Understanding Alanis Morisette's "Ironic"

few songs are responsible for as much linguistic controversy as Alanis Morisette's Ironic. already a well-known artist in Canada, Ironic was how she introduced herself to the rest of the world, and the world reacted. a lot. like, seriously, looking back, I distinctly remember debates about whether she used the word correctly happening when I was in high school, a full decade after the song came out. and I think that's a shame, because spending all this time dissecting the lyrics means many of us haven't taken the time to really listen to the music. it's actually a beautiful song, with something real to say, and I don't think it gets enough credit, so… let's fix that. let's take it apart. (tick, tick, tick, tock) quick heads-up: if you want to see my next video a month early, or just watch this one without ads, those are both up now on patreon. there's a link in description, more on that at the end of the video. the song starts like this: (bang) which is honestly fascinating, and I'll explain why in a minute, but first, while I mostly want to look at the music, I feel like the comments section will be a mess if I don't at least talk about whether anything she describes in the song is actually ironic. and, like… kinda? the best example is probably the guy who's afraid to fly. that is, by and large, an unfounded fear: commercial air travel is extremely safe. him finally overcoming his irrational anxiety just to immediately encounter the absurdly unlikely event that would have justified it in the first place is ironic. but most of the stories are probably better classed as unfortunate coincidences. like, I've been to a wedding where it rained, despite being in Los Angeles, which is in the middle of a desert. it was still a lovely ceremony. so is this song a good example of irony? eh, not really, but lyrics play fast and loose with definitions all the time, and you can definitely tell what she means. I think that's more important, and it brings me back to Glen Ballard's guitar. (bang) I'm gonna spend a lot more time on these first two bars than I probably need to, because I think they're absolutely gorgeous and I really want you to understand why. I like to say that intros teach you how to hear the rest of the song, and this intro quietly spells out exactly what she means when she says "ironic". she means bittersweet, and the way that comes across in the music is with tonal ambiguity. the song's in B major. mostly. that'll get complicated later, but for now, B major. but the intro… isn't. or, I mean, it is, but it's being sneaky. instead of starting on a B chord, Ballard starts with E major 7. (bang) on top of that, Morisette does walk up to B: (bang) but this chromatic run could easily be a gesture in E blues. it's not like we're clearly in E, but there's also no reason to assume we're not. and they hold that fake key for the entire intro, never strongly confirming but also never contradicting it, so when the verse comes around, there's this moment of backfill, where your brain realizes what it was supposed to be hearing and quickly tries to recalibrate. it's disorienting, and if we think of this intro as instructions, then what it's teaching us is to be careful of our footing. the ground is uneven, and just when we think we're stable, something's probably gonna shift. but what I really want to talk about is the second bar. (bang) this is what I like to call a fretchord: it seems really complicated if I just tell you all the notes he's playing, but it makes a lot more sense if we instead think about it as a physical shape on the fretboard of a guitar. it's a fretboard chord. a fretchord. you get it. anyway, the story of this chord actually begins with that E major 7, which isn't quite as simple as it sounds either. that voicing is made of three fretted notes and three open strings. the open strings are a low G#, a B, and a D#, basically a G# minor triad. the fretted notes are E, G#, and a high B, making E major. together, these form the world's least interesting polychord: the two triads have a lot of overlap, sharing both G# and B, so the whole thing fits together into a single harmonic object, which we call E major 7. but I'd still like you to think of it as a polychord, because what happens next is he takes the fretted strings, that E major triad, and moves them up a whole step to F#, while the open strings stay the same. and suddenly, that overlap disappears. these two chords have zero notes in common. spelled from the bottom, we could call this G# minor 11, but my ears follow the motion of those fretted notes, so I prefer to hear it as some sort of F# chord. F# 6/9 add 11, I guess, from beloved jazz fusion artist Alanis Morisette. but again, labeling this chord isn't the point. instead, what we hear is a sort of naked duality, taking this seemingly simple harmony and rending it asunder, forcing us to momentarily stare straight into an unfamiliar tonal abyss. it defamiliarizes the structure of the major 7 chord, inviting us to contend with its dual nature as both major and minor by separating it into its component parts. this chord plays for exactly one bar, but in that bar, it becomes a sort of rosetta stone for the entire song. this is the vibe. everything else is just putting words on how this moment feels. I love this chord. it's so good.

