wish that I liked Alanis Morissette, just like I wish that I could drink a cup of coffee in the morning without having to go potty directly after. But I just can’t.

Listening to Morissette’s newest CD, “Under Rug Swept,” makes me grind my teeth and remember why I walked out on her set when she played in concert with Tori Amos a few years back.

The first track of the album, “21 Things I Want in a Lover,” sounds how the teacher from the “Peanuts” cartoons might sound if she were trying to be soulful. It drones on and on … and on. And just when you thought your head couldn’t hurt any more, track two, “Narcissus,” proves that it can. It has a computerized guitar effect running throughout that could induce seizures in a healthy listener.

The third track, “Hands Clean,” otherwise known as “the one they play on the radio” is predictably the best song on the CD, which isn’t saying much. The radio-friendly toe-tapper features less screechy vocals and a jazzy melody, but then again, so does the Oscar Meyer jingle.

As Madonna’s label baby, holding the throne as the most recognizable hair flapper on Maverick Records, Alanis has made a turn for the worse with her third album. The colorful artwork on the cover and the sappy power ballads together seem like an imposter trying to duplicate the Fiona Apple flair of old. It just doesn’t work.

Overall, this husky-voiced yelper seems to have exceeded her prime and should stick to lyrics that make mention of people doing dirty things to each other in movie theaters like she did in her most famous song, “You Oughta Know.”

There was a time and a place for female singers who could fill a whole CD with songs that lament their first period, how they refuse to shave their legs and how they would love to beat up their ex-boyfriends, but that time seems to have passed. If I was offered $100 to listen to “Under Rug Swept,” I think I sadly would have to decline.

Poor Alanis, there’s always the Lilith Fair to look forward to.