Ironic (song)
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Musically, the song is a glossy take on a basic grunge music format, with delicate, sparsely-instrumented verses alternating with loud, aggressive chorus sections.
Lyrically, the song consists of a series of vignettes describing situations, each ending in the repeated question "Isn't it ironic?" For example:
- A traffic jam when you're already late
- A no-smoking sign on your cigarette break
- It's like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife
- It's meeting the man of my dreams
- And then meeting his beautiful wife
- And isn't it ironic... don't you think?
- It's meeting the man of my dreams
- And then meeting his beautiful husband
Music video
The music video was released in early 1996 and received heavy rotation on MTV and VH1. It was directed by Stephane Sednaoui.Synopsis
Morissette is shown entering her car and she sings the opening verse when she drives off. As the first chorus begins, we meet the first of her three passengers: Morissette in a green sweater, riding in the back seat. Morissette portrays the other two passengers, one in a yellow sweater with braided hair, also in the back seat; and the other in a red sweater in the front passenger seat. Each version of Morissette represents a different aspect of her personality. At the end of the video, Morissette (the driver) exits her car after it stalls, but her passengers are nowhere to be seen.Awards
The video was nominated for six MTV Video Music Awards in 1996, and won three: Best Female Video, Best New Artist, and Best Editing. In 1997, it was nominated for a Grammy Award in the Best Music Video - Short Form category, but lost to the Beatles' "Free As A Bird."Parody
In late 1996, a parody version of the video was released, and starred a young girl named Allison. Allison mimicked Morissette's actions and wardrobe while lip syncing to the original song. At the end, a man, presumably her father, sees Allison in the car and tells her to stop fooling around. This version of the video received mild airplay as a novelty on VH1 and was, for a time, the only version of "Ironic" available for viewing in Yahoo!'s LAUNCHcast music video library. This version is included onClosed Captioning
Ironic was one of few videos released with multi-colored Closed Captioning, a rare practice in North America. The verses appeared in light blue, and the chorus appeared in green. The musical notes that usually accompany song lyrics or background music appeared in purple.Linguistic controversy
The song's usage of the word "ironic" attracted attention from people concerned with the precise use of the English language.Some 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." Others, however, appear to be merely unfortunate (not even improbable or coincidental), such as "a black fly/in your Chardonnay" or "A traffic jam/when you're already late."
Morissette once said herself that the biggest irony of "Ironic" is that there is no irony in the lyrics: "The irony of 'Ironic' is that it's not an ironic song at all."#redirect
U.S. Chart Performances
Top 40 Mainstream: #1Modern Rock Tracks: #1
Top 40 Adult Recurrents: #1 Hot 100: #4 (As it was her first commercial single release in the US, this was Alanis' debut in the Billboard Hot 100.)
Adult Top 40: #5 Rhythmic Top 40: #11
Mainstream Rock Tracks: #18
Adult Contemporary: #28
References
- The seminal and definitive analysis of the ironic lack of irony in "Ironic" is by the Irish comedian Ed Byrne. Extracts from his stand-up routine on the song were widely disseminated on the internet (not to mention in bars and around water-coolers) and most subsequent critiques are indebted to it.
"There's nothing ironic about being stuck in a traffic jam when you're late for something. Unless you're a town planner. If you were a town planner and you were on your way to a seminar of town planners at which you were giving a talk on how you solved the problem of traffic congestion in your area, couldn't get to it because you were stuck in a traffic jam, that'd be well ironic."
"Rain on your wedding day is ironic only if marrying a weatherman and he set the date."
"A no-smoking sign on your cigarette break, that's inconsiderate office management. A no-smoking sign in a cigarette factory - irony."
- The song was parodied in an MTV commercial featuring Donal Logue as a cab-driver with his quadruplicate counterparts spouting similarly un-ironic ideas. (One sample: "It's like meeting the girl of your dreams and finding out she's five.")
- The song and video were discussed at length in VH1's I Love the 90s. Commented Mo Rocca in the broadcast, "Irony is the disparity between what you expect will happen, and what does happen. So raining on your wedding day isn't ironic, it's just crappy. It would have been ironic if she had lived in a place like Seattle, and traveled to the desert of Mexico for a wedding and it ended up raining there, but not in Seattle. Alanis always gets the last laugh though. We all sit here, saying her song isn't ironic, but in fact, that's pretty ironic that she wrote a song called 'Ironic' that wasn't really ironic. Those Canadians are pretty crafty."
- In Sessions @ AOL, Alanis discusses "Ironic" and refers to an incident where "a woman came up to me in a bookstore bathroom and asked "Is the ironic thing about 'Ironic' that it's not actually filled with ironies?" I nodded and smiled."
- "Ironic" was on the list of songs deemed inappropriate by Clear Channel following the September 11, 2001 attacks.
External links
- [It Is Ironic, Isn't It?]
- [Irony and Ignorance]
- [Definition of irony]
- [Definition of and usage note for ironic]
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