John Ondrasik is the man behind Five for Fighting known for "SuperMan" and "100 years."
John is talking about his new song "Ok", his upcoming tour and the Music Matters Challenge.
Taking a Walk.
Hey, this is John and Rossi from five for Fighting on Taking a Walk podcast with Buzznight, talking about the Music Matters Challenge and all things music.
Well, John, your work on the song Okay is some of the most profoundly blunt and honest work I've heard in a long time. It brought me to tears and it's amazing. Can you talk about the creation of it and how it makes you feel when it does connect with audiences?
Well, thank you.
Certainly it was no fun to write, but I think after the October seventh atrocities and seeing the collapse of many of our institutions, the moral collapse of our institutions scared me and angered me. And I did spend some time writing this song. You know, unlike the Blood on My handsong I wrote about Afghanistan or some one Man Save the World about Ukraine, I took more time with this one.
I wanted to get the tone right.
I listened to some classical funeral marches and some Israeli Jewish music.
And the lyric came very quickly that We're not okay.
It was inspired by Eric Adams speech after October seventh, where you know, we had thousands of people celebrating these atrocities in New York City, and he said, something's really wrong with our culture. When we see you know, media pick up hamas propaganda, when we see our college campuses rampant with anti Semitism and radicalism, when we see members of Congress literally kind of you know, spout hamas propaganda, Something's wrong within our culture.
And that's what Okay is about and what the video tried to illustrate.
And you know, the reaction has been, you know, fairly overwhelming. You know, when when Israel shared the video on their social media. I'm not a Jewish person, but I got a sense very quickly of the vitriol and threats that the Jewish people faced every day. At the same time, you know, to see the reaction from so many people in Israel and around the world to the song that they feel abandoned, particularly by the music industry. You know, I'm sitting here in New York City as I'm talking to you, and you know, twenty some years ago, after nine to eleven, we had every icon in the music industry at the Concert for New York, you know, singing and condemning these evil acts of Osama bin Laden but but now it's it's cricket's nobody's saying anything. It's a historical disgrace. So I think for many Israelis and Jewish people to have somebody write a song about it was was significant for them. So I take some satisfaction in that I'm actually going to Israel on the break of my tour in the middle of the month, and it's not a pro Israel song, it's it's equally a pro Palestinian song. The hero of Okay in the video is a Palestinian woman standing up to Hamas and and so to me, there's no difference between a Palestinian child as really child, Pranian child and Afghan child. And if you truly care about Palestinians, you know you have to save Gaza from Hamas. So I think we've been caught up in a lot of this kind of you know, oppress or pressing mindset for the kids, and it's we're losing our kids. Twenty percent of them don't believe the Holocaust happens. So we've got a lot of work to do, and I think music is a part of that.
The video is so powerful. Listen to the song. I urge my listeners. But watch the video and the way you end it with the Martin Luther King quote, he who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it. Just amazing work. And I hats off to you, John.
Thank you well.
I appreciate that, and I agree. You know, the first of lyric is it's the time for choosing. I don't think we can keep our head buried in the sanding any longer. And Martin Luther King's quote is exactly that, you know, silence to the face of evil's complicity. And I hope help many artists kind of take that to heart and and maybe starts speaking up a little bit more.
Let's talk about the work on the Music Matters challenge. Tell us about that.
Yeah, you know, music really matters to me. It's personal, you know, for music in the schools. When I was a kid, music funding was cut at our elementary school.
My mom came in.
She started producing full musicals. We actually did West Side Story. I was Tony and West Side Story, and probably because I was my mom's son.
But you know, however it worked.
It was an amazing experience and the kids in that class fifty years later still talk about what transformative experience that was. And I had an opportunity a year and a half ago to go into a Chicago inner city school, Farragut Academy, who had lost their music teacher, and we wrote a song me and eight students called let Music Film My World. Through that process, we raised a quarter million dollars and funded a music teacher for their school, so they have one, and we wanted to take that nationally. And what the Music Matter Challenge is. It's kind of like the Bucket Challenge for music, where everybody in America can make a video, tell a story about a music teacher or someone who made a difference in their life through.
Music, sing a little bit of our song. Let music Film My World.
Enter the contest and let musicfilmyworld dot com and we'll have ten finalists at the end of April. We'll let the public vote on the winners, and the winner will sit with me and Kaylee fund another music teacher for a school in need. They'll win down for one thousand dollars. There's a School Prize where schools can compete and win a twenty five thousand dollars grant. But what really is buzz is to raise awareness for the four million kids in America who don't have a music teacher in their school, and this is our drive to fix that.
Amazing. You know, as you were telling me about it, I was reflecting on one of my favorite movies. I don't know if you ever saw at Mister Hollins Opus, but it's wonderful what you're doing.
That is a great reference and I'm actually gonna use that, but yeah, I love that movie. It was amazing, and I think you're right if you look at the metrics. You know, kids that have a music teacher, graduation rates, grades, you know, their ability to succeed in the sciences all increases, their social communication gets better, their anxiety decreases. So it's not just an extracurricular activity. It's critical, especially for our young kids. And I think most people that grew up with the music teacher, most people that have kids with the music teacher, can attest to that. And that's really what we're trying to do. And it should be a lot of fun. You know, everybody likes to create something. Everybody likes, you know, to be seen on social media, so it should be fun. And I can't wait to see everybody's video.
And you're going to be hitting out on the road, John.
Yeah, we're launching next week out with my string Quartet.
Will be kind of in the Midwest for the first couple two weeks through April seventh. Then I'm actually taking a little detour to Israel and do some performances there and work on some other artistic projects.
And then we'll I'll come back I can.
I'll be in Washington and we'll head down to Oregon and end up in SoCal and so it'll be a busy month. But my string Quartet are some of the best string players in the world. They add such a dimension to songs like Superman in one hundred Years, you know, to watch them every night as a treat alone. So I can't wait to get out there, sing some songs and try to make a difference. Well.
In closing, we produced this other podcast it's called Music Saved Me about the healing power of music. Do you believe music has supernatural healing powers?
So buzz.
There was a time I had a concert, I think it was in Philadelphia, and I walked off stage and Superman was embraced by the autistic community. So I had a lot of relationships within the autistic community, and there was a family there with a young boy who was on the spectrum, severely on the spectrum, kind of having an episode. You know, certainly could interact with him, and his mom said, you know, kind of said to him, hey, hey, hey, hey, you know, here's John, Here's here's the Superman singer. And this boy quickly stopped his tantrum. He stood up, He walked right to my face, two inches away from my face, look me straight in the eye, and he's saying Superman verbatim. And that experience told me that there is miracles in music, and that there is healing in music, and there's a science in music therapy. So I think that for me was truly formative, and that's another reason why we're pursuing this Let Music Film my World effort and making sure that every kid has access to music in their lives.
John, I'm grateful I had the opportunity to have you out my podcast. Congratulations on your work, and thank you for your work because it's so important.
Well, thank you, buzz. Maybe I can come back and we can chat about your other podcast.
I'd like to learn from you guys, you know how music can really help our wellness in so many ways.
I'd absolutely love it. Thank you, John, It's an honor.
Thank you Buys. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Taking a Walk podcast.
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