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  • 2000-01-10 (xsd:date)
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  • Who is Alanis Morissette's 'You Oughta Know' About? (en)
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  • A segment of the modern audience insists on interpreting the lyrics of pop songs written in the first person literally (see the legend about Phil Collins' In the Air Tonight for a prime example) and assuming that the accounts described therein must reflect the personal experiences of the singers. (The latter perhaps fostered by the trend that began in the 1960s of pop musicians' writing their own material rather than relying upon the efforts of commercial songwriters.) When Mary MacGregor hit the charts with Torn Between Two Lovers in 1976, for example, far too many fans assumed she must really have been involved in relationships with two different men at the same time (even though the song was not written by MacGregor, but was in fact was penned by two men, Peter Yarrow and Phil Jarrel), and listeners spent years trying to guess whom Carly Simon had in mind when she wrote You're So Vain. It was inevitable, then, that Alanis Morissette's vitriolic 1995 song You Oughta Know (from her huge-selling third album, Jagged Little Pill) would trigger gossip about the identity of the ex-lover savaged in the lyrics for moving on so quickly: Rumors have named just about everyone of note with whom Morissette has ever been associated as the target of this bitter attack: Morissette did reveal in a 1995 interview that the song was not a mere abstraction but was indeed about someone specific with whom she had a relationship: Dave Coulier is by far the name most frequently attached to this rumor, and if he didn't know about it in 1995, he reportedly did by 1997, when the spokesman for Boston's Comedy Connection (where Coulier was currently working) told the Boston Herald: But just as Carly Simon has steadfastly refused to identify the subject of You're So Vain for all these years, confirmation of whom Morissette was thinking of when she wrote You Oughta Know may forever remain elusive. Paul Cantin's biography of the singer quotes her as saying: (en)
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