Alanis Morissette isn’t particularly concerned about the fact that plenty of people have a problem with the lyrics in her 1995 hit “Ironic,” which describe several scenarios – none of which is a pure example of irony.
In the December 21 episode of MGM’s “Words + Music,” she says of the criticism, “I don’t care.”
“People got really triggered by the malapropism, or whatever the word,” she explained of the mild uproar in the ’90s. “I am a linguist. I’m obsessed with linguistics. I also love making up words, and I also don’t care.”
“Where I go when people are triggered by anything is I quickly go to what’s at the epicenter of this — what is, what is everyone really up in arms about?” Morissette continued. “Why is everyone laughing? And I think we’re afraid to look stupid. So I think because who is a linguist and then misuses a word, you know, ‘What kind of person does that?’ is where I go.”
“But I wasn’t being precious about it,” she added. “And I think a lot of lyrics around the planet, many, many artists, most of us aren’t being wildly precious about it. So I’m 90% grammar police, which is the real irony. And then 10% I really couldn’t care less. So I think the 10% won over on that song.”
Morissette also noted that she didn’t ever actually expect to release the song.
“When Glen [Ballard] and I wrote ‘Ironic,’ this was the first of the songs written for the whole record,” she said. “And I wasn’t writing wildly autobiographically quite yet, more sort of storytelling, getting to know Glen. And at one point, I didn’t want the song in the record, because I thought that it was sort of, for lack of a better term, our warm up, you know. But I love the song.”
At the time of its release, many people pointed out that the true definition of irony — when something is said or done that is the opposite of what’s expected — doesn’t completely apply to many of the examples in the song.
