Alanis Morissette talks years of “shaming” over Ironic not being ironic

1 June 2021, 15:28 | Updated: 1 June 2021, 15:46

Alanis Morissette - Ironic (Official 4K Music Video)

The Canadian singer-songwriter revealed she didn't want the song to feature on her album at first and joked about jibes over the song's lyrics.

Alanis Morissette has opened up about her most famous single and joked about how she's been mocked about it for years.

The singer-songwriter's landmark song - which was released in 1996 as the third single from her seminal Jagged Little Pill album - is one of her most known and loved tracks.

However, speaking on Rolling Stone's Music Now podcast, Morissette has revealed she didn't think too much of the song at first and remarked upon how its title and lyrics have caused years of "shaming".

Alanis Morisette at O2 Shepherd's Bush Empire, in March 2020. Picture: Rob Ball/WireImage/Getty Images

The song is featured in the hit Broadway musical, which is named after the album, where a character says: “That’s not irony [...] That’s just, like, shitty.”

Asked if she felt a sense of satisfaction with the scene putting a nail in the coffin of that criticism, she laughed: "Yeah. Until the next generation kicks my ass! Until the next onslaught of shaming!"

Alanis Morissette in her Ironic video. Picture: YouTube/Alanis Morisette

The You Outta Know singer added: “I guess one of the things that is the scariest for us in terms of our collective shame is being [seen as] stupid or uneducated or ignorant.

“I can embrace, ‘I’m stupid,’ I can embrace that I’m really brilliant. It just depends on when you catch me!”

Talking about how she felt about track itself, she revealed: "I didn’t even want it on the record.

“And I remember a lot of people going, ‘Please please, please.’ So I said, OK. That was one of the first songs we wrote, almost like a demo to get our whistles wet.

"But people wound up really liking the melody, and I wasn’t that precious about it. And I came to realise later that perhaps I should have been..."

Alanis was set to embark on a global tour to celebrate 25 years of her Jagged Little Pill album, but dates were forced to postpone due to the coronavirus pandemic.