"If I had realized how upset people would be I suppose I might have given it a little more thought," That's Alanis Morisette's comment on the critics who point out that some of the "ironic" situations represented in this quirky song do not really comply with the dictionary definition. "I guess what people forget sometimes is that when I write songs, I write them in about 20 minutes, and that it was just a snapshot of that moment. It's not something that I foresaw turning into a song, first of all, that I'd have to sing every night for a year; or something that I thought millions of people would be listening to. Honestly, it's was something that I just wrote as anyone would write a poem, for a high school project. They write it, then they honestly think they'll never have to read it again, really. And that's kind of how I saw my songs." Arguably the worst lyric on Jagged Little Pill is the one which runs: "It's like 10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife", but even that doesn't spoil a song that
cleverly conveys the singer's real personality. Each verse is delivered in a deliberately different style, which can be by turns gentle, cute, panicked, ambivalent - that emulates in song Morissette's own discrete moods. The theme of 'Ironic' is simply that life be "funny". It's not far detached from the whole theme of the album, which is that sometimes good stuff can come out of bad times. A lousy lover can inspire you to write a hit song or a nervous breakdown can cause you to turn your life around. Okay, that's not irony, strictly speaking, but give a girl a break.
