Sounds like he knows.
Actor Dave Coulier, long rumored to be the subject of Alanis Morissette’s 1995 breakup anthem “You Oughta Know,” described in cringing detail the moment he first heard the song and it realized it was likely about their brief relationship in the early ’90s.
“I hear the hook for ‘You Oughta Know’ come on the radio and I’m like, ‘Wow, this is a really cool hook,’” Coulier told hosts Jim Norton and Sam Roberts on SiriusXM this week. “And then I start hearing the voice. I’m like, ‘Wow! This girl can sing.’ And I had no idea that this was the record ... And then I was like, I’m listening to the lyrics going, ‘Ooh, oh, no! Oh, I can’t be this guy.’”
The “Full House” star didn’t specify which ‘You Oughta Know’ lyrics tipped him off. But he did talk about another “Jagged Little Pill” track, “Right Through You,” which includes the line: “Your shake is like a fish.”
“I listened to the whole record and there was a lot of familiar stuff that her and I had talked about,” he said. “Like, ‘Your shake is like a fish.’ You know, I’d go, ‘Hey, dead fish me,’ and we’d do this dead fish handshake.”
Hearing the album led Coulier to some revelations about the relationship.
“I started listening to it and I thought, ‘Ooh, I think I may have really hurt this woman,’” he said. “And that was my first thought.”
The comedian told a similar story about “You Oughta Know” in a 2008 interview with the Calgary Herald, saying he heard the song for the first time on the radio while driving. But in 2019, he told BuzzFeed the idea of him being the “supposed subject” of the song was a “silly urban legend” fueled by media speculation.
For her part, Morissette has never revealed her inspiration. She said on “Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen” in 2019 that she was “intrigued” by the fact that multiple people have claimed to be the song’s antagonist.
“I just think, if you’re going to take credit for a song where I’m singing about someone being a douche or an asshole, you might not want to say, ‘Hey! That’s me!’” she said.