Songs By Request

On 9 Jan I offered on Facebook, for the first time, to write a song for anyone if they’d share something personal with me.  The responses were amazing and kind of overwhelming.  I read them all and many of them were hilarious.  I picked one that resonated with me and wrote a song called You’re Failure Makes Me Happy  and you can download it for free here.

But the requests kept coming! I’m so honored and impressed that people would share such personal stories with me.  The following day a friend asked me to write a song for her husband’s 30th birthday.  I wrote You’re Tired, You’re Old and you can download that one here.  Again, the amount of details friends shared with me were hilarious and surprising.

Today was a rough day.

All of this makes me ridiculously happy right now.  Just before I wrote You’re Failure Makes Me Happy, I had a really rough day.  I took this picture and posted it to Instagram and the caption read, “Today was a bit rough. Struggling with how I’m serving others or feeling alive. I have so many ideas, but not feeling like I’ve come across the answer where I can really put all of my energy and feel like it’ll result in serving and connecting to people. That’s what that face means.”

I’ve been struggling with a sense of purpose and connection when it comes to my career.  I feel as if I have strengths and talents that can serve people well, but I’m not utilizing them like I should be.  I feel that’s contributing to a lack of connection with people, because I’m not serving others with the best I have to offer.  That’s why I started the blog, trying to use what I feel like are my strengths to serve a broader audience, to actually have an impact on others, and to do this by telling great stories.  But deep inside I’ve always felt like music is one of my greatest strengths and I’m not using it.  I often think, “I’ll get this idea up and running AND THEN I’ll have time to do music like I want to.”  I don’t think that’ll ever really happen if I make music a second priority.  But, I’ve struggled to know exactly how I can best use music to truly serve others.  I mean, I’ve made a bunch of recordings, toured a little bit, played tons of shows, and even written a successful commercial for radio.  But it’s never really felt like I’ve connected or served as best as I can.  I’ve always felt like I have so much more to offer, better ways I could serve others, more to do, and I just don’t know how.

When musicians talk about how they serve others through their music I often think of the line from the movie School of Rock where Jack Black says, “Dude, I service society by rocking. I’m out there on the front lines liberating people with my music. Rocking ain’t no walk in the park, lady.”  Lame, lame, lame. Too often I’ve felt as a musician we work to serve ourselves first and if others benefit that’s a bonus, a by product.  It often seems like wildly famous musicians focus on their pocket, their ego, and their story first and serving others directly is never a consideration.  There’s got to be a new way of really using music to serve others directly instead of indirectly, hoping the artists’ stories or efforts will resonate with others.  What if you wrote directly for them?  How insane would it be if Sting wrote a ditty just for you?  Or Bon Jovi, Taylor Swift, or Green Day?  Talk about creating fanatics and not just fans.

So I wondered, how could I do this?  How could I really use my music to serve others?  How could I connect with people with the strengths and talents I have?  That’s when I thought about writing songs for other people based on their stories.  I posed the question, if you’ll share something personal with me, if you’d be willing to trust me with your story no matter the content, I’d do my best to serve you and your story by writing a great song.

The responses were so validating.  It helped me connect with old friends and it made people so happy – which made me ridiculously happy.  I loved seeing people share the songs and the excited comments.  It made me feel amazing to know I was using my talents to do something I love and to directly serve a specific person.  I could see my efforts had a direct impact.  In many careers it’s really hard to identify impact.  But in this case, my work resulted in a direct impact to make others happy.  I loved every minute of it.

I want to keep doing Songs By Request for as many people as I can.  The hard part is, I can’t possibly answer everyone! The last thing I want to do is leave anyone feeling ignored.  (My mother-in-law and coworker are already giving me grief for not writing songs about menopause or break ups!)  I feel bad because people have made some good requests and I know they really want me to respond, but I just can’t possibly do them all – but I’ll do my best to answer the requests that I can, when I can.  I’m so grateful people are willing to share their stories with me.  Please don’t stop.

I really hope to continue doing Songs By Request for quite some time.  So from here on out, join my Facebook Page Marc Allred Music and on twitter at marcballred for the next time I ask for your stories so I can write a song just for you.  Really looking forward to hearing your story.
-Marc