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Ironic (song)

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"Ironic"
Song

"Ironic" is a song written by Alanis Morissette and Glen Ballard and produced by Ballard for Morissette's third album Jagged Little Pill (1995). It was released as the album's fourth single in 1996 (see 1996 in music).

Style and theme

Musically, the song is a glossy take on a basic grunge format with delicate, sparsely-instrumented verses alternating with loud, aggressive chorus sections.

Track listing

  1. "Ironic" (3:49)
  2. "You Oughta Know" (Acoustic/Live from the Grammy Awards) (3:48)
  3. "Mary Jane" [Live] (5:52)
  4. "All I Really Want" [Live] (5:22)

Limited special-edition maxi-single track listing

  1. "Ironic" [Album Version] (3:48)
  2. "Forgiven" [Live] (6:09)
  3. "Not the Doctor" [Live] (6:05)
  4. "Wake Up" [Live] (5:05)

Success

"Ironic" became Morissette's second number-one hit on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart in the U.S., where it stayed for three weeks. The song was also more popular than previous singles on more adult-oriented radio stations and charts. The song also became Morissette's highest-charting hit on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, where it peaked at number four. It is one of only two songs by Morissette to crack the top-ten on that chart, the other being "You Learn", backed with a live version of "You Oughta Know", which reached number six. Both songs were also from Jagged Little Pill. In other countries, "Ironic" did not meet as much commercial success, however it was a moderate Top 20 hit in the UK, where it peaked just outside the top-ten, at #11. It is still considered to be one of Morissette's biggest hits, and also received great critical acclaim at the time of its release. The song is still popular today, mainly based around the debates surrounding the lyrics of the song, and whether the examples mentioned in the song actually qualify as being ironic (see below). The pop-punk band Four Year Strong covered the song in their 90's cover album "Explains It All."

Linguistic usage disputes

Look up ironic in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

The song's usage of the word "ironic" attracted attention[1][2][3] for what some think is an improper application of the term.[4][5] Two situations that Morissette describes in the song are arguably examples of cosmic irony: events that, as the Oxford English Dictionary puts it, appear "as if in mockery of the fitness or rightness of things", such as "a death row pardon/two minutes too late".

Morissette has also confirmed that she is a self-dubbed "malapropism queen" and alleges that the song was lighthearted and not taken too seriously at the time it was written:[6]

For me the great debate on whether what I was saying in ‘Ironic’ was ironic wasn’t a traumatic debate. I’d always embraced the fact that every once in a while I’d be the malapropism queen. And when Glen and I were writing it, we definitely were not doggedly making sure that everything was technically ironic. It’s a testament to the fact that we didn’t think it was going to be put under the microscope by 30 million people. For me the sweetest moment came in New York when a woman came up to me in a record store and said, ‘So all those things in the “Ironic” aren’t ironic.’ And then she said, ‘And that’s the irony.’ I said, ‘Yup.’ To me it’s a real snapshot of a nineteen-year-old’s definition and version of how life worked at the time. All that ‘Ironic’ touches on spawned all my future inquiries into and current understandings of the mysteries of life.

Irish comedian Ed Byrne has performed a skit in which he jokingly attacks the song for its lack of ironies: "The only ironic thing about that song is it's called 'Ironic' and it's written by a woman who doesn't know what irony is. That's quite ironic." Byrne then tries to give the song 'the benefit of the doubt' by coming up with scenarios where the various unfortunate incidents, mentioned in the song, actually would represent irony.[7] Popular satirists Berger and Wyse also parodied the song in their cartoon strip The Pitchers. In an episode where superhero Irony Man (a pun on Iron Man) likens his superpowers to lyrics from Morrisette's song, causing his cohorts to rename him "The Man from Alanis" (a pun on The Man from Atlantis).[8]

In December 2009 the comedy website College Humor released a spoof video of the song amending the lyrics so they would be appropriately ironic.[9]

Alternate versions

In 2004 Morissette amended a lyric as a show of her support for same-sex marriage:[10]

"It's meeting the man of my dreams
And then meeting his beautiful husband"

She first sang the line at the fifteenth annual GLAAD Media Awards in March 2004.[11] She recorded an acoustic version of the song with the amended lyric for an exclusive iTunes Music Store release. Another acoustic version was recorded for the album Jagged Little Pill Acoustic (2005), and another for the Cities 97 Sampler Volume 16 (2004). The song was also performed in a duo with Avril Lavigne, at the House of Blues, in 2005.[12]

Music video

The single's video was released in January 1996 and received heavy rotation on MTV and VH1 in the US. It was directed by Stéphane Sednaoui and features Morissette driving a black Lincoln Continental Mark V through a winter landscape. She also plays her passengers: one in a green sweater riding in the back seat; one in a yellow sweater with braided hair, also in the back seat; and one in a red sweater in the front passenger seat. At the end of the video, the car stalls and Morissette, as the driver, exits but her passengers are nowhere to be seen.

The video was nominated for six MTV Video Music Awards in 1996 and it won three: "Best Female Video", "Best New Artist", and "Best Editing". It was nominated for two 1997 Grammy Award in the "Best Music Video - Short Form" category but it lost to The Beatles' "Free as a Bird" and to Eric Clapton's "Change the World" for "Record of the Year." "Ironic" was one of few videos released with multi-colored Closed Captioning, a rare practice in North America.[citation needed] The verses appear in light blue and the chorus appear in green. The musical notes that usually accompany song lyrics or background music appear in purple.

In late 1996 a parody version of the video was released featuring a young girl, Allison Rheaume, who mimics Morissette's actions and wardrobe while lip syncing to the original song. At the end, a man (presumably her father) notices her in the car sitting in the driveway and tells her to stop fooling around. This version of the video, directed by David Rheaume,[13] received mild airplay as a novelty on VH1 and was, for a time, the only video for "Ironic" available for viewing in Yahoo!'s LAUNCHcast music video library. It was included on the Morissette CD/DVD The Collection (2005). Also, "Weird Al" Yankovic produced a parody version of the video, for Canada's MuchMusic, in which he takes the place of the fourth version of Morissette in the front passenger seat.

In the 1996 novel Naive. Super by Norwegian author Erlend Loe, the protagonist watches the video for "Ironic" on television and dreams about "meeting an Alanis-girl and living in a house together with her."

Charts

References

  1. ^ It Is Ironic, Isn't It?
  2. ^ Irony and Ignorance
  3. ^ "Morissette Single Reaches New Levels of Meta-Irony", Heuristic Squelch humour article, November 2002
  4. ^ Bartleby definition of irony
  5. ^ Bartleby definition of and usage note for ironic
  6. ^ MSOPR
  7. ^ Ed Byrne slates Alanis Morissette on YouTube
  8. ^ The Pitchers: Superscript and Typo, The Guardian film supplement, May 2, 2008
  9. ^ College Humour spoof of the song and video
  10. ^ Vineyard, Jennifer. "Alanis Isn't Angry Anymore — She's In Love". MTV News. June 4, 2004. Retrieved August 23, 2006.
  11. ^ Keck, William. "Politics in play at gay awards". USA Today. March 28, 2004. Retrieved August 23, 2006.
  12. ^ [1]
  13. ^ "Alanis Morissette [Imitator] - Ironic". MuchMusic. Retrieved 2009-08-27.
  14. ^ "Ironic", in Swiss, French, Dutch, Belgian (Flanders and Wallonia), Swedish, Norwegian, Australian and New Zealander Singles Chart Lescharts.com (Retrieved January 28, 2008)
Preceded by Billboard Modern Rock Tracks number-one single
March 16, 1996 - March 30, 1996 		Succeeded by
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