Composition
"Flea and I did that song together in the studio. It was already written with different instrumentation and we were asked to kind of re-write the music... A lot like a re-mix. The structure of the song was in place but there were no guide tracks, we just had the vocal to work from. It was just a good time and we basically jammed until we found something we were both happy with. Alanis was happy too."
—Dave Navarro talking about the conception of "You Oughta Know".According to an ABC News article, "Alanis Morissette revealed that her angst-ridden hit 'You Oughta Know' was about her relationship with Dave Coulier". In an August 2008 interview to the Calgary Sun, Coulier admitted to being the ex-boyfriend portrayed in the song. In 1997 the Boston Herald reported that Coulier "admitted the lines are very close to home. Especially the one about 'an older version of me' and bugging him 'in the middle of dinner.'"
However, in October 2008, Morissette reiterated her refusal to identify the subject, commenting to a CanWest News Service journalist,
"Well, I've never talked about who my songs were about and I won't, because when I write them they're written for the sake of personal expression. So with all due respect to whoever may see themselves in my songs, and it happens all the time, I never really comment on it because I write these songs for myself, not other people."
Other celebrities have been rumored to be the lover in the song, including: Bob Saget, Coulier's co-star on Full House; Mike Peluso, hockey player for the New Jersey Devils and previously for the Ottawa Senators in 1992–93; Matt LeBlanc, the actor who appeared in the video for Morissette's single "Walk Away" in 1991;, and Leslie Howe, a musician and the producer of Morissette's first two albums in the early 1990s.
Read more about this topic: You Oughta Know
Famous quotes containing the word composition:
“Boswell, when he speaks of his Life of Johnson, calls it my magnum opus, but it may more properly be called his opera, for it is truly a composition founded on a true story, in which there is a hero with a number of subordinate characters, and an alternate succession of recitative and airs of various tone and effect, all however in delightful animation.”
—James Boswell (1740–1795)
“The composition of a tragedy requires testicles.”
—Voltaire [François Marie Arouet] (1694–1778)
“Modern Western thought will pass into history and be incorporated in it, will have its influence and its place, just as our body will pass into the composition of grass, of sheep, of cutlets, and of men. We do not like that kind of immortality, but what is to be done about it?”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)