Music | Once Upon Your Prime

april-fools-day I don’t know about you, but I get tired of people pulling dumb stunts on me (pretending apple juice is urine) or visual gags (glueing quarters to the sidewalk) on April Fool’s Day. I much prefer word games. And if they’re set to music and have a catchy beat, all the better!

That’s why every April Fool’s Day I tell the various people in my life that extremely famous songs were written with me in mind. It’s an innocent joke but you’d be amazed how many will buy it, until I can’t contain myself and burst out laughing.

Here are some tips to pull off your own, “I’m The One Neil Diamond Meant When he Crooned, “Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon” hijinks!

Tall Tale Tunes: Otherwise known as Story Songs will work really well for this particular joke. You know the kind where the lyrics teach a lesson or impart a moral? I must admit every time I heard, “Centerfold” by J. Geils Band, I really wanted to be the character in that song. The innocent girl that was “pure as snowflakes” in high school, who was “slipping notes under his desk while he was thinking about her dress!” And then years later, when he’s looking thru the pages of a girlie magazine, there’s his homeroom angel on the pages in-between . . . Whoa, Babam!! Well – – you guessed it, I once told my ex-husband that I went to school with the lead singer of this band and bragged that “Centerfold” was written specifically about me — to assuage the mad crush he had on me, of course. To this day, my ex is terribly flattered I picked him to marry (out of what must’ve been hundreds of offers!) and he’s never once asked which magazine I posed for. (If he did, I’d tell him it was Popular Mechanics.)
List of Story Songs: Here are some other suggestions of these kinds of songs you can claim are written about you: Bye Bye Miss American Pie (What? Wouldn’t it be a kick to be the person solely responsible for the day the music died?) Stairway to Heaven (All you have to be is a lady who’s sure all that glitters is gold. Easy Peasy! Oh and you make him wonder…you really make Led Zeppelin wonder!) Cat’s in the Cradle (if you’re a guy, this one is perfect! Tell your wife you would have mentioned you were the son in Harry Chapin’s song a long time ago, but you thought she’d cry at your wedding when you refused to invite your dad because your smile never dimmed as you said, “I’m gonna be like him, yeah. Y’know I’m gonna be like him!”
Name Songs – – Man, do you have it made if there happens to already exist a song with YOUR exact name in it. In fact, women named Wendy seem to have all the luck. Tell him you actually are THE Wendy that Bruce Springsteen was Born to Run with, not to mention a personal invitation to strap your hands across his engines. Mmmm. Wendys can also claim that they’re the one referenced in Prince’s song, Kiss, or “Wendy” the song by Brian Wilson of Beach Boys fame. And even Elton John with his title, “Wake Up Wendy.” Or get fanciful and tell him you’re the Wendy from the musical, “Peter Pan.” But if you really wanna stretch it, tell him The Association wrote their song, “Windy” about you. Ready? Just google your name and see if you already have a song out there — bingo, instant April Fool’s material!
Naive Targets: There are no songs with Stephanie in them, so I always choose extra gullible people for this type of musical prank. For instance my brother is the perfect kind of innocence for me to easily fool with. (When we were younger, I told him I had my own Candy store inside my bedroom wall and as proof I’d produce a Hershey bar– I also mentioned that a blue furry monster sometimes used our downstairs bathroom and the way to know when he recently peed in the toilet was the water turned the exact shade of his fur when you flushed. I always said this after our mom put those navy colored Clorox drop-in disks in our commode!) So last April 1st, I told this overtrusting brother of mine that many of the Beatles songs were indeed about me and that our parents kept changing my name thru the years to preserve my privacy. He bought that I was Sexy Sadie, Lovely Rita, Hey Jude, Long Tall Sally, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, and even Michelle, Ma Belle — though he knew I wasn’t ever french. He may have been gullible, but apparently I underestimated his math skills because one day he pointed out that I was just being born in 1964, the very same year the Beatles burst onto the American Scene. Oh well.
Straight Face: If anyone doubts your sincerity during this April Fool’s joke, all you need to do is perform your own personal rendition of Carly Simon’s, “I’m So Vain, I probably think this song is about me, don’t I? Don’t I?”