1995Released
4:09

Did You Know?

Interesting facts and trivia about You Oughta Know. By Songfacts®.

This song is an angry message from a scorned ex-girlfriend directed at her former lover. Morissette has said it is about a specific person, but that person has not contacted her, and probably doesn't know it's about him. Morissette claims she will never say who this is about, just as Carly Simon has done with "You're So Vain." The song was rumored to be about the actor Dave Coulier, whom Morissette dated for a time - Coulier says it was in 1992 when Alanis would have been 17 or 18 years old and he would have been 32 or 33 (hence the line "an older version of me"). Coulier played Joey on the TV show Full House, and is known for his Bullwinkle impression. In a 2008 interview with the Calgary Herald, Coulier claimed the song is about their rocky former relationship. The actor/comedian said that he first heard the track when he was driving. "I said, 'Wow, this girl is angry.' And then I said, 'Oh man, I think it's Alanis,'" Coulier revealed. "I listened to the song over and over again, and I said, 'I think I have really hurt this person.' I tried to contact her and I finally got a hold of her. And at the same time, the press was calling and saying, 'You want to comment on this song?' I called her and I said, 'Hi. Uh, what do you want me to say?' And she said, 'You can say whatever you want.' We saw each other and hung out for an entire day. And it was beautiful. It was one of those things where it was kind of like, 'We're good.'" Coulier later said that he only admitted to being the subject of the song to placate reporters who kept asking him about it. In 2014, he told Buzzfeed: "The guy in that song is a real a-hole, so I don't want to be that guy."

The lyrics came from a journal entry Morissette wrote during what she describes as "a very devastated time." She told Spotify: "When I hear that song, I hear the anger as a protection around the searing vulnerability. I was mortified and devastated. It was a lot easier for me to be angry and feel the power from that anger versus the broken, horrified woman on the floor."

Morissette started out as a dance-pop singer, releasing her first album in her native Canada in 1991 when she was 16. Another album was released a year later, but then she was dropped from her label. Looking to change direction, she went to Los Angeles and met with producers, looking for someone to help fulfill her vision. She found her man in Glen Ballard, who worked for Quincy Jones' label and produced the first Wilson Phillips album. They had an instant rapport and easy songwriting chemistry, completing one song every time they met for a session at Ballard's studio. "You Oughta Know" was written on October 6, 1994, after a three-month hiatus. By this time, Morissette was comfortable enough with Ballard to reveal her deeply personal lyric. After they worked up the track, she blasted out the vocal in one take. In a Songfacts interview with Ballard, he said: "The most wonderful thing for me as a writer is to hear someone's voice in the room, and she was constantly auditioning how to do it, so at the end of the night on 'You Oughta Know,' we had a track, and she just went out and sang it one time, and since I was the engineer too, I was hoping I'd got it. It's not the best recorded vocal in the world - some of it is too hot - but that's the only time she ever sang it in the studio. Even when we were getting ready to put the record out, all those vocals were the original vocals. I've never done anything that authentically live. Really, that's what it was, a live vocal, but she's so damn good that she could pull it off. There was some talk about refining things and re-doing things, but she was adamant that there was something about the moment of creation when we did it."

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Song Analysis

Key, BPM (tempo) and time signature of You Oughta Know.
EKey
MajorMode
4/4Time Signature
105BPM

Album

The album You Oughta Know is released on.

Released By

The record label that has released You Oughta Know.
Maverick
© 1995 Maverick Recording Company
℗ 1995 Maverick Recording Company

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