Interpretations:It Was A Very Good Year

Filk

This is what is sometimes called a "filk," wherein the tune of a well-known songs is appropriated and the words altered to fit another topic. The political comedian Steve Allen used this technique for humor, as did Alan Sherman, Tom Lehrer, and others.

When I was 103, it was a very good year

It was a very good year for chorus girls named Cupcake O'Leary

I'd sit them on my knee

They were repelled by me, when I was 103

The song's true lyric begins with When I was 17, it was a very good year and go onto recount the type of desirable classy women the singer conquered at various ages (17, 21, 35) in his life, and how they were all like fine wine. This lyric starts from old age, and punctures the pomposity of the idea of being a lothario who drank women as if they were wine, since the girl(s) find him repulsive.

When I was the square root of a negative number, it was a very good year

As noted on the home page for this song, it's a pun, since i is the mathematical symbol for the square root of negative one, an imaginary number.

It was a very good year for dodecahedrons

12 sided polyhedrons. D&D players use dice shaped like regular dodecahedrons, for instance.

in a state of quantum uncertainty

We would have sexual intercourse, while at the same time we would not have sexual intercourse

According to current thought in physics, a particle's momentum & position or time & energy are reciprocal quantities in terms of how accurately one can measure either value. This leads to the idea that the particle exists in all possible quantum states until observed. (More or less.) The joke here is that one might, according to Erwin Schroedinger's formulation of the extension of this concept into the macro world, both have sex and not have sex simultaneously until someone observed you and collapsed your probability wave into one value or the other.

When I was the square root of a negative number

Which would make the singer imaginary, as is a scenario in which he both does and does not enjoy the favors of a dodecahedron.

When I was Maggie Thatcher, it was a very good year

Conservative Prime Minister of Britain in the 1980's, a counterpart to Ronald Reagan in some senses.

It was a very good year for cat fights with Joey Heatherton

Sex-symbol actress in the 1960's and early 1970s

and the Trilateral Commission

A shadowy international group favored by conspiracy theorists as puppet-mastering world events.

We would pull each other's hair - it was a very good year

In this verse, the singer is bragging about how important he/she is, being the PM of England, knowing Joey Heatherton, and wrestling with them and the entire Trialteral Commission. Could be taken as a claim to insider political power, or just a funny image of media figures cat-fighting.

Overall, this is absurdism. A fun take on a pompous song for the purposes of humor. ~Christina Miller, June 2007

I believe the closest we’ll ever see TMBG do a full on parody song

I never thought this song meant anything of importantance. Just Linnell messing around and writing something humorous. And I must say he did a very good job (pun not intended but gladly accepted)

First verse

The first verse calls to (my) mind the marriage of Anna Nicole Smith and Texas billionaire J. Howard Marshall. He was pretty decrepit at the age of 89 when he wed Smith (26) after seeing her at a Houston strip club. Every yellow rag had to speculate about the nature of their intimate moments... making the assumption that she was a gold digger choking back her repulsion in anticipation of getting that fat inheritance. Spoiler alert: he died after about a year, and she didn't get it. --Nehushtan (talk) 00:51, 24 November 2019 (EST)