Iis "Ironic" by Alanis Morissete ironic because it doesn't include any irony in the lyrics, or is she an idiot?

the quality of an occourance being so unexpected or ill-timed, it seems to be deliberately perverse.

Plus I think English is her second language - maybe "ironic" was an imperfect match for some French term that has no exact English equivalent.

Or maybe she IS just an idiot, who knows or cares?

God the 90s were awful.

To be fair, "A bit shabby" wouldn't make a good title for the song.

The Mr Play It Safe one might work b/c I think you're supposed to expect that his fears would be shown to be groundless. And also because he takes the disaster in stride ("Isn't this nice?") even though he'd been deathly afraid of it all his life. Unless he was using verbal irony.

(note, you might want to hit crtl+A or something else smart when you get to that page as it's in white writing on a white background)

Furthermore I think Byrne's routine only ever worked based on the same vague idiotic buzzwave that the sale of the concept of irony rode for Alanis. The man's a twat.

on this basis many things in this song are, indeed, ironic - maybe it's you who doesn't know what Irony is?

horrible song though, of course.

Doesn't this make the word ironic pretty meaningless? And you a bit of a knob?

people stopped doing this in the 90's? gimme a fuckin' break. and a kit kat bar please.

I think the song wavers between good examples of irony and weak ones - a traffic jam when you're already late, for example, is rather commonplace and not-particularly-surprising. But I suspect this was more a case Alanis grasping for examples that would fit her rhyming pattern than her actually totally missing the point.

-- Dorian Lynskey (doria...), June 2nd, 2004."

I'm sure her definition of irony is perfectly cromulant.

It might be ok if you're not hearing his horrible whiny voice in your head while reading it

Jesus fucking Christ who gives a shit

it's like raaaaiiin on your wedding day
it's a freeee riiiiide when you've already paid
it's bursting into a thread that's been dead for 21 years shouting "jesus fucking christ who gives a shit"

I wrote two pieces back then, one for publication and one for my homepage, pointing out the various things I found silly about Alanis Morrissette. With humour and not maliciously, I think, but who knows--I think either one of them would get me run out of town today.

fascinating

Is that not relevant to the two previous posts?

I mean, other than underscoring my point.

"i wrote something a long time ago. i'd get hated for it today."

is that not fascinating?

One person seemed to say that this thread making fun of an Alanis Morrissette song is pointless, then the original poster countered that it's still a silly song--a neat encapsulation of how attitudes about her have changed in 30 years. That's what my post was about. So honestly, I have no idea what you're whining about.

whining?

fascinating, tell me more.

Nice homage to "Proceed, governor."

"You Oughta Know" probably the best song on Jagged Little Pill and shows Alanis's range as a singer. Starts off breathy and demure like, I don't know, Dar Williams or someone, and gets progressively more aggressive through each stanza, reaching a kind of Bob Mould nasal whine on the pre-chorus and then full-on James Hetfield growls on the chorus. Great lyrics too, that "But you're still alive" line still gives me the chills.

My appreciation has grown in the last 15 years every time someone goes for it at karaoke.

xxp you're the kind of person who references presidential debates. it's ok for me to find your post boring and let you know. ps a little self-awareness can be a good thing. have a nice friday. :)

"ironic" is a great song but i'm with o. nate that "you oughta know" is just undeniable. i'm not like an alanis mega fan but i like most of what she's done. her material has aged well and people seem to be recognizing that. i'm glad she's having a moment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dH289KxkGw

One person seemed to say that this thread making fun of an Alanis Morrissette song is pointless, then the original poster countered that it's still a silly song--a neat encapsulation of how attitudes about her have changed in 30 years.

Wait what? Mr Snrub revived this thread in their usual baffling way, koogs had some fun with that, nothing was said about the song either way and the OP afaict is long gone. I don't think this encapsulates much beyond the consistency of how ILX threads tend to go.

koogs

who?

Haha, sorry ledge!

Map -- and it's okay for me to let you know that I found your post totally irrelevant. Which I did.

Didn't ledge (or koogs, or whoever) directly refer to the song by quoting it?

Yes they did but they did not call the song silly! They called the revive silly.

otm

i do still think the song is silly though lol

But doesn't the original post (same person) suggest there's something fundamentally silly about the song (in much harsher terms than that)? Maybe I did misinterpret ledge's post today, but that seemed to be the feeling at one point.

Okay, missed your post...So I'm not wrong.

