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Musical Fortune-Telling Or, What the 'Billboard' Chart Revealed About My Life Path by Mikki Halpin Let's just start this off by saying I am from California. Not just California, but Los Angeles. And I went to college in Berkeley. So it shouldn't surprise you to learn that I have various nonrational beliefs. I have been treated by a hypnotherapist, read by a psychic and two "healers," suffered through acupuncture, know three types of numerology, had my chart done more than once, know my sun sign/rising sign/various cusps, and once moved across the country based in part on an astrocartography reading. (Astrocartography, for those of you who don't know, combines astrology with map reading to provide info based on your birth date and geographic location. When considering a move to New York, I saw that my chart indicated publishing aspects were strong for me there. And now here I am, writing a column for VH1.com! Laugh if you will, but it was obviously true.) But even I'm a little skeptical of the fortune-telling ability of the pop music charts. According to a URL that's been forwarded to me approximately 394,839,463,956 times in the past few weeks, you can discover some of your life "themes" if you check out which song was No. 1 on the day you were born. The fine folks at www.thisdayinmusic.com have put the Billboard charts for the U.K. and the U.S. into a searchable database to make this easier for those of us who no longer remember how to do basic research, now that the Internet is here for us. (Note: If you were born before the mid-1950s, you are out of luck, because that is when the charts were launched. Did they even have music before then?) Right now my life needs a theme. I'm between boyfriends, without health insurance, unclear on what to do with my hair, and just look at people blankly when they ask what I do for a living. Music has guided my life in many ways. Maybe this chart thing will work for me. My theme song turns out to be "Do Wah Diddy Diddy" by Manfred Mann. Don't know it? Here's a link. It's an icky finger-snapping-guys-in-cardigans song, the kind Ralph Malph and Potsy probably sang in glee club. Yucko. No offense, but besweatered earnest guys have never done it for me. Manfred Mann (born Miles Lubowitz), went on to become a big prog-rocker, which I find equally loathsome. Why can't I be cool like Beck? His life song is by the Jackson 5. Let's face it, I hate my theme song. Maybe my reaction indicates that I am an iconoclast, a rule breaker, someone who rails against the status quo. Or maybe it just means that my mom put the wrong year on my birth certificate. I'm open to creative interpretation. The lyrics to "Do Wah Diddy Diddy" aren't very illuminating, which I know is surprising because the title has such promise. I have been known to walk down the street, though I don't think I have ever done it while snapping my fingers and shuffling my feet. Hmmmm. We Californians are optimists. I take to heart the hidden message of the song, the truth revealed in my musical fortune: I will meet a new boy, and we will be very happy together! We will, in fact, be happy every single day, it says so right in the song. What a relief. Musical fortune-telling worked for me! |
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