Forget making a mixtape. If you really want to impress your beloved, you’re going to need more than an assemblage of Frank Sinatra and Magnetic Fields tunes. You’re going to need a song that’s absolutely original.
With that in mind, website Write Me My Song offers up original tunes for lovesick songbirds who want to woo their mates.
“We hung out all the time and we used to write songs for family and friends,” says co-founder Jeremy Honig. “We used to sit around and make up funny lyrics to songs on the radio. It occurred to me, ‘Let’s use this time more productively and write songs for special occasions.’ ”
The lyrical style of the jingles — which range from 30 seconds to four minutes in length — range from poignant to raunchy. The tunes themselves are a mixture of live instruments (piano, guitar, bass, some light percussion) and synthesizer (strings, horns and drum kit).
The founders — Honig (who handles the business), Evan Behlivanis (who writes the music), and Brian Frankel (the chief lyricist) — met 15 years ago at Binghamton University, where they all performed in a cappella group the Binghamton Crosbys. Since then, they’ve gone on to careers in a variety of professions — Behlivanis, 32, is a theater teacher, Honig, 34, is a lawyer, and Frankel, 31, works in finance. But they retained their passion for music and decided to put it to work.
Most common request? Weddings. “The people I’ve spoken with who have ordered wedding songs say that they don’t want to share their song with thousands of other couples,” says Honig. “They want something that is just for them. It’s something they can have forever that will always remind them of their weddings.”
But it’s not all just eternal love and wine and roses — many of the songs, priced from $49 to $299, aren’t based around the romantic themes you might expect. Sometimes they’re about cups of coffee.
Consider the one Honig wrote for a couple who met when the bride spilled her cup of java on the groom. The lyrics proclaimed, “There you were, all alone/A cup in your hand, on the phone/One stray spill, who could know what it would mean/My shirt was a mess, but I never felt so clean.”
And then sometimes, it’s Becks.
“Last month, my wife and I were making jokes about the polar vortex during one of its snowy nights: ‘Great time to drink some Becks? In the polar vortex,’ ” says 42-year-old Brooklyn Heights resident Edward Ziskind, a sales and marketing executive. “We wrote some rhymes, and then the light bulb went off: ‘Wouldn’t it be great if we sent it to Write Me My Song to see what they could do with it?’ ”
The couple were so delighted with the song that they turned it into a video online.
Write Me My Song also works with clients to make sure they’re able to incorporate all the musical elements they want into a song. Chelsea resident Anthony Ramirez purchased a song as a Christmas gift for his girlfriend. “I wanted our song to have a poignant, singer-songwriter feel, but I’d also tossed around the idea of adding in tight harmonies and an a cappella feel, since my girlfriend is a fan of both,” says the producer, 31.
But the team’s favorite may be the quirkiest requests. The only thing they won’t write is parodies — for legal reasons — and anything that they feel is mean-spirited.
Honig notes that while they love composing all the romantic ballads, their favorite thus far has been one from a man who “commissioned a theme song for his cat because his wife really loves the cat.”
Good luck finding anything like that on your standard mixtape.