Well you are still wrong in that you think mr snrub doing his usual thing and someone making a joke about that says anything about the change in reception of Alanis Morisette over the last 30 years. But hey. :)

I will try to be more observant of mr snrub's tendencies next time before reading into the situation too deeply.

i do find it a little tedious when ppl are like damn you just can’t ridicule women musicians like you used to. what a world

and when they can't be wrong and always have to have the last word.

We try, but we won't ever get the last word.

My favourite pop music ever was made by women in the late '70s and early '80s, so you might have the wrong person here. I wasn't ridiculing women musicians; I was making fun of Alanis Morrissette.

map y r u being kinda mean

well clemenza hasn't offered any engagement with or thoughts about alanis or the song beyond it being silly, and i guess i'm with ivy in that i find that distasteful.

did we really need to know that clemenza? you along with 20,000 other old snobby white guys. you didn't even have the guts to link your piece before you got to act like a victim about it.

Okay--maybe I can meet you halfway here and we can call this on account of (allusion intentional) rain. I don't even dislike "Ironic." What Ledge found funny in 2004, I found funny then, found funny when the song came out, and still find funny today. But the song is melodic and, for me, probably one of her best; I don't turn it off if it comes on the radio, and in Canada that's often. My original point--that I could joke around about Alanis's lyric in 1995 that I might not be able to today without drawing all kinds of wrath, well, I see evidence of that here. I didn't realize that to say that, I had to first qualify myself with a lengthy explanation of why I think "Ironic," on the whole, is a pleasant song.

Victim? Really?

all right, i see where you're coming from a little better. thanks for taking the time to explain. "i think either one of them would get me run out of town today" is kinda victim-y though!

Exaggeration for comedic effect (or at least intended--apparently only I find it funny). I don't literally think I'd get run out of town; I think I'd get what I got here today x 1,000.

(No way I'm linking to the pieces. They don't bother me, but I'm not a glutton for punishment.)

haha ok man. my apologies for going off on you, you do you.

“Maybe the real irony was” etc.

Who among us can say the word “Chardonnay”and not think of this song? I cannot. I always hear it in Alanis’ voice. I do not like this song but I can appreciate a distinctive way of singing about white wine.

when i say Chardonnay i just think of Footballers' Wives

Mr. RFK
Was anti-vax
Quoted medical journals
Written by quacks
He’d waited his whole life
To enforce his lies
And as COVID took his wife
He said, with teary eyes:

“Maybe I’m autistic,
Don’t ya think?”

What Ledge found funny in 2004

clem are you having a stroke?* ledge did not identify themselves as having typed Stupid into the ftf in 2004, and you seem to be getting upset at people responding to that and to the other words you typed here, instead of to a series of other things that you had in your head

*comedic exaggeration

alanis should have written a song about how we're all crazy here

We'd reached a rapprochement, everyone was fine, but you felt it important to open things up again.

Having said that, I don't why or how I misread that. I got ledge being the first response today confused with him having started the thread 20 years ago, which he clearly didn't. I can't offer any explanation other than zoning out.

my friend Bob was doing his Celta course (the month-long intensive programme where you qualify to be an English as a foreign language teacher) somewhere in Italy around 2002 and for her first demonstration one girl apparently built a whole lesson around this song, a very bold move, wish I had been there to see it.

fgti hahahaha

Also, I just realized: you know how "theater kid" is a label that caricatures a showbiz-loving approval-loving kid, but Alanis is more my kind of theater kid: someone who's working on songs as exposition, character, subtext, objective and conflict (if we're talking "You Oughta Know"); adjacent to "literature kid" but putting their stage presence into it.

i'm like not the person to really get into alanis since i only know her on a v superficial level but thanks to alfred for linking "hands clean" - i think that's a beautiful song, i don't know, as someone whose had to work through messy breakups and do self-therapy, she has a snappy way with getting across the broad experience of all that and "healing" for lack of a better term. i'd honestly somehow forgot she was canadian, she seems so quintessentially l.a. to me - but no that's not right, she's too free to be l.a. to the core.

my contribution to Alanis discourse is that I hate almost all of her music very intensely (I don't mind the chorus to "hand in pocket" but I super hate the verses) and mrs. noothgrush feels exactly the same, we hated this music as it came out into the world and enjoyed our hating, but since becoming parents a decade plus ago we've made meaningful friendships with other parents, and one of them, a dear friend, utterly loves alanis, so when I catch myself feeling the hate I go, c'mon now, mrs x loves alanis, can't be all bad, why the hell not, go ahead alanis morrissette make these people happy

