The Six Greatest Musical Pranks Ever Put To Record

That’s right, it’s the one day a year when every website on the planet gets a free pass to post made-up headlines because that’s… funny?Because it’s amusing to be ‘tricked’ on a day when you know well in advance that you’re going to be ‘tricked’? Because the height of comedy is a website posting a bald-faced lie in order to get a few confused clicks?

What’s that? No, you’re the humourless bastard…

Anyway, in light of it being the most predictably irritating day of the year, we’ve gone and compiled a list of the greatest musical prank albums unleashed upon the world. Hey, it beats posting a “Courtney Barnett Announces Concept Album About Koalas” headline, don’t it?

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1. Van Morrison – Payin Dues/ The Bang Sessions

In 1968, Bang Records learnt a very important lesson: never, ever, ever piss off Van Morrison. The singer felt restricted by the label and found himself trapped in a contract that stipulated he had to release 36 songs before he could formally leave the company’s roster.

Unluckily for them, the folks at Bang didn’t mention any quality requirements, so in retaliation Morrison gave them the musical middle finger to end all musical middle fingers: a slapped together series of one-take numbers in which Morrison mumbled iconic lines like, “I can see by the look in your face / That you’ve got ringworm”.

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2.The Pizza Underground – Live At Chop Suey

Is The Pizza Underground an ingenious rip on overly serious Velvet Underground fans who can’t stand having their idols gently jibed? Or is it a totally sincere reflection on the nature of contemporary pizza culture? Or, conversely, is it another attempt by Macaulay Culkinto become the walking parody of a failed child actor? That, my friends, is ultimately up to you to decide.

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3. IceJJFish – What Time It Is

IceJJFish is probably a troll. Probably. The man has never broken character for a second, and his music is jam-packed with a kind of warbly, atonal sincerity. Just take a listen to ‘What Time It Is’, the anti-art masterpiece at the centre of his album of the same name.

Mr. JJFish:If you really are serious about your music and what you do, I apologise for including you in this list. But if you’re not, and your entire musical persona is designed to confuse and distrupt pretentious hip hop fans, then take this comment posted to one of your videos as proof of your success:

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4. Run The Jewels –Meow The Jewels

This one isn’t a prank, per se, given that the audience was in on the joke. After meeting a crowdfunding stretch goal, game-changing rap duo Run The Jewels released Meow The Jewels, a remixed version of their incendiary album Run The Jewels2 comprised almost entirely of feline-related samples. The result is surprisingly listenable – enjoyable, even.

That said, it’s best consumed in little doses. Listen to more than two tracks in any one sitting and you will start questioning every life choice you’ve ever made, desperately trying to understand the path that led you to the moment you sat alone in your room listening to a man rap about economic inequality over the sounds of moggies mewling.

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5.Robert Pollard – Relaxation Of The Asshole

As far as this writer is concerned, Robert Pollard is one of the truest geniuses this world has ever known – a genuine visionary responsible for some of the most powerful albums ever picked up by human ear. So that’s why his ramshackle collection of onstage banter is listed here as a ‘prank’: because every self-respecting Guided By Voices fan the world over needs to believe that it is a prank, a jibing riff on Elvis’ equally awful Having Fun With Elvis On Stage, rather than a real album that Pollard really thought about before he unleashed it upon to the world for real.

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6. Justin Bieber – Purpose

In 2015, Justin Bieber found himself in a quandary: people were widely coming to realise that he was a snivelling, whiny jerk. Facing the possibility that he was finally going to be rejected by the population that had once so adored him, Bieber did the only thing he could – he wrote Purpose, a prank album designed to trick the world into thinking he was a nice, sensitive person, rather than a tin-eared tool.

And it worked. Purpose is the highest-grossing prank album of all time, but more than that, it’s the most successful. People – people with regular jobs, and generally sound opinions, and wives and husbands and children – actually bought this album. People who own houses and oppose Donald Trump and manage to put on their pants every morning listen to Purpose. And more than that, they like it.

It only lends credence to the old adage: the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist. Or, I suppose, the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was dropping the world’s trashiest techno album.

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