Alanis Morissette Updates "Ironic" Lyrics During Performance With James Corden

Jagged Little Pill singer is celebrating her album's 20th anniversary

By Francesca Bacardi Nov 10, 2015 1:45 PMTags

Twenty years later, Alanis Morissette is ready to give her big hit, "Ironic," a modern update.

The 41-year-old songstress appeared on The Late Late Show With James Corden Monday where she was invited to perform her famous song, but she and the late-night host changed the lyrics a bit to reflect society's more tech-savvy age.

"An old friend sends you a Facebook request / And you only find out they're racist after you accept," Morissette began the song.

From there on out it became a back-and-forth between the two performers. "There's free office cake on the first day of your diet / It's like they announce a new iPhone the day after you buy it / Isn't it ironic? / Don't you think," James Corden continued.

"It's like swiping left on your future soul mate / It's like a Snapchat that you wished you had saved / It's a traffic jam when you tried to use Waze," they both sang together during the chorus.

YouTube

But let's be honest—the biggest question surrounding Morissette's iconic track is that for a song titled "Ironic," there aren't any ironies. Thankfully Corden and Morissette finally addressed the song's faux pas in their new version.

"It's singing ironic when there are no ironies," the Into the Woods star crooned.

Toward the end of the performance, Corden became so enamored of their update that he decided to take Morissette's famous mumbling at the end of the original and make it his own, going on for so long that the Jagged Little Pill performer had to tell him to stop!

Between the clucking—yes, clucking—on The Tonight Show and the lyric changes on The Late Late Show, we had no idea how versatile this song could be. Watch the video to see just how good this duet is.

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