Eight Easy Steps

"Eight Easy Steps" is a rock song written by Alanis Morissette for her sixth studio album, So-Called Chaos. The album's opening track, it was released in 2004 as the So-Called Chaos's third single. The song may be seen as discussing self-help, with the message that it is the "course of a lifetime", but the help that is actually "offered" in the song is tongue-in-cheek, with lines like "How to lie to yourself and thereby to everyone else" and "How to control someone to be a carbon copy of you."

The song reached number nine on the Billboard Hot Dance Music/Club Play and number 27 on the Adult Top 40.

Music and structure

"Eight Easy Steps" is a post-grunge song composed in the key of A♭ major. It is written in common time and moves at a moderately fast 132 beats per minute. Its verses are set to a Middle Eastern beat. Morissette's vocal range spans nearly an octave and a half, from A♭₃ to C₅.

Critical reception

Stylus Magazine gave the song a negative review, finding it a "flaccid and innocuous" attempt to recreate the hard rock sound of her 1995 single "You Oughta Know".PopMatters disagreed, commenting that the chorus's "one shining moment of Alanis Anger" was one of the album's few energetic moments.The New York Times called the song "triumphant", and The Guardian found the song's distortion effective, as well as its "Nine Inch Nails-like metallic rage".