Songoftheday 3/18/20 - An old man turned ninety-eight, he won the lottery and died the next day...

"Ironic" - Alanis Morissette
from the album Jagged Little Pill (1995)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #4 (five weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 29

Today's song of the day comes from Canadian songstress Alanis Morissette, whose breakthrough album Jagged Little Pill had spun off a pair of radio hits in America with "You Oughta Know" and "Hand In My Pocket", during 1995. A third cut from the record, "All I Really Want", got enough radio play to climb to #14 on the Alternative Rock chart and #65 on Billboard's Hot 100 Airplay tally at the close of the year. (It would later on be released as a true single in Canada, making it to #2.) In February of 1996, the first physical single from Jagged Little Pill was released in the U.S. "Ironic", written by Alanis along with her producer Glen Ballard, was a collection of observations meant to be, well, ironic, but maybe proving the title some of them were contested as just odd occurrences. Fans didn't care though, and snapped up the single and with radio on board gave Alanis her biggest Hot 100 success. The music video, featuring a bevy of Alanises in a car, became, well, iconic...

"Ironic" became Alanis' first true top ten single on Billboard's official Hot 100 chart in April of 1996. The song climbed to #5 on their Adult Top-40 format chart, and got to #28 on the Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") radio list. It also crossed over to top the Alternative Rock chart for three weeks, and rose to #18 on the Mainstream Rock list. Internationally, the single topped the Canadian singles chart for six weeks, and made the top ten in Australia (#3), New Zealand (#3), Norway (#4), the Netherlands (#6), Belgium (#6F/#9W), Germany (#8), Ireland (#8), Iceland (#8), and Switzerland (#9). The track just missed it at #11 in the UK, and peaked at #16 in France. At the Grammy Awards in 1997, the song was nominated for Record of the Year, which went to Eric Clapton's "Change The World", as well as Best Short-Form Video, which the Beatles won for "Free As A Bird".

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Here's Alanis in concert in Holland in 1996...