michael’s “Last Christmas” from her holiday EP on Friday (Nov. 3). The four-song EP also includes covers of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s “Happy Xmas (War is Over)” and Christmas carols “Little Drummer Boy” and “What Child is This?”
“I have been obsessed with George Michael my entire life and had the pleasure of meeting him backstage at one of my shows. WHAM! was a favorite band when I was younger,” she explained. “George’s voice (velvet and dreamy) was super inspiring to me,” she explained. “Covering ‘Last Christmas’ is a way to mark the holiday time as well as bow down to George himself.”
The holidays are a great time to catch up on festive music and musicals like Jagged Little Pill. The musical, based off Morissette’s pivotal 1995 album, will be at Toronto’s Princess of Wales Theater from Oct. 24-Nov. 26 and Knoxville, Tenn. from Dec. 5-10.
Jagged Little Pill the musical will head to Sacramento next year along with St. Louis, Orlando, Fla., Kalamazoo, Mich., Charleston S.C., Dallas, Texas and other cities.
“I love that this musical touches on topics that I care about so deeply,” said Morissette. “The emphasis is on healing, connection, the pain of rupture or the loneliness of a sense of disconnection. And how to remain connected in the face of conflict or challenge or loss. Such a celebration of how we define ourselves as we go along. The musical has the delicate combination of super vulnerable, activism, self-expression and the healing power of showing up with empathy.”
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