after a bar, he slides back down to E major 7, then the intro ends with this walkdown: (bang) once again painting a picture of ambiguity. the topline melody is very clearly in B: (bang) arpeggiating a B power chord with an added A# to really make its point. but underneath that, Ballard plays this low, repeated E: (bang) that feels like it's resisting the song's effort to abandon the false key. it invites you to hear the more prominent B line above it as outlining the V chord even as the song pivots to make it the root. and then we're into the verse, and the real key becomes… ok, it's still not entirely clear. Ballard plays this four-chord loop: (bang) and while it does make sense in B, it also presents yet another option: F#. after all, he plays that chord twice as often, in the two strongest metric positions. on its own, I might even be inclined to say F# is the most likely key here, and the only reason I'm not is because of Morisette's melody. she's clearly singing in B, alternating between ending lines on the 3rd: (bang) and the root. (bang) this strong, tonal melody means the key isn't really ambiguous, but it is weak. that weakness creates a sort of narrative ambiguity, where you're not really sure how you're supposed to feel. is it happy? sad? wistful? melancholy? much like the stories she's telling, that depends on your perspective. and Ballard is working overtime to maintain that effect. the first step is to weaken the F#: again, it's the most obvious key center of the loop on its own, but we want uncertainty, not a direct clash with Morisette's B. here, he does two things. first, he plays the F# chords in first inversion. that is, the lowest note of the voicing isn't F#, it's A#. still the same chord, but without the grounding of an obvious bass note, it feels a little less stable, and not quite as capable of supporting a ton of harmonic weight. and second, he's playing a push-chord pattern, with the second chord of each bar hitting a little early, drawing some of the rhythmic power off the F#s and onto the chords that follow. but those changes, combined with the melody, really start to tilt the scale back toward B, so in order to maintain this delicate balance, he has to weaken that too. and here, there's three tricks. first, B is the second chord of the loop, by far the weakest position. the first chord has so much metric emphasis that whatever you put second can't help but sit in its shadow. burying your I chord here is a great way to make it feel like you don't really have a I chord. the push-chord rhythm digs it back out of that hole just enough to keep it alive, but it's hanging on by a thread. the second trick is with the chord itself: instead of B major, he holds the C# from the previous voicing, giving us B sus 2. not only does this obscure the chord quality, adding a mysterious shimmer to the sound, it also reduces the total motion between chords. the only change is the A# sliding up to B, and that's not enough for a strong resolution. and third, the final chord of the loop contrasts that B major sound with its good friend and relative minor, G#. these two keys have a lot in common, and when it comes to loop structure, the G# chord has a lot going for it: it's in a stronger metric position, and unlike the B chord, it's played as a full minor 7. no suspended notes. plus, whenever she resolves the melody, she does it over G# minor. all that sort of tempts your ear away from the true root, suggesting that maybe, just maybe, this whole thing is actually in G#. it's not, the melody is in B and I will not be persuaded otherwise, but damn if they're not trying, y'know? that carries into the chorus: (bang) where there's obviously a huge shift in orchestration. the whole band comes crashing in, including this gorgeous organ part by Michael Thompson: (bang) and we're gonna talk about all that, I promise we will, but first I'm gonna keep talking about tonal ambiguity 'cause it's my video and you can't stop me. I guess you could leave, or skip ahead, but, like… don't. underneath all these layers of sound, there's two subtle changes to the loop. first, the F# chord is no longer inverted. not only does the new electric guitar voicing have a low F#: (bang) there's also a bass part, also playing F#. (bang) on the other hand, the B chord is no longer suspended. the C# is gone, replaced with D#, so now it's just a normal B major triad. (bang) these changes strengthen both potential keys, but I think they do more for the F#. we've got a strong, root position triad, played twice, in the first and third positions, always approached by strong harmonic motion. everything

I know about chord loops tells me that the center of this harmonic universe is supposed to be F#. but what about the harmony's natural predator, the melody? in the verse, we knew we were in B because Morisette kept singing it, but here, not so much. most phrases end on an unstable pitch, usually G#: (bang) but the whole thing revolves around F#. there's these long, held notes at the start of each line, and the final phrase ends with a clean resolution to that pitch. (bang) and like, yes, it's not uncommon to build a melody around the 5th of the key. this does still make perfect sense in B major. but it doesn't just make there's two perfectly valid ways to read this section, and there's not enough information to really tell them apart. or, I mean, there is: music is all about context, and since there's no clear evidence of a key change, it's fair to assume the