There is still a huge amount of real-life demand for this mystery ex in “You Oughta Know” to indeed be held accountable. All these many years she has refused to say who the song is about. The most common theory is that the culprit is Dave Coulier, comedian and Full House television “uncle.” But letting the man’s identity remain unknown keeps the focus on the central question, which is not whether any specific man was lousy to Alanis but how we mete out justice against the generic figure of Mr. Duplicity. She doesn’t want to be subservient, or for her life plans or happiness to be at the mercy of a two-faced liar’s whims. The tether of the song is supposed to tug at him as much as it tugs at her, and this symbolism would be significantly undercut if the vague persona were traded for a specific person.
Look at what happens every time Carly Simon teases another new detail about the identity of the man in “You’re So Vain.” Some filthy rich guy once paid $50,000 at auction for Simon to reveal who the song was about, on the condition that he keep it confidential. Every time she reveals one letter of the subject’s name to the public, there is a brief media storm as people clamor over the possible celebrity suspects. So we rehash the myriad of prickish deeds done by Jagger or Bowie or Beatty or Cassidy, losing sight of the much more widespread problem of men who walk into parties like they’re walking onto a yacht. This archetypal narcissist in his stupid apricot scarf owns everything in his line of sight—the girls, the jet, the horses. The fact that there are a dozen serious real-life contenders for Simon’s character is worth a chuckle, lest we gag. She’s said it’s a composite of several men and of course it is.
The very popular Canadian sketch comedy series for pre-teens, You Can’t Do That on Television, simultaneously aired in the US on the paid cable television station Nickelodeon. When she was in junior high in 1986, Alanis appeared on five episodes and was forbidden during this window of time from cutting her hair or otherwise altering her appearance for the sake of preserving continuity for the viewers. She left quickly because it was evident that she was too much of a grown-up. She didn’t laugh at fart jokes like the other child actors did, and she read books during the breaks from filming.
The show had a running gag from the very first episode, which was simply to drop a pile of green goo on the head of any character who said the phrase “I don’t know.” This sliming was so representative of the show that eventually it became the visual trademark of the entire Nickelodeon brand. During her brief stint on the series, Alanis was slimed three times, but only one of those scenes was aired. The slime mixture itself was disgusting and actors largely hated whenever it was their turn to be subjected to it, yet the slime couldn’t be avoided. The fact that it wasn’t a surprise did not make it any less traumatic. As a result, probably many of the show’s endless parade of young people grew up into adults that have strongly negative associations with the phrase “I don’t know.” It’s a dismissive phrase, one that sweeps things under the rug. It’s the phrase Mr. Duplicity will use to keep insistent questioning at bay. When I hear Alanis singing to him, lobbing the litany at him about whether his new lover speaks eloquently or whether she would have his baby, I assume he is just running in the other direction and screaming, “I don’t know!” I like to think in “You Oughta Know” Alanis is basically sliming her ex. It is the green goo, the mess he made, reminding him that she will not be ignored.
Excerpted from Chapter 2: “To Remind You” of Why Alanis Morissette Matters by Megan Volpert. Copyright © 2025 by Megan Volpert. Excerpted with permission from University of Texas Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Megan Volpert is the author or editor of over a dozen books on popular culture, including two Lambda Literary Award finalists and an American Library Association honoree. Her newest work is Why Alanis Morissette Matters and she won Georgia Author of the Year for Boss Broad, an essay collection full of feminist retorts to the work of Bruce Springsteen. She teaches at Kennesaw State and Reinhardt Universities, plus writes for Salon and PopMatters. Her first love, at age three, was Cruella De Vil. Volpert’s favorite revenge story is RuPaul’s unparalleled real-life rise to power against heteronormative culture. As an air witch with a passion for all things fragrant, her not-so-secret (you say) villainous (she says anti-heroic) persona goes by the name of the Spritz. Dive deeper into all this at meganvolpert.com.
