If you haven’t heard about the 2019 Hunks in Heels beauty pageant I was a contestant in, then head over to this post to get a little background on why this post even exists. Short version – I was in a woman-less beauty pageant and for the talent portion decided to write a song and perform it on stage. My character’s name was Samantha Lane Underwood-Thomas, and she was as white trash as they come.
Honestly, I didn’t actually go through a lot of choices and settled on singing an original song pretty quickly – and I knew I’d perform it while playing guitar. I also knew I would make it a humorous one. I just didn’t know which one it was going to be. I probably have 70+ songs in various stages of completion that I tinker with from time to time. Whenever a lyrics or chord progression comes to me, I try to write it down so I won’t forget it in the future. Some have a serious tone, but the bulk of the rest are intended to be humorous in some way. A good portion are even parodies of popular songs. While I had a lot of songs from which to choose, once I had decided on my character, I knew exactly which one I was going to pick back up and finish.
Around the end of 2014, my brother called me one day and told me he had come up with a funny line for a song. At this point we had been listening to Stephen Lynch now for several years, and while his language and off-color songs aren’t for everyone, this one line was inspired by his style. In fact, I took this one line and turned it into a single 4 line verse and titled it: “Untitled ‘Stephen Lynch’ Type Song”. I know – didn’t exactly roll off the tongue.
That verse would go on to sit in my collection of notes and ideas for nearly 5 years until this pageant gave me a reason and incentive to finish it. Doing so only took a day, but as I continued to play it over the weeks leading up to the pageant, I changed lyrics and chords – working on the song even until the actual day of the pageant! In fact, I was nervous about forgetting some of the lyrics once I got on stage and was performing it front of actual people, so I printed the words so I’d have them with me during the performance.
The pageant began and soon the talent portion was upon me. I had everything up and my lyrics were right there where I could read them. The song began and it was going well. I didn’t even look at the lyrics! I didn’t even need them! Ha! I was so close to the en— Oh. Crap.
What’s the next line???
Yep; I needed the lyrics. It was one of the ending choruses and I had completely forgotten the words. Of course it was the one I had tweaked just before the show. Typical. No worries though; I had a backup plan I put into action. I glanced over to my lyric sheets as my inner self started to panic, hoping I would see something to trigger my memory. I might as well have been trying to read the Bible from space while blindfolded. All the ink on the pages merged together and I couldn’t read a single word, much less find my place. The panic intensified. The 3rd line was approaching and I was still drawing a blank. When the time came, I still had nothing, so I kept it going the only way I knew: I repeated the 3rd line from the previous chorus…
…and then I realized I also didn’t know the 4th line in that chorus! Unfortunately this was worse because of the rhyming; I *had* to come up with something that rhymed! The brain is funny that way with remembering rhymes, and everyone in the auditorium would have known it was the ‘wrong’ line. I stalled. I ad-libbed with a “You know what else?”
And then, miraculously, it finally came to me. Along with it was the missing 3rd line that I had already blown past, which wasn’t really of any help at this point. Or was it? I was pretty frustrated at myself for missing it and decided then that I would just inject it into the final chorus and bump that 3rd line instead, which is what I ended up doing.
As a side note, it’s interesting how the brain can be doing all this processing and decision making real-time while standing in front of hundreds of people, playing a guitar, and singing a song. All while wearing a dress and high heels, mind you!
The song continued through to the end without any issue (aside from my voice almost completely getting shot), since the remainder hadn’t been changed in weeks. The audience responded to it well, and it was the most enjoyable part of the entire competition for me.
Plus, I can now say that I’ve gotten a crowd of hundreds of people to all say “balls”. Bucket list item: check!
Here’s a video of the performance. The lyrics are below the embedded video…at least the lyrics I intended to sing! Hope you enjoy!
View Lyrics
(v1)
You come home after work
Your shoulders hanging low
You grab a cold one from the fridge and I ask
Well how’d it go?
You tell me all the things that day
That didn’t go as planned
I take your hand and hold it tight cause
Honey, I understand.
But…
(c1)
You’ll never push a baby out your wiener hole
And your boobs don’t get sore just because
You don’t get a little moody every 28 days
So you’ll never feel like a woman does
(v2)
Your jaw is open now
Your face full of surprise
You find the strength to say these words
As anger fills your eyes
“It’s tough to do all the things I do
My body aches with pain”
I say I’m gon’ need to stop you right there
I’m about to woman-splain!”
‘Cause…
(c2)
You ain’t got to choose between a two piece or one
Your feet don’t get blistered from heels
You don’t hear “Hey Mom!” seven thousand times a day (And that’s before lunch!)
So you don’t know how a woman really feels
(bridge)
They say two heads are better than one
But in your case I disagree
You help clean the house every once in a while
And then act like you deserve a trophy!
You say that you’re working too hard every day
And your boss is a pain in the butt
Men have it harder than women you say
Say what?!?
(c3)
You don’t get catcalled when you walk down the street.
Spanx means something entirely different to you
If you don’t shave your legs, well then nobody blinks
No, you don’t know what a woman goes through
(c4)
You don’t need no makeup when you go to the store
You get to stand up when you pee
You cry like a baby when you’re kicked between the legs. (Ok, now I’m gonna give that one to you…I have it on good authority ladies that one’s real…)
But you’ll never be a woman like me.
(c5)
No, they’ll never push a baby out their wiener hole
And their boobs don’t get sore just because
They don’t get a little moody every 28 days (Course for some of us it’s 21 This woman here in the front looks like she’s moody today! It’s okay – me too!)
No they’ll never feel like a woman does.
You know what?
They ain’t got the balls to be us!
No-
They ain’t got the balls to be us!
Everybody!
They ain’t got the balls to be us!
Just the ladies!
They ain’t got the balls to be us!
Just the guys!
They ain’t got the balls to be us!
They the guys dressed like girls!
HA gotcha!
Now don’t pitch a fit, when I say you’re full of….it.
If you think you feel like a woman does.
I loved it!!! So funny and original!!!