key from the verse carries through. but again, what is the key from the verse? it's probably B, but it wasn't super clear there either. and yeah, I know I'm going in circles here, but I'm trying to make a real point: throughout the song, the harmony maintains a really tenuous grip on its key center, touching it just enough to not sound atonal but not enough to ever feel grounded. it's a song about good things happening at bad times, and the music invites you to sit with both sides of that duality. and speaking of dualities, let's talk about the orchestration. there's a lot of new instruments here, but I'm gonna pull out Lance Morrison's bass part, 'cause he did not need to go this hard. he did that for us. I'm not really sure I can connect this part back to the song's story: if he'd just played a simple 8th-note pattern: (bang) it still would've made the point just fine. but he did not play a simple 8th-note pattern. instead, he played this: (bang) and it absolutely whips. let me break it down. the push chord pattern means he has to change to the new root on the 8th note before beat 3. it's a jagged rhythm, but he smooths it out a bit by splitting the space evenly into two dotted 8ths. (bang) he holds that for another dotted 8th, pushing him into the middle of beat 3, where he throws a little embellishment on the note below the chord root: (bang) before hitting a couple extra 16ths that run into the start of the next bar. in total, he manages to dodge every single beat except the downbeat, giving it this loose, untethered groove that weaves its way around the rest of the band. and despite being just a single extra note, those decorative steps give it a beautiful melodic quality that breaks the bass out from its strictly harmonic role defining the chord roots. it's a really gorgeous bassline, different enough to be interesting without demanding too much attention, and while it may not be narratively necessary, it makes the song feel upbeat and alive, adding yet another layer of emotional nuance. but while all the instruments are doing their own interesting things, the main impact here comes from the sheer dynamic weight of adding them all at once. the move from a soft, acoustic verse with its conversational phrasing and loose time feel to a full rock band is so striking that it almost seems to change the genre, instantly transforming from Joni Mitchell to Joan Jett. and that's one of the great things about Alanis Morisette: her work has never felt particularly bound by stylistic conventions. in fact, the whole '90s alt rock scene was a playground for musical scavengers, nakedly pulling influence from all across the history of popular music, but she was always particularly good at it. and in this song, the sudden transformation again feeds our sense of narrative duality: the melancholy atmosphere of the verse gives way to a sneering, self-aware chorus, as if the narrator is now in on the joke. that new sound carries through to the end of the chorus, where the chords finally break from the loop: (bang) and the first thing that stands out to me is this A chord. up to now, the key center has been a bit fuzzy, but the notes weren't. they've flirted with B major, G# minor, E lydian, and F# mixolydian, but those are all modes of the same parent scale. that is, they contain all the same notes, they just use them differently. so no matter which key is correct, we know it has A#, not A natural. but the real surprise to me isn't the out-of-key note itself, it's how little I notice that it's out of key in the first place. usually, a weird tension popping up is a big, attention-grabbing moment, but it wasn't until I transcribed this part that I even registered the clash. it sounds fine, unremarkable even, despite her emphasizing it by singing A in the melody: (bang) and the bassline doubling her. (bang) nothing about this feels like it doesn't fit, and I think that's down to the fuzzy key. most of what makes out-of-key notes so distinctive is the way they subvert expectations, but the tonality here is too weak for my ears to really expect anything. is this the b7? the

b3? 4? b2? each of those is dissonant in a different way. without guidance, my brain doesn't know what to do with it, and since the key isn't helping, I have to rely on other, non-tonal frameworks. and my default there is simple chord-to-chord motion. this comes right after G# minor: (bang) and, if I'm not too worried about the key, that sort of phrygian step, if you will, is an inherently satisfying sound. it feels good, solid, and that comfortable voice-leading motion is more than enough to distract from the little voice in the back of my head that should be telling me something's weird. and the other important chord is, of course, the last one. structurally, it's that F# polychord again, but while I'm pretty sure the acoustic guitar is playing it, it's drowned out by the electric: (bang) and the electric guitar can't really play that chord. I mean, physically, it can, but it wouldn't be a good idea: running six distinct pitches through a distortion pedal creates way too many clashing overtones. the timbre would be a mess, and the harmony unrecognizable. instead, the electric plays a sort of hybrid voicing, borrowing notes from each half of the polychord in order to make, effectively, an F# sus 4. this contains both F# and B, our two main roots, and that's enough to evoke the polychord without all the acoustic baggage of actually playing it. and the placement of this