Alanis Morisette

Alanis Morisette is a singer/songwriter who had a huge worldwide hit with her first album Jagged little pill.

Alanis is Canadian.

Now, to the real business of this entry:

Rant about Alanis's song Ironic

See also: irony.

Nothing in this song is actually ironic. It is merely unfortunate or unlucky or unwanted.

Now, if Alanis has spent a little more time on it before putting it out there, she could have made it ironic without too much fuss.

For example, consider the lyric "It's like ra-ay-ayn on your wedding day...". Unfortunate, but not ironic - yet. What would be ironic is if you'd spent months planning an outdoor wedding in a garden somewhere. Then, a couple of days before, the weather forecast said it was going to rain, so you moved the whole wedding indoors. But then, a later forecast said it would be sunny after all, so you moved the whole thing outside again, at great expense and difficulty. But it rained on the day anyway.

Why Alanis couldn't have included this realistic scenario in her song is a mystery.

An alternate fix might have been to give up and simply retitle the song "Unfortunate". The lyrics don't fit the melody quite as well, but it's a small price to pay.