Isn’t it ironic?

It’s the most famous of the Canadian angstress’s three and a half albums worth of songs. It may well be the only famous song she’s ever released. Say the name “Alanis Morissette” to most people and they mention “Ironic”. They will then go on to say “but it’s not irony is it – it’s just bad luck”. So we have a successful woman with one famous song, a name almost no one can spell (it’s one R, 2 S’s and 2 T’s) and a standing allegation of having a tenuous grip on the English language.

I’ve picked up my two favourite dictionaries – the Concise Oxford and the Essential Collins – and looked up “irony” in their august pages. I then looked up the lyrics to the song. As long as no actual work is involved, I’m pretty thorough. Here are the things that Alanis – bless her – says are “ironic” -

An old man turned ninety-eight 
He won the lottery and died the next day 
It's a black fly in your Chardonnay 
It's a death row pardon two minutes too late 

It's like rain on your wedding day 
It's a free ride when you've already paid 
It's the good advice that you just didn't take 

Mr. Play It Safe was afraid to fly 
He packed his suitcase and kissed his kids goodbye 
He waited his whole damn life to take that flight 
And as the plane crashed down he thought 
"Well isn't this nice..." 

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 

The Concise Oxford defines irony thus – “the expression of meaning through the use of language signifying the opposite, typically for humorous effect”. Oh dear. Poor Alanis. She’s fallen victim to the American problem of not quite understanding what we English (the clue is in the name, folks) are doing when we say the opposite of what we mean. Odd then that this is the nation which gave us “bad” to mean good (though the source of that is questionable in so many ways). Alanis has committed the song writer’s crime of sacrificing actual meaning for punchy lyrics. It’s not as if she’d have a problem rhyming the word “luck” with anything but a song about ducks, rucks and fucks would be rather more up the street of the drug fuelled [censored for legal reasons]’s output.

Ha!

Fooled you.

You thought this was another Alanis bashing column didn’t you. Eight and a half years on from the release of “Jagged Little Pill” and people STILL go on about how “Ironic” doesn’t involve any ironic things. I’m here to shatter that illusion. For the Concise Oxford has a second definition for irony - “a state of affairs that appears perversely contrary to what one expects.” While Collins gives us “a situation or result that is the direct opposite of what was expected or intended.”

So the song still isn’t perfect but it isn’t wrong either. Rain on your wedding day or the plane crashing on your first flight might be described as the direct opposite of what was intended. Of course, it requires a certain level of naivety to believe that the traffic will be clear just because you are late but that’s circumstantial. If the road is normally clear then you can reasonably expect it to be clear on this occasion. If the jam is unexpected then I think the Oxford definition would apply. A no-smoking sign on your cigarette break would certainly be the direct opposite of what was expected. Unless you decided to take your cancer break at a petrol station that is.

The moral of this story is that you shouldn’t take her words too literally and mock her because the examples she gives are more bad luck than irony. Do we mock Belinda Carlisle because heaven isn’t actually a place on Earth? Do we mock the Beatles because you actually do need more than love? We don’t. Well, I don’t and I don’t know anyone who does.

14th November 2003