Synopsis
Alanis Morissette tries to spread messages of positivity and environmental awareness, but the people around her repeatedly reject them. At home, a parallel version of Alanis is shown inside a symbolic heart, surrounded by personal fears and emotional defenses. As the two stories converge, she recognizes that her efforts to change the world are undermined by unresolved pain in her private life. She strips away the slogans and insecurities, reconnects with her partner, and replaces "Save the Earth" with "Save the Heart."
Factoids & Trivia
- The video's central idea reflects Morissette's explanation of the song: meaningful change in the outside world has to begin with change within oneself.
- The red-clad Alanis inside the heart represents the emotional reality beneath the public activist persona. The visual contrast connects global concerns with private feelings of loneliness, insecurity, anger, and avoidance.
- The final change from "Save the Earth" to "Save the Heart" provides the video's visual punchline and summarizes its message that personal relationships and inner health cannot be ignored while pursuing larger causes.
- An earlier version premiered at the Elevate Film Festival in Los Angeles on September 15, 2007. Morissette submitted the song to the festival, whose entries were created under an unusually compressed two-day writing, shooting, and editing schedule.
- The more widely circulated official video appeared in May 2008, ahead of the release of Morissette's seventh studio album, *Flavors of Entanglement*. "Underneath" served as the album's first single.