^^^ Mr. Duplicity

a small surprise to remember Jagged Little Pill broke out from 120 Minutes whenever Youtube recommends her live appearances on there

OMG @ FGTI

c'mon now, mrs x loves alanis, can't be all bad, why the hell not, go ahead alanis morrissette make these people happy

haha, this experience for me is like .. hating and being morally opposed to "disney fandom" since i was a teenager .. and then seeing so many freaking photos of nice-seeming gay people in front of the disneyland castle or whatever. if it inspires people and keeps them going, like.. my hate is so subjective. it's cool that it tells me a lot about myself and who i am, but that has no bearing on all the important things about another person .. other than that if we hang "little mermaid" is not going to be a topic of conversation haha. unless i'm genuinely curious and open-ended about what they like about "little mermaid", that's when it could get interesting, i can learn something interesting about that person and also become a little bigger myself. but if i don't wanna do that, that's cool too.

I always thought the Real Lesson of this song is to remind us of the Wheel turning from "who would have thought?" to "it figures". It's her Ozymandias.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GC_mV1IpjWA

NO

When I say "Chardonnay" I just think of Lolita Nation

Imagine if the lyric wasn’t “isn’t it ironic” but “I am disappoint”. It would have been so ahead of its time! If somewhat behind the present.

haha, this experience for me is like .. hating and being morally opposed to "disney fandom" since i was a teenager .. and then seeing so many freaking photos of nice-seeming gay people in front of the disneyland castle or whatever. if it inspires people and keeps them going, like.. my hate is so subjective. it's cool that it tells me a lot about myself and who i am, but that has no bearing on all the important things about another person .. other than that if we hang "little mermaid" is not going to be a topic of conversation haha. unless i'm genuinely curious and open-ended about what they like about "little mermaid", that's when it could get interesting, i can learn something interesting about that person and also become a little bigger myself. but if i don't wanna do that, that's cool too.

ha, we are very similar...the sort of hegemonic power of Disney is the kinda thing I'm hugely opposed to, and mrs. noothgrush straight up cannot stand Disney full stop...and then we became parents, and a Disney mom we know was like YOUR KIDS WILL LOVE DISNEY WORLD and I'm like, fuck, I want the kids to have a good time, and I pitch the idea and mrs. nooth is "word? we are going to spend our we-only-get-one-a-year-if-that vacation coin on THAT? seriously??" but I also know several people who are, like, plenty smart, at least as smart as me, who are like -- look -- it's a really good time -- that's kind of all there is to it -- you'll have fun, too, they're really good at fun in the Disney zone -- and like, I respect it now. we all have our things. I can't conceive of other people's things just like they can't imagine that I spent 300 dollars in a day on rocks because there's all kinds of cool ass rocks to buy.

It's funny, I had some friends who were deep into the "Disney is the antichrist and our children must never be exposed to it" zone and I learned to tolerate and respect their position, even though it seemed like dramatic goth posturing and I wanted to roll my eyes at it. I think my growth experience has been more learning to accept what other people hate than what they like tbh

Alanis is great btw

My appreciation has grown in the last 15 years every time someone goes for it at karaoke.

^^^^ on this 100%.

I don't like Disney characters, love Walt Disney World. My best friend is getting married there next April.

Well, that's.... um

It's fun, with little of the forced jollity we're used to.

Whiney's a fan too: reddening's thread of DISNEY PARKS gossip

If we're rolling into this sidetrack then yeah, I'm not a committed Disneyite but those parks fully commit to a bit and it's kind of glorious

had some friends who were deep into the "Disney is the antichrist and our children must never be exposed to it" zone and I learned to tolerate and respect their position, even though it seemed like dramatic goth posturing

Golly gee, NV! I dont know about that

As someone who can’t live without the ‘Little April Showers’ sequence in Bambi or the enchanted dinnerware numbers in Beauty and the Beast, i think Disney’s hygienic fascism and fusion of Euro-fetish with supernaturally rich and alluring color have done a great deal to promote the association of whiteness racial purity with safety. Can’t fault the haters too much.

Disney in its neolib fashion has gone a long way to redress that deserved criticism, I gather, from the number of Black and brown heroes and heroines since the late '90s (my youngest niece sure loved her Tiana doll).

Also: a considerable number of WDW employees in the Orlando area are gay boricuas.

