Why the "If I Were" Song Survived: Rich Anthony's If I Were a Ghost Trades Chores for the Northern Lights
The Joliet Songwriter Spends One Day as a Friendly Ghost, From Tokyo to Zanzibar
If I Were a Ghost by Rich Anthony opens on a question a child might ask. What would you do if you could be a ghost for just one day? The Joliet, Illinois songwriter answers it on a folk-pop single released on 18 September. His ghost floats out of the window, passes through walls and trees, and sneaks on planes without a passport.
Rich Anthony’s If I Were a Ghost is in the playlist below, beside the singer-songwriter and indie folk records it suits, and his articles across our titles are collected on his artist profile. The single reached MusicRoots.News through PopHits.Co Music Charts, which verifies independent artists and places their releases across its network of music news titles. Give it a listen, then read on for how the lyric is built.
The One-Day Question Behind If I Were a Ghost and Rich Anthony’s Folk-Pop Hook
The hook is the first line, and it is also the title: If I were a ghost for just one day. The song returns to it at the start of three verses. In between, a short refrain closes the loop with the same wish. I’d see the world, nothing in my way, if I could be a ghost for just one day.
That conditional frame has a long folk history. Tim Hardin wrote If I Were a Carpenter in the 1960s. Bobby Darin then took it to No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1966. Later, the Four Tops and Johnny Cash carried it into soul and country. The device lasts because it asks the listener to imagine along with the singer. Anthony’s version simply swaps Hardin’s carpenter for a friendly ghost.
His ghost also points to a second tradition, the Halloween song that would rather make you laugh than jump. Bobby “Boris” Pickett‘s Monster Mash reached number one on the Hot 100 in 1962. Nearly 60 years later, in 2021, it was back on the same chart. Anthony aims for that kind of fun. Near the end, one line says so outright: No chains or moans or haunting boasts. He has also said he wrote it for listeners of every age, from children to adults. He hoped each of them would find a favourite line.
Bats, a Bell and a Childhood Dog in Rich Anthony’s Lyric
Most of the lines are small, specific pranks, and that is the craft of it. The ghost mixes up the socks in every drawer, makes the ceiling fans roar and resets the clocks just to misbehave. It crashes weddings and photobombs a toast. It moonwalks through the Louvre at night, checks out Atlantis and soars up to the Northern Lights. Then it hangs with bats, naps in a bell and makes the thunder extra loud from inside a stormy cloud.
The ghost dog came first. Anthony explains why in the note under the official video. One of the first things he thought of doing as a ghost was visiting his childhood dog. So, in the song, he asks the dog if he wants to play. Then the two of them chase cars in Zanzibar and chill inside a candy jar.
Then the lyric turns. Would I still feel the sunset’s glow? Would memories follow wherever I go? The same verse wonders whether a ghost would miss hugs or apple pies. Its answer, in the final verse, is gentle. The ghost scares a friend, then laughs and waves, and drifts through the night still watching over those it loves.
That quieter half has an ancestor as well. Danny Dill and Marijohn Wilkin wrote Long Black Veil, and Lefty Frizzell recorded it in 1959. It is sung by a dead man who still sees the woman who visits his grave. Dill called it an instant folk song. Anthony keeps the watching and leaves the gallows out. That is how a murder ballad’s device ends up in a Halloween song for all ages.
Rich Anthony Wrote Lyrics Before He Sang Them, and If I Were a Ghost Shows the Habit
Rich Anthony is the performing name of Richard Anthony Goberville. He uses his middle name because Goberville is hard for some people to pronounce. Born in a suburb of Chicago, he lives in Joliet, about 45 minutes south of the city. He started with poems. Soon, though, he found that lyrics set to music reached people on a deeper level. His first public performance came at a friend’s wedding. There he sang words he had put to a friend’s composition.
Since then he has written for causes as well as for fun. Even If came after relatives asked how he could foster a child, knowing he might have to let go. He pledged all of its proceeds to charities supporting foster children. The song grew into two albums recorded in Canada with producer Victor Crowl, Connected and Love is the Power. Later, Electric Love turned to electronic pop, and his seasonal releases include My Kind of Christmas. His influences run from Stevie Wonder and James Taylor to Pet Shop Boys and Michael Jackson.
Colin Schlegel, Brandon Harvey and Dan Vasquez Behind the Recording
If I Were a Ghost was made with a small team. Colin Schlegel recorded the live instrumentation, Brandon Harvey recorded Anthony’s vocals, and Dan Vasquez mixed and mastered the track. Acoustic strumming drives it along, and a whistled part keeps the mood light. Meanwhile, the animator Rnotte drew the video’s animations in Looom on an iPad, then added a paper overlay in Superimpose V. The note under the video stresses that none of it is AI.
The order of the lyric is where the craft shows. The pranks come first and the questions come later, so the song earns its quiet moment instead of starting there. As a result, it suits a family’s seasonal playlist. It also suits a folk-pop playlist for an adult listening alone.
From the MusicRoots.News curator team: “If I Were a Ghost lets the socks, the ceiling fans and the clocks do the early work. So when the sunset line arrives, it lands with real weight. We would hand this Halloween song to a child and to a grandparent, and both would come away with a line to keep.”
If I Were a Ghost plays at the top of this page. It is also on Apple Music as a single. Follow Rich Anthony on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, the YouTube channel, TikTok and Facebook. His smartlink gathers every other platform.
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Why the “If I Were” Song Survived: Rich Anthony’s If I Were a Ghost Trades Chores for the Northern Lights