Dave Coulier Clears Up Alanis Morissette’s ‘You Oughta Know’ Urban Legend
For anyone who had ears in the 90s, Alanis Morissette’s song “You Oughta Know” was inescapable. The Canadian pop singer-turned-dark crooner broke out into the scene with her scandalously frank song “You Oughta Know,” which painted the best example of a 90s revenge song until the emergence of singer Taylor Swift.
In the beginning, all we knew is that “You Oughta Know” was about a boyfriend turned ex. Although we didn’t know the specifics with the vague lyrics, one thing was for certain — Alanis was definitely betrayed in big bad way. Then rumors started circulating that the man who wronged Morissette was none other than sitcom funny man Dave Coulier.
During its 1997 release, Coulier was still known as a wholesome personality given his notoriety for having played lovable goon Joey Gladstone on the family sitcom Full House. To say we were shocked is an understatement. Over a decade after and the question to music’s best urban legend still remains — was Alanis really singing about Coulier?
In a recent interview with BuzzFeed, Dave Coulier admits that he and Alanis did date but even he isn’t too sure if that song is specifically about him.
“You know, it’s just funny to be the supposed subject of that song,” he said. “First of all, the guy in that song is a real a-hole, so I don’t want to be that guy.” Also, “that guy” probably broke the law in a movie theater if going by the lyrics.
Coulier continued to explain where the backstory of the urban legend came from, and surprisingly Dave kind of started it.
“I dated Alanis in 1992. You know, it’s just funny to be the supposed subject of that song. First of all, the guy in that song is a real a-hole, so I don’t want to be that guy. Secondly, I asked Alanis, ‘I’m getting calls by the media and they want to know who this guy is. And she said, ‘Well, you know it could be a bunch of people. But you can say whatever you want.'”
The Full House star continued to explain his sticky situation:
“The press just wore me down and everybody wanted to know. So I said, ‘Yeah, all right, I’m the guy. There, I said it!'”
That said, it seems like Coulier is still trying to figure out what went wrong between he and Alanis. During a 2008 interview with the Calgary Herald, he was singing a different tune about the first time he heard “You Oughta Know.”
“I said ‘Wow, this girl is angry.’ I listened to the song over and over again and I said ‘I think I have really hurt this person.'”
At one point the Full House star did admit that there’s some similarities in the lyrical content.
“There was a lot of familiar stuff because she was writing a lot of material when we were dating, so there were some familiarities all throughout ‘Jagged Little Pill.'”
“The one that got me was, ‘I hate to bug you in the middle of dinner.’ That was because we had already broken up and she had called — she was living in Canada at the time — she called, and I said, ‘Hey, I’m right in the middle of dinner, can I just call you right back?’ I remember that line when I heard ‘You Oughta Know,’ and I just went…it was like, ‘Uh-oh.'”
Since Coulier, Alanis Morrissette is a lot happier and has found love with her husband of three years Mario “Souleye” Treadway. As for Dave Coulier, he was once married to Jayne Modean but the two divorced and he shortly moved on to Alanis Morissette – it’s safe to say we know how that one ended up.
[Image via Bing]
