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

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I've been wondering about this. Does anybody know?

― Stupid (Stupid), Tuesday, 1 June 2004 16:37 (twenty years ago)

It's like ray-ee-ain on a rainy day

― andrew m. (andrewmorgan), Tuesday, 1 June 2004 16:40 (twenty years ago)

Apart from anything else, it should be called "ironical."

― Stupid (Stupid), Tuesday, 1 June 2004 16:45 (twenty years ago)

What is this, the tenth anniversary of people thinking they're smart for pointing that out?

― el Huckle-huckle-Buck (Horace Mann), Tuesday, 1 June 2004 16:47 (twenty years ago)

8th.

― Sick Mouthy (Nick Southall), Tuesday, 1 June 2004 16:48 (twenty years ago)

It is MOR-onic...to think that pointing out the IRONY of the song "IRONIC's" lack of true IRONY is anything new.

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Tuesday, 1 June 2004 16:48 (twenty years ago)

This is a serious question. I want to know. Was it intentional, or does she really not know what irony is?

― Stupid (Stupid), Tuesday, 1 June 2004 16:49 (twenty years ago)

I AM IRONY MAN...

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Tuesday, 1 June 2004 16:50 (twenty years ago)

da duh, da duh da, da duh da duh da duh, dadada

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Tuesday, 1 June 2004 16:50 (twenty years ago)

WHY WON'T ANYONE TELL ME?

― Stupid (Stupid), Tuesday, 1 June 2004 16:51 (twenty years ago)

Actually I think she just didn't really think it through...it's a pop song. She was just trying to find stuff that rhymed. No mystery.

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Tuesday, 1 June 2004 16:52 (twenty years ago)

But maybe she is stupid, I dunno. She dated Dave Coulier (TV's Uncle Joey from Full House) for a while.

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Tuesday, 1 June 2004 16:53 (twenty years ago)

what about Mr Play It Safe? is it not ironic that the first flight he took was also his last?

― stevem (blueski), Tuesday, 1 June 2004 16:55 (twenty years ago)

Only if what actually killed him was a paper cut from his insurance policy.

― el Huckle-huckle-Buck (Horace Mann), Tuesday, 1 June 2004 16:56 (twenty years ago)

irony:
definition 2 Oxford paperback dictionary 1994:

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

― kevin brady (groeuvre), Tuesday, 1 June 2004 17:05 (twenty years ago)

No more idiotic than any other person who uses the word wrongly, since many do. I've heard people say things like "I went in the store to buy fabric softener, and ironically it was on sale for half-price!"

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?

― Myonga Von Bontee (Myonga Von Bontee), Tuesday, 1 June 2004 17:34 (twenty years ago)

She could learn a thing or two about irony from Malkmus, man.

― Mark (MarkR), Tuesday, 1 June 2004 17:54 (twenty years ago)

Has anyone noticed how toast always falls buttered-side down?

― noodle vague (noodle vague), Tuesday, 1 June 2004 17:56 (twenty years ago)

Irony vs. The Universe Just Hates You

― el Huckle-huckle-Buck (Horace Mann), Tuesday, 1 June 2004 17:58 (twenty years ago)

"Dude, that cannonball guy is, like, so cool."
"Are you serious, man?"
"(starts crying) I don't even know anymore!"

God the 90s were awful.

― Unknown User, Tuesday, 1 June 2004 19:00 (twenty years ago)

HEY ALSO, DID YOU KNOW VALENTINES DAY WAS INVENTED BY THE GREETING CARD COMPANIES TO GET EXTRA BUSINESS? YEAH I JUST DISCOVERED THAT ONE DAY WHEN I WAS AT THE HALLMARK STORE. ANYWAY, I'LL NEED THOSE PAPERS ON MY DESK BY THIS TUESDAY, AND DONT TELL JEAN ABOUT THE SURPRISE PARTY BECAUSE YOU REALLY FUCKED IT UP LAST TIME, BUT IT'S COOL, EVERYBODY MAKES MISTAKES.

― David Allen (David Allen), Tuesday, 1 June 2004 19:05 (twenty years ago)

ed byrne to thread...

― bert (bert), Tuesday, 1 June 2004 19:06 (twenty years ago)

I suspect it is just daft.

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

― Keith Watson (kmw), Tuesday, 1 June 2004 19:10 (twenty years ago)

Not that I care, it being one of the worst things ever committed to vinyl.

― Keith Watson (kmw), Tuesday, 1 June 2004 19:11 (twenty years ago)

Is she really francophone? Even if French were her first language, it's unlikely she grew up in Ottawa without a pretty solid knowledge of English. She went to an English school.

― sundar subramanian (sundar), Tuesday, 1 June 2004 20:20 (twenty years ago)

She was being so ironic that it wasn't ironic at all, everybody knows that.

― hstenciI (Joseph Larkin), Tuesday, 1 June 2004 20:22 (twenty years ago)

(And if the Ottawa Board curriculum in those days was similar to that of the Carleton Board, she would have learnt about the three types of irony - dramatic, situational, and verbal - in Grade 10 English.)

