Ironic

Morissette and Ballard wrote it as the third song they made together, in under 15 minutes. Ballard said they were just having fun. Morissette said it was written as a warm-up and was not meant for the album, and that many people encouraged her to include it. It was recorded at Westlake Recording Studios and Signet Sound Studios in Hollywood, with Ballard and Basil Fung on guitar, Lance Morrison on bass, Rob Ladd on drums and percussion, and Michael Thompson on organ. Warner Bros. sent it to US radio on 13 February 1996 and it was released as a physical single on 27 February, which made it the first single from the album eligible for the Hot 100.

The lyrics list unlucky situations and ask whether they are ironic, and critics and pedants have argued over whether they are. Jon Pareles of the New York Times found the song's implications distinctly unironic. Morissette said she was at first embarrassed by the lyrics, and later joked about it. In a 2015 performance on The Late Late Show with James Corden she sang an updated line about singing Ironic when there are no ironies. Stereogum's Tom Breihan gave the song 7 out of 10 and called the controversy an excuse for smug pedantry.

It reached number four on the Hot 100, still her highest placing there, and topped the Modern Rock and Mainstream Top 40 charts. In Canada it spent six weeks at number one on the RPM chart, and it reached number three in Australia and New Zealand and number 11 in the United Kingdom. The video, directed by Stephane Sednaoui, shows her driving through a winter landscape as several passengers. It was nominated for six MTV Video Music Awards in 1996 and won three, and the song won the 1997 Juno for Single of the Year and was nominated for the Grammy for Record of the Year.

Live and covers

At the GLAAD Media Awards in March 2004 she changed the line about meeting the man of her dreams and his beautiful wife to husband, and kept the change on the 2005 acoustic recording. She sang it with Avril Lavigne at the House of Blues that year. In July 2024 she brought out Muna to sing it at Pitchfork Music Festival. Kelly Clarkson and Avril Lavigne have covered it.