Alanis Morissette and Joan Jett fit into a strange political moment

Vice President Kamala Harris, 59, walks a fine line between the younger baby boomers and the older Gen Xers. But it was Gen Z who bestowed her the title “Selfish,” after British pop icon Charlie XCX’s latest album.

For a generation that automatically associates the word “brat” with spoiled brats, several outlets have explained what the term means to Gen Z. The Independent defined the word as “an icon, a symbol of authenticity and confidence in one’s own right.”

The Brat meme became a social media phenomenon (and has likely already died out, given the short half-life of memes), but Harris undoubtedly energized the electorate, with her campaign raising more than $120 million since its inception.

But she’s not only a driving force for content creators and internet warriors, she’s also inspiring women her age.

Electro-dance pop is no joke to us: give us the iconic, rebellious, raw, female power of Joan Jett, 65, and Alanis Morissette, 50, who are currently touring together.

Morissette, a seven-time Grammy Award winner with more than 75 million album sales, opened her show at the Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre in Maryland Heights with powerful feminist graphics projected across all of the screens.

As she belted out the lyrics to “Hand in my Pocket,” a message appeared on the screen: “No country has achieved gender equality.”

That message resonates differently now, as America has the chance to elect its first female president after Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in 2016 but was defeated in the Electoral College.

This was before the protections of Roe v. Wade were lost, when our daughters still had the rights our mothers and grandmothers fought for.

Everything is different now.

Back in January, a friend bought me tickets to see “Jagged Little Pill” with her. My brain mistakenly thought I was going to a Morissette concert, which I’d never seen, rather than a Broadway musical. My husband had read a preview of the jukebox musical in the newspaper and let me know the morning of the performance that I’d misunderstood. I had time to get back on track before showing up to the well-heeled audience in my worn-out jeans.

When I found out Morissette’s tour was coming to St. Louis, it felt like fate. I hadn’t thought much about her in decades, but we’re both in a crossroads year, when our country faces a crossroads in an election that will determine our fate for generations to come.

Maybe she needed to revisit her discography, the soundtrack of her college years. The smash hit “You Oughta Know,” from the album “Jagged Little Pill,” is a disparaging, angry, and vulnerable message to a former lover. Over the decades, many of her early listeners have moved on to stable relationships. They may find that the drama from the outside world is louder and takes up more space than the personal minefields of their 20s and 30s.

Politics have always been personal, but lately they have become so pervasive, so angry and so anxiety-inducing that it’s hard to escape. We’re all riding a rollercoaster of emotions in a tumultuous election cycle the likes of which many of us have never experienced before.

Another Alani classic that captures our political moment in the cycle of life. “You Learn” is a thoughtful meditation on dealing with the misfortunes life brings. You learn by living, loving, crying, losing, and bleeding.

“Throw it away (caution breaks the wind).”

Wait until the smoke clears.”

As we all waited for the dust to settle in the days immediately following President Joe Biden’s decision to drop his nomination, it was clear to see how dramatically the political energy had shifted in the past few days.

The atmosphere at the concert was one of unabashed and fearless women, and reflected the changing political climate.

I decided to try wearing a T-shirt I’d bought a few days after the Supreme Court’s overtly political decision on presidential immunity: a plain gray shirt with Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s words, “I fear for our democracy, and I dissent,” printed in white font.

I wanted to make a subtle statement that would be understood by news junkies and political nerds, and see if anyone would understand what I was trying to say. How many people at a rock concert have time to read all the text on a stranger’s shirt?

A perky blonde woman sitting in the row in front of me, dancing to Jet’s rock anthem, met my eye and pointed to my shirt, so I pulled it down and straightened it out so she could read the lyrics.

She smiled, nodded approvingly and raised her hand amp in a rock and roll salute. The message got across — rock and roll, sis.

We cried and we learned.