― sundar subramanian (sundar), Tuesday, 1 June 2004 20:22 (twenty years ago)

I was just now pondering whether any of the events in the song could be considered situational irony, which required me to try to remember what situational irony is exactly. It's the most I've ever thought about this song.

― sundar subramanian (sundar), Tuesday, 1 June 2004 20:24 (twenty years ago)

Situational irony occurs when the reader or character expects one thing and another thing happens.

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.

― sundar subramanian (sundar), Tuesday, 1 June 2004 20:29 (twenty years ago)

That Ed Byrne rant in full.

(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)

― ailsa (ailsa), Tuesday, 1 June 2004 20:56 (twenty years ago)

I'm sure she has claimed it was intentional, but did so rather unconvincingly. I just think she has a flexible interpretation of certain words. I interviewed her recently and although she was obviously intelligent she used at least two words that don't actually exist.

― Dorian Lynskey, Wednesday, 2 June 2004 11:52 (twenty years ago)

Why does everybody like to talk about this shitty song anyway?

― Unknown User, Wednesday, 2 June 2004 12:03 (twenty years ago)

She's Canadian. Do you even have to ask?

― John 2, Wednesday, 2 June 2004 12:06 (twenty years ago)

I saw a clip from an interview with her once where she said she'd started to hear from British friends that British music journalists were making fun of her about this, so she looked 'irony' up in the dictionary and realised she'd used it incorrectly.

― slb, Wednesday, 2 June 2004 12:10 (twenty years ago)

Or did she just use so correctly that it blew everybody's mind?

― Huk-El (Horace Mann), Wednesday, 2 June 2004 16:31 (twenty years ago)

As Kevin pointed out and everyone else seems to have missed the song is a series of instances of situational irony; "a state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects and is often amusing as a result" so, e.g. rain on your wedding day runs contrary to expectations that your wedding day will be the best day ever.

― tomp (tomp), Wednesday, 2 June 2004 17:36 (twenty years ago)

not in an amusing way, though. "10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife" is almost situational irony.

― don (don), Wednesday, 2 June 2004 17:43 (twenty years ago)

There were alot of articles about Ed Byrne a few years back, one of which argued that since the writer had heard so many people trying to appropriate his Alanis-Ironic joke, this made it good. I have my doubts most of these people appropriated the joke, in fact I think it's just such a run of the mill average routine that people kept coming up with it, over and over, and over and over again and again.

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.

― Ronan (Ronan), Wednesday, 2 June 2004 18:12 (twenty years ago)

Shaved or coifed?

― Huk-El (Horace Mann), Wednesday, 2 June 2004 18:23 (twenty years ago)

Id never heard of Ed Byrne up to 3 minutes ago, but reading that bit-- it was pretty good.

― David Allen (David Allen), Wednesday, 2 June 2004 18:36 (twenty years ago)

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

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.

― jed_ (jed), Wednesday, 2 June 2004 18:50 (twenty years ago)

Yeah I don't understand why people are so dumb about this. I understand not liking the song, but almost anything can be ironic, if viewed in a certain way. Certainly, the things Alanis talks about in the songs are clearly ironic, falling under the definition posted above.

― Richard K, Wednesday, 2 June 2004 19:42 (twenty years ago)

Can a situation be ironic? I mean, really. I call bullshit on situational irony.

― the music mole (colin s barrow), Wednesday, 2 June 2004 21:00 (twenty years ago)

I understand not liking the song, but almost anything can be ironic, if viewed in a certain way.

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

― noodle vague (noodle vague), Wednesday, 2 June 2004 21:35 (twenty years ago)

'"Dude, that cannonball guy is, like, so cool."
"Are you serious, man?"
"(starts crying) I don't even know anymore!"
God the 90s were awful. '

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

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Wednesday, 2 June 2004 21:45 (twenty years ago)

Yeah, I never understood that, when people accused the 90s of being a decade of sarcasm and irony. It doesn't make sense. How did people get by without sarcasm before?

― David Allen (David Allen), Thursday, 3 June 2004 02:16 (twenty years ago)

Sarcasm existed, but it wasn't as COOL, man.

― My name is Kenny (My name is Kenny), Thursday, 3 June 2004 02:30 (twenty years ago)

Are you serious, man?

― the music mole (colin s barrow), Thursday, 3 June 2004 02:44 (twenty years ago)

It might be tempting to do the whole "ironically, Alanis's song about irony actually had a better grasp on the concept of irony than that demonstrated by those who accused her of applying it incorrectly" thing but that would be descending to the same level etc.

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.

― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Thursday, 3 June 2004 03:11 (twenty years ago)

"I interviewed her recently and although she was obviously intelligent she used at least two words that don't actually exist.

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

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

― Sasha (sgh), Thursday, 3 June 2004 04:10 (twenty years ago)

She's an idiot. She probably says "oooh oooh I've got a migraine" when she's just got an 'eadache.

― Pack Yr Romantic Almanac (Autumn Almanac), Thursday, 3 June 2004 04:22 (twenty years ago)

Id never heard of Ed Byrne up to 3 minutes ago, but reading that bit-- it was pretty good.

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

― Joe Kay (feethurt), Thursday, 3 June 2004 07:15 (twenty years ago)

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