"disney people" are horrible monsters without personality imo. i don't think i'll ever forget the time i went to disneyland as a 13yo and finally registered that the place was miserable instead of wonderful. but i don't have kids and i'll never need to revise this opinion

yeah my only visit to DL was when I was a 15yo sarcasm demon. back in 1994 the normalness was overwhelming and horrifying. no idea what I'd think now tbf (still possessed by sarcasm so prob similar)

LOL, the worlds happiest prison

Alfred, yeah but the barely-covert racism has always been much more effective than the overt racism they’ve been working to scrub

I genuinely love how "Disney" as concept has NV, Whiney, and me vs. Deflatormouse and ivy, when I'd think they'd be on our side or we'd join them.

Anyway, I don't think I could enjoy Disney World WITH kids. How else to appreciate the theming at bars, restaurants, public spaces, and so on?

Gonna take this to the reddening thread. Carry on with Alanis!

I do really like some things about Disney! I think in the list your favorite movie genres thread i wrote “talking animals and animate objects”
I didn’t take Aladdin as much of a compliment, and that’s what i was thinking of re: your previous posts. since then Moana might be the only one i’ve seen? Yeah, i think they got a bit better.

Anyway

When JLP came out, people in Canada had a moment about Alanis’s popping off. I recall reading people claiming that JLP was “her second best album”, the stone faithful for “Now Is The Time”. Rumours from my friends in Ottawa saying that she was a demon in high school— had more money than anyone else, owned her own car, and had a reputation for (I quote) “trying to run down teens in the smoking pit”, which I’m sure is entirely apocryphal.

I remember seeing Alanis fans on CityTV telling the interviewer “I want to marry her”, like, nice looking young adult men who were completely in love. I felt a bit of that, too, there was something so loveable about JLP-era Alanis!

We did discuss the lyrics to “Ironic” in high school English. We went through and talked about which examples actually constituted irony, and wrote our own.

My friend Andrew went to see Ozzy. Ozzy had a pre-amble video at the concert, with Ozzy inserted into other people’s videos. Andrew told me Ozzy parodied “Ironic”, with him sitting in the backseat as Alanis drove, getting hit in the face with her panties, and finally handing her a dildo. I’ve never seen this video, I only remember what Andrew told me.

Alanis and Tori did a tour and I skipped it, for some reason— I’ve never seen Tori live, which is kinda crazy, but I’m not a fan of the live recordings I’ve heard so maybe it’s not so crazy. I remember Tori in the press, being snippy about Alanis’s success. Tori is the only person who doesn’t love Alanis!

"I really like her. She's such a good person. I like her as a person a lot. I like the songwriting and I think I like her singing but I've got to tell you, I have a hard time listening to that record, just on a sonic level. It would make a dog's ears hurt. I hate records that have so much high end and no bottom."

"And as much as I love Alanis - I love that girl from head to toe - but Alanis, 'What were you going down on him in a theater for? To pick up your Coca-Cola?' she asks. "Give me a break! But this woman in 'Playboy Mommy,' she'll swallow. She'll swallow a billion seeds to protect this little girl."

You know when somebody says “I love that girl from head to toe” that they’re lining their sights up for an attempt at a headshot

hate to side with Alanis over Tori Amos, whose work I like, but that is some heavy cringe

Someone once told me that the reason Americans love Disneyland is because it's the only time in their lives that they get to experience the kind of walkable neighbourhoods and liveable cities and mass transport that most Europeans take for granted.

Same thing with cruise ships. Floating cities with high density housing and integrated residential and commercial properties on top of one another in a way that is banned in most American neighbourhoods.

No opinion on Alanis, or irony.

I don't get the Ironic hate, it's not like she released a song called Sacastic Sense Of Humor

or even spelling it correctly

I agree with Alanis. I think those things she sings about in this song are kind of ironic.

Though when I think of a lyric with "chardonnay" in it, this is the first one I think of:

Down in Sausalito, we had clams for dessert/You spilled some chardonnay on your gypsy skirt

I had a vocab quiz in middle school with the essay question 'are the situations in the Alanis song examples of irony why or why not and if not could you give an example of actual irony'

Lol. The song is not about irony in that sense.