chord is very intentional: it falls right as she sings the words "it figures", so the rich, disjointed harmony of that fretchord becomes a symbol for the inherent subjectivity of human experience. are these things good or bad? neither. they're just life. they mean what you want them to mean. now, I know what you're thinking. "12tone", you're saying, presumably out loud to your computer screen, "12tone, you're reading way too deep into a single chord voicing that they're not even playing. " and you're right. sort of. well, no, you're wrong, and to see why, I'm gonna skip the second verse entirely and jump straight to the bridge, because here: (bang) they just straight-up make my point for me. this section returns to the intro progression, looping E major 7 and the F# fretchord, with this clean electric line on top that's totally drenched in reverb. the loop means we actually get to spend some real time with the polychord, and over it, Morisette breaks from describing ironic situations and instead just talks about how life is weird and surprising. (bang) I love when artists spell out all the symbolism for me. makes my job so much easier. I also want to talk about the vocal phrasing here. the way she sings this melody feels like the musical equivalent of a run-on sentence, with three distinct phases kinda smushed together. the beginning: (bang) is bold and melodic, with these big, attention-grabbing leaps and really clear diction. from there, it rambles off into the middle bit: (bang) where she drops to a lower register, starts slurring her words a bit, and rushes her delivery to cram as much as possible into the bar. the range is also much smaller, mostly just A# and B, with long runs of repeated notes, making her delivery feel much more conversational, like a friend excitedly explaining something to you at a loud party. and, like that friend, she doesn't quite know when to stop: the melody is structured like a two-bar phrase, but as she crosses over the second barline, she sort of slouches into a drawn-out ending: (bang) repeating herself unnecessarily and dragging out a two-bar phrase to fill four bars. seriously, check out how little is missing, musically or narratively, if I just cut that ending entirely. (bang) but with it there, this line feels like she starts out absolutely certain she has something really important to say, gets lost along the way as she tries to explain all the little nuances and details, before ultimately realizing it wasn't all that insightful to begin with. which, like… *sigh* I wonder what that feels like. I simply can't imagine. and I don't say that to criticize her: by her own admission, the song's not that deep, but I do think this phrasing adds an ironic twist. the song's been at the center of decades of controversy over the precise definition of irony, picked apart in bad-faith readings to show that she's actually not saying what she thinks she's saying, and here she just kinda… shrugs and agrees. because the actual message of the song is as simple as it is obvious: life is unpredictable and weird. you never really know what's gonna happen, and you won't know what those things mean until they're over. everything else is set dressing around that central theme, and by musically undercutting her most philosophical ramblings, she's almost teasing her listeners for trying to read deeper than that. what she's saying is clear, even if she's not saying it very clearly. and that's pretty much it. the bridge leads into a breakdown verse: (bang) reminiscent of the first one but with some percussion to keep the momentum going, then another chorus, then the outro is just the bridge again, looping that same progression for a bit before slowing down as the instruments drop out one by one. (bang) it's a fitting end in that, like much of the song

it's completely unsatisfying. there's no fade-out, no button hit, no clear conclusion at all, they just sort of give up on playing and go do something else. live, I guess. it's an ending that doesn't seem interested in answering any of the questions the song raised, because those aren't the sorts of questions someone else can answer for you. that would defeat the point. so am I saying that Ironic, a song widely maligned for its faux-intellectual posturing, is actually a deep, poignant treatise on the nature of life, and everyone missed it because they were too busy with their own faux-intellectual takedowns? I don't know. maybe. but like, wouldn't that be ironic? I've been thinking a lot lately about rhythm. specifically, the difference between rhythm and meter, to the point where I wound up making a whole video about it. it's a common sticking point for new musicians, but also weirdly difficult for experts to agree on, and I fell down a pretty deep rabbit hole trying to work it all out. if you want to see that, the video's live now on patreon. it'll go up on youtube in like 3 or 4 weeks, probably, but my patreon patrons have been making this channel possible for a long time, so I've started posting videos early over there to say thanks. I know it's a tough time for a lot of people right now, so don't worry, the video will still come out for free on youtube, but if you can't wait, there's a link to my patreon in the description. and as always, thanks for watching. thanks to our featured patrons, Susan Jones, Jill Sundgaard, Howard Levine, Warren Huart, Damien Fuller-Sutherland, Neil Moore, and Geoff! check out Patreon for a fuller outro, and as always, keep on rockin'.