Certain songs and their meanings are the stuff of legend, and you could point to Alanis Morissette’s scathing debut hit, ‘You Oughta Know,’ as one of them. The lyrics detail her heartbreak about a breakup, and it eventually became public knowledge that the subject of this song was none other than Dave Coulier, who played the lovably dumb Uncle Joey on Full House and Fuller House. How could Uncle Joey do such a thing? Hurting Alanis Morissette all the way to pop hit and pop culture significance. The song helped her debut album Jagged Little Pill sell 10-million+ copies, and now Coulier is talking about when he first realized the song was actually about him.
During a chat with SiriusXM Faction Talk’s Jim Norton & Sam Roberts Show, Coulier says he was driving in Detroit when he first heard the song on the radio. He says he dug the song until he had a “Hey, wait a minute” moment after recognizing the singer’s voice. He says he thought, “Ooh, oh no! I can’t be this guy!” From there, he said he raced to a record store, bought the album, sat in his car, and listened to it.
“There was a lot of familiar stuff in there that her and I had talked about. Like [in ‘Right Through you’] ‘your shake is like a fish.’ I’d go, ‘Hey, dead fish me,’ and we’d do this dead fish handshake. And so I started listening to it and I thought, ‘Ooh, I think I may have really hurt this woman.’ And that was my first thought.”
Coulier and Morissette dated for two years back in 1992 when she was 18, and he was 33. Jagged Little Pill came out a year after they parted ways and turned Morissette into an instant music star. The album was nominated for nine Grammy Awards, winning five, including Album of the Year. Morissette was 21 at the time of the win, which made her the youngest person to win the award up to that point.
In the spirit of Carly Simon’s ‘You’re So Vain,’ Morissette has never really said that the song is about Coulier. Back in 2008, during an interview with the Vancouver Sun, the singer said, “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.” That being said, Coulier believes it is about him due to certain lyrics pointing to aspects of their past relationship. During a 1997 interview with the Boston Herald he “admitted the lines are very close to home. Especially the one about ‘an older version of me’ and bugging him [Coulier] ‘in the middle of dinner.’” His Full House co-star, the late Bob Saget, also claimed to be with Coulier during that dinner when Alanis called. I guess we have to pick who we really believe in this scenario.
Do YOU think ‘You Oughta Know’ is about Dave Coulier?