(xpost) If she'd called it "Kind of Ironic," this thread wouldn't even exist.

my contribution to Alanis discourse is that I hate almost all of her music very intensely (I don't mind the chorus to "hand in pocket" but I super hate the verses) and mrs. noothgrush feels exactly the same, we hated this music as it came out into the world and enjoyed our hating, but since becoming parents a decade plus ago we've made meaningful friendships with other parents, and one of them, a dear friend, utterly loves alanis, so when I catch myself feeling the hate I go, c'mon now, mrs x loves alanis, can't be all bad, why the hell not, go ahead alanis morrissette make these people happy

― J Edgar Noothgrush (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi), Friday, July 11, 2025 7:30 PM (four days ago) bookmarkflaglink

This shift, not with Alanis specifically but across the board, has been a big part of growing older for me the last ten years. Learning not to harsh other people's buzz and being able to appreciate other's enthusiasm even if I don't share it to me is a worthy endeavor and part of being a good human.

Nickleback, Mumford and Sons, Candlebox and any campfire stomp music are exceptions. Throw them in the bin.

I made a friend in 2004 while working in a horrible call centre in Brighton, she loved Alanis and Kevin Smith movies and she was one of the loveliest people I've ever met.

She spent her days on the telephone
With angry men who'd just whine and moan
The loveliest person I'd ever spoken with
But her favorite director was Kevin Smith

and isn't it ironic

don't u think

i mean i was like ten years old when jagged little pill came out. "you oughta know" was on mtv all the time. impossible to resist. my parents bought me the album. my dad even liked it because her voice was weird and also he has a thing (that he'll never acknowledge or analyze) for women who can probably kick his ass verbally and/or physically. when i listen back to it i think it's pretty uneven, and i kinda hate its demo-y quality, so many boring drum loops, but the things i liked about it are still there: its candidness, its fierceness, its inability to say anything in a normal way that most people here find annoying and unlistenable but i think is charming and full of personality

i'm also one of those people who believes the follow-up is wayyyyy better. like wayyyyyyy better

I remember watching the 120 Minutes debut of "You Oughta Know", since i'd stay up late to watch it in the summer. didn't necessarily know she was going to blow up big but remember thinking 'this song's gonna blow up pretty soon'

xxp thank you Neando, that's lovely, I think I'm still friends with her on FB and might send it to her.

I heard about her before I heard her: my future sister-in-law noted, "have you guys heard that song on the radio with a woman who sounds really angry? Like, really really angry." And a few days with the radio on: "this must be it."

Now wondering if CaAL & I worked at the same horrible call centre

That would really be ironic!

what call center isn't horrible. if a call center were idyllic, that would be ironic too.

it was amusing the one time I took a call, back in the days where we asked customers to provide their account passwords orally, and he embarrassedly told me it was "L-O-N-G-D-O-N-G"

Something I adore about Alanis is her willingness to sing with her strong Ottawa Valley accent. Her eee’s and her rrr’s. “I Went To Your House” is my exemplar

A few days after hearing that really really angry woman on the radio, I left a message on a friend's answering machine, "oh yeah, I would go down on you in a TheHAY-TAH". I didn't know where Alanis was from, and her diction was amusingly hard to place.

Oh we used to substitute "off-license"...

Anyway, I'm positive that the other notable lyric, seeing as the one we know it as doesn't rhyme..

"I hate to bug you in the middle of dinner..
and are you thinking of me when you're in her"

Obviously, a terrible forced rhyme. What to do? Go extreme, of course...

definitely don't want to contemplate what dave coulier is like in bed

While I hated "you oughta Know" from the instant I heard it in 1995, it was also at that same instant a "what the fuck is this? this is something special" impression, like "Are you that Somebody" or "When Dove Cry." I strongly disliked it then and continue to dislike every single other song from the record, but that recording is undeniably sui generis.

@map - it was Lloyds TSB credit card services in Brighton

That's pretty much how "You Oughta Know" hit me, yes, that same feeling as "When Doves Cry". I would have cottoned to it more if it didn't have a drum rhythm that felt like it had been used in a dozen alt radio hits already.

i have a "you oughta know" story though the details are hazy. so we used to have these religious community dances called "stake dances" (i grew up mormon). i was a 12 year old music freak and someone let me be in charge of the music at one of the dances. i was kinda friends with this girl who was a year or two older than me and i remember she kind of like influenced me to like the song (i did! i'd never heard female rage before and it was very alluring.) anyway i remember playing the song and i think we got a talking-to. it was definitely scandalous. i remember silence and frowns lol.

i should say that i'd witnessed female rage in the form of my mother screaming and throwing things across the kitchen. so my relationship with it was complicated haha.

stake dances! man that brings back some memories of my mormon friends (i grew up in vegas, which is lousy with mormons)