This man has written over 23 thousand songs and I'm obsessed

Happy World Motern Day!

Courtesy Matt Farley

Not so long ago (ok, probably ten years ago) a longtime friend introduced me to the music of Matt Farley.

If you can’t find his music on Spotify, don’t panic. He has several dozen aliases that he uses to release music. Stay with me—that’ll make sense soon.

Best known as "the guy who wrote that song about (insert random name/object/place/) or "the guy who released over twenty-three thousand songs," Farley has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, NPR, and many (many!) more. He even performed on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.

As if that doesn't keep him busy enough, he's created a slew of movies that are absurd and hilarious and well worth a watch.

But for today we'll focus on the music.

I came to know Farley through my friend Anthony Frith, an Australian writer and director who actually flew from Australia to the States to make a documentary about Farley.

For a month we got to hang out and I was able to show him how much unnecessary sugar and fat is in American food—“There’s sugar in the bread,” he said the first day he landed. “Why is there sugar in the bread??”— and the American NorthEast novelty that is Friendly’s.

Part one of the web series. I highly recommend a full watch. They’re short and hilarious, and you’ll have a great time.

But what this led to was a longtime internet and sometimes in-person friendship between Matt and I, and a journalistic curiosity that I could never fully quench.

If you’re unfamiliar, here’s a snippet from an article I wrote several years back on Farley. If you have the time, a full read + quick watch of web series will give you a deeper understanding of Farley.

Matt is a pretty ordinary guy with an extraordinary amount of passion and perseverance for his craft. It’s that drive that allows him to write and release 100+ songs per week and it’s that volume that’s part of the secret sauce of his success. The more music he releases, the more discoverable he is. Matt says it best: “If you write a song about everything, some of them, even just by accident, will catch on.”

And at 20,000 songs, there’s not a lot Matt hasn’t written about. There are songs about highlighters, songs about different towns, states, and countries. Songs about how hot it is outside (but really it’s the humidity), or how the freezer is broken so you have to eat all the ice cream. There are congratulations songs on everything from getting divorced to learning to juggle to binge-watching a series.

It’s easy to write Farley off as a hack or a spam artist, someone creating songs out of nothing just to cash in, but what Farley does takes skill. It takes persistence, determination, hard work, and perhaps most admirable of all, a willingness to continue to play in the creativity that brought him here.

You don’t write songs about highlighters or shorts, or towns with funny names because you’re bored with life. You write about it because you’re engaging with everything around you. Because you take life for the insane rollercoaster it is and decide to just have fun and make people smile. Including, and perhaps most importantly, yourself.

What Farley has done is find a way to love the process and make a living with it. Who can fault him for that?

As a writer and a creative, I understand feeling threatened by that. Annoyed. Frustrated. Art is supposed to be serious, right? It’s supposed to be torture and brilliance and slamming your head against the keyboard just to get one perfect line. It’s feeling awful just to feel elated.

But what if it wasn’t?

And what if it was never supposed to be?

The marketer in me can’t help but think what Farley has done is brilliant. I mean just look at how he got into the New York Times. The human being in me who has sat next to Farley while he ordered off a diner menu that included a breakfast named after him, or watched him perform to a room full of dancing fans, or promptly responded to every fan tweet within 5 seconds flat is overjoyed by the happiness he brings everyone. He’s genuine in his love of what he does and who he does it for.

And that makes me admire him as an artist, and a person, all the more.

I’ll leave you with this. Six years ago I wrote an article for Substream titled Matt Farley Continues To Exist: How One Man Is Bringing Quantity And Quality To Spotify and it’s one of my favorite pieces, not only for the person and subject matter, but because it’s something I find so fascinating and exciting. I’m still inspired by him all these years later.

I’d love for you to read and listen, and give me your thoughts. And hey, if you catch this today, June 3rd, it’s officially World Motern Day, which is Matt's birthday, and a self-declared holiday to celebrate all things Farley’s company, Motern Media.

You can celebrate by listening to this playlist or just going to congratulate him on Twitter. I can almost guarantee you’ll get an instant response and a whole lot of appreciation.

 

What do you think of this as a writer, creator, or artist? I’m really curious!