Ironic by Alanis Morissette

Note: Before I listened to this song I consulted the Oatmeal to determine what constituted irony. You can consult it here, so we're on the same page: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/irony.

First impressions: After one listening, I don't think a single example in Alanis' song is ironic. But just to be sure, let's go through them one by one and examine the potential irony of them.

"An old man turned ninety-eight/He won the lottery and died the next day." This would only be ironic if 1) he played the lottery every week and 2) was in fact killed by the giant check that he got from winning the lottery. (Bonus points if the jackpot was $98 million.)

"It's a black fly in your Chardonnay." Not even close. That's just minorly annoying. It could only be ironic if the wine was called something like "fly repellent" or "no fly zone," but then who the hell would drink it?

"It's a death row pardon two minutes too late." Nope, that's just really bad luck and timing. It would be ironic if there was a short circuit in the prison electrical lines and the phone call to pardon him set off the electric chair, thus killing him. Otherwise, just bad timing.

"It's like rain on your wedding day." Yet again, just bad luck. This seems like the bride's fault though. Who plans a completely outdoor wedding at a time of year where there could even possibly be rain?

"It's a free ride when you've already paid." This is just Alanis being confused. Once you have paid for the ride, it is then "paid." It cannot be "free" once you have paid for it. That's like saying "I went to Best Buy and gave some guy in a blue shirt $1000 and he gave me a free flatscreen!!" People like this are the reasons scams thrive. On an unrelated note, I need 10 people who love to make money and hate to work to email me RIGHT NOW for a chance at instant wealth and fame.

"It's the good advice that you just didn't take." Now that's just dumb. Why not take good advice?

"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...'"
I think this might actually be bordering on irony. But i think the fact that he went voluntarily might convolute things a bit. It is ironic that he avoided something for so long then it killed him. I think it'd be better if he avoided it for so long then a small plane crashed into his house killing only him...while his family was on a long, safe flight to Hong Kong. Well, not really better for him, but better for Alanis as now it is closer to irony.

"A traffic jam when you're already late." No. No. No. No. This is, once again, just shitty luck, and really not all that uncommon.

"A no-smoking sign on your cigarette break." That was poor planning. Here's a suggestion: move 20 feet away from where you are.

"It's like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife." Just no. As specifically addressed in the aforementioned Oatmeal article, this is not ironic. There is no reversal of fortunes. She had no reason to expect that in a spoon factory (where she obviously is, because nowhere else would have 10,000 spoons and no knife) that there would be a knife. It's like saying you were surprised that there were no penguins in Africa given how many vultures you saw. Both are birds, but neither makes it an ironic situation. Or being surprised that you went to China and didn't see a single Korean person.

"It's meeting the man of my dreams/And then meeting his beautiful wife." By definition, then, the man of your dreams is married. If this man is the man of your dreams then everything he is, even things you didn't know about, are attributes held by the man of your dreams. And since this man is married, then the man of your dreams is also married. This is not ironic, it is more of a wakeup call that maybe you should aspire higher and have better dreams.

The only truly ironic thing in this song is the fact that a well-known songwriter released a single entitled "ironic" without looking up the definition. This is in fact an entire song filled with examples of what she thought were irony but were in fact just a lot of bad luck. The chorus may shed some light onto why Alanis's examples of irony are not ironic. She says "Well life has a funny way of sneaking up on you/When you think everything's okay and everything's going right." This is her definition of irony in a nutshell: when your life is going well and something disrupts this trend, then it's ironic. She has clearly confused irony with unluckiness. By her definition, most things in life would be ironic. Whenever you order a hamburger and get a chicken sandwich, it's ironic. When you beat up a hooker and she turns out to be an undercover agent, that's ironic. When your fucking shoe is untied, it's ironic. But I digress. Let's just say it seems almost criminal to build an entire song around a concept and not even use it correctly once.