Ironic by Alanis Morissette

Ironic is a song by Canadian singer Alanis Morissette. She wrote it with producer Glen Ballard in 1994. It came out on her album Jagged Little Pill in 1995. It was issued as the album's fourth single in February 1996. It spent six weeks at number one in Canada and reached number four on the Billboard Hot 100. It was also nominated for the Grammy for Record of the Year.

Morissette and Ballard first met in early 1994, not long after she moved from Canada to Los Angeles. The two wrote Ironic on May 26, 1994. Their partnership went on to produce all of Jagged Little Pill. Ironic was only the third song they finished together. Ballard later told Billboard that it took them less than 15 minutes. The idea came out of a lunch conversation. Morissette had described an old man who wins the lottery and dies the next day. Back in the studio, the two traded unlucky situations and tried to make each other laugh.

Morissette treated the song as a warm-up exercise. She has said she did not want it on the album at all. Ballard pushed for it. So did several people on the project who liked the melody. She eventually agreed. She has described the lyrics as storytelling, not autobiography. They follow a set of characters running into bad timing.

The recording took place at Westlake Recording Studios and Signet Sound Studios in Hollywood. Ballard produced the track and played guitar. Basil Fung also played guitar, with Lance Morrison on bass, Rob Ladd on drums and Michael Thompson on organ. Chris Fogel mixed it. The finished song is in B major at about 82 beats per minute. The full breakdown of its key and tempo is on its Song IQ page. It moves from a quiet, almost conversational verse into a big, open chorus. Much of the album follows the same pattern.

Jagged Little Pill had already turned Morissette into a star by the time Ironic reached radio. Maverick and Warner Bros. sent it to US pop stations on February 13, 1996. The physical single followed later that month in the US, Canada and France, then in the UK in April. In Canada, the song climbed from a debut at number 95 to the top of the RPM chart on April 1, 1996. It stayed there for six weeks. It finished as the second-biggest Canadian song of the year, behind another Morissette single, You Learn. In the US it topped the Modern Rock Tracks chart for three weeks. It peaked at number four on the Hot 100 in April 1996. That is still her highest placing on that chart. It also reached number three in Australia and New Zealand and number one in Israel. In the UK it peaked at number 11. The British Phonographic Industry certified it double platinum in January 2025.

The music video was directed by Stéphane Sednaoui and shot in a snowy Brooklyn. It shows Morissette driving a car in which every passenger is also her, each version with its own clothes and personality. The effect relies on editing rather than visual tricks. The clip had six nominations at the 1996 MTV Video Music Awards and won three: Best Female Video, Best New Artist in a Video and Best Editing. At the 1997 Grammys it was nominated for Best Short Form Music Video. The single won the Juno Award for Single of the Year in Canada.

The song is best known for the argument over its title. Most of the situations in the lyrics, like rain on a wedding day or a fly in a glass of wine, are bad luck or coincidence rather than irony in the strict sense. Critics, teachers and comedians have pointed this out for close to 30 years. Ed Byrne built a stand-up routine around it. Morissette has said she was embarrassed by the criticism at first. In a 1999 interview with Q, she explained that she and Ballard had been trying to amuse each other and were not thinking about irony at all. Later she argued that dictionaries had widened the word's meaning to cover the way she used it. Ballard studied English literature. In 2020 he said he enjoys the debate and admitted the pair used the word loosely.

Morissette has also made fun of the song herself. In 2015 she performed a rewritten version on The Late Late Show with James Corden that poked at the song's reputation. She has changed lines on stage over the years, including at the 2004 GLAAD Media Awards, where she altered a lyric in support of same-sex marriage. A revised acoustic version appeared on Jagged Little Pill Acoustic in 2005. In June 2024 she sang the song on Canadian morning television with her daughter ahead of its 30th anniversary.

Other artists have recorded it too. The band Self released a parody called Moronic in 1998. Jesse & Joy and Four Year Strong recorded their own takes. Kelly Clarkson covered it in 2022 and sang it with Morissette on her talk show the following year. Avril Lavigne, who had performed it with Morissette in 2005, recorded a solo version for the film Mile End Kicks. The song plays over the opening of the 2013 film The Internship. It is also part of the stage musical Jagged Little Pill, written by Diablo Cody, which opened in 2018.