Ironic (song)

"Ironic" is the title of a 1995 song written and performed by singer Alanis Morissette, which first appeared on her highly successful debut album Jagged Little Pill.

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?

The song was accompanied by a music video that received heavy rotation on MTV. It showed a car ride, in which the driver and all three passengers were Morissette, wearing different sweaters.

Linguistic controversy

The song's usage of the word ironic attracted attention from people concerned with the precise use of the English language.

• The first dictionary meaning of the word irony, (American Heritage Dictionary, 4th edition), is "the use of words to express something different from and often opposite to their literal meaning". We will refer to this as "the strict sense" of the word.
• The dictionary, however, acknowledges that it can also mean mere "incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs". We will call this the "casual sense" of the word. See: dramatic irony. (This definition is not of dramatic irony, but of irony of situation. Dramatic irony occurs in a work when the audience knows something that the character does not. Also, this usage is not "casual," it is merely different. The "strict sense" is only one type of irony, verbal irony.)
• A usage note says "the words ironic, irony, and ironically are sometimes used of events and circumstances that might better be described as simply 'coincidental' or 'improbable', in that they suggest no particular lessons about human vanity or folly", but says that a majority of their usage panel rejects this usage. We will refer to this as "sloppy usage" of the word.

The situations Morissette described were not ironic in the strict sense. They seem best described as "unfortunate coincidences" or "surprising disappointments." Referring to them as "ironic" is arguably sloppy usage, of which detractors maintained Morissette was guilty.

Supporters argued that the song title used the word ironic correctly in the casual sense. They argued that it was self-referential, and that the irony consisted of the song's use of the word ironic to create an expectation that the song would be about irony, followed by the incongruous presentation of situations that were not ironic.

A further defense could be that each line of the song is only a part of that particular situation and with further information each could be ironic.

Some of those familiar with the song and the usage debate invoke Morissette's name in reference either to the sloppy usage, or to the subtly self-referential usage of the word ironic. It remains to be seen whether phrases such as "Morissettian irony" will enter the common lexicon.

Alanis 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."

References

• The song was parodied in an MTV commercial featuring Donal Logue as a cab-driver with his quadruplicate counterparts spouting similarly un-ironic ideas.
• The song and video were discussed at length in VH1's I Love the 90s.

External links

• It Is Ironic, Isn't It? (http://fgk.hanau.net/articles/ironic.html)
• The True Irony of Alanis Morissette (http://www.mellowfellow.com/ironic.shtml)
• Irony and Ignorance (http://www.geocities.com/eirig/)
• Definition of irony (http://www.bartleby.com/61/61/I0236100.html)
• Definition of and usage note for ironic (http://www.bartleby.com/61/43/I0234300.html)