Dave Coulier Got A Big Surprise With Ex Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughta Know”

When Dave Coulier first heard Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughta Know” in 1995, he, well, didn’t know the breakup anthem might be about him. Appearing on SiriusXM Faction Talk’s July 12 Jim Norton & Sam Roberts episode, Coulier recalled driving through Detroit when the less-than-flattering song came on his car radio. “I’m like, wow, this is a really cool hook. And then I start hearing the voice. I’m like, ‘Wow, this girl can sing.’ And I had no idea, you know, that this was the record,” the Full House alum recalled. “And then I was listening to the lyrics going, ‘Ooh, oh no! Oh, I can’t be this guy.’”

So Coulier drove to a local record store, bought the Jagged Little Pill CD, and sat in his car listening to the entire album, including the track on which the singer reminds a toxic ex of the “mess [he] left” when he “went away.” One example he cited were the “Right Through You” lyrics, in which Morissette — whom he dated for about two years beginning in 1992 — sings about a man with a fish-like handshake who took her as a joke and hurt her feelings.

“There was a lot of familiar stuff in there that her and I had talked about. Like, ‘Your shake is like a fish.’ I’d go, ‘Hey, dead fish me,’ and we’d do this dead fish handshake,” Coulier added on the SiriusXM show. “And so I started listening to it and I thought, ‘Ooh, I think I may have really hurt this woman.’ That was my first thought.”

Morissette, for her part, has never revealed who “You Oughta Know” is about, even though the actor has nonetheless taken responsibility as the heartbreaker over the years. During a 2019 Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen interview, Morissette said there would be “no revealing” the man’s identity, though she added that she was “intrigued ... that more than one person has taken credit for it.” (Other rumored subjects over the years have included Friends alum Matt LeBlanc, hockey player Mike Peluso, and musician Leslie Howe.)

“I’m thinking, I don’t know if you want to take credit for being the person I wrote ‘You Oughta Know’ about,” Morissette elaborated on the Bravo talk show, explaining she felt “devastated” when she penned the track. “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!’”

Indeed, Coulier told BuzzFeed in 2014 that it felt “funny to be the supposed subject” of “You Oughta Know,” something he referred to as a long-running “urban legend,” at the time. “First of all, the guy in that song is a real a-hole, so I don’t want to be that guy,” he said. “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.’”

Regardless, he’s insisted that there are no hard feelings between them. Referring to Morissette as funny, sweet, super-intelligent, and super-talented on Jim Norton & Sam Roberts, Coulier claimed that they “reconnected” years later, and “she couldn’t have been sweeter” to him. Meanwhile, he also shared a story of how she drove from Toronto to Detroit to sing to his sister, Sharon, while she was in the hospital dying of cancer. “That’s the kind of human being she is,” he said of his ex, “so I’ve never had anything bad to say about her. She’s lovely.”

As for that infamous “Would she go down on you in a theater?” line from “You Oughta Know,” yes, he even addressed that, too. After Norton asked what movie they were watching, he joked, “You do that popcorn cup trick one time, and it backfires on you...”