People that aren't songwriters may not be aware of the huge community of singer/songwriters on youtube that are trying to get their music heard. There are millions of people with guitars and pianos and webcams and original songs that want some type of positive reinforcement from the world. My anonymous kindness attack today was to put a positive comment on as many videos as I could watch.
If I'm being honest this wasn't exactly the easiest thing to do. Some of these songs and singers are just bad. My goal wasn't to give someone false motivation or a mixed message. I'm also not trying to offer constructive criticism. I only want to glean whatever positive input from the song and let the artist know what I liked about their music.
There was an older black gentleman that sang about Jesus with a techno beat and it seemed like he was making up the words as he went along. He clearly worked hard to edit and shoot the video and had put some serious time into it. He also got into a fight about race in the comments section.
There were a lot of girls singing really sad songs about broken hearts.
There were a lot of guys singing songs about girls.
There was one guy with a beard and a weird (but good) voice singing a song about trees out in an apple orchard on a windy day. That video was a little disconcerting because it felt eerily familiar to me.
There was an Indian guy that clearly did not speak English as his first language rapping about world peace to an "amateur" beat. He called it amateur beat, that's why the quotation marks are there.
There was a rock band filming a live performance. The sound quality was pretty rough but if you listened closely enough you could hear a pretty high energy punk band. I thought the production of the video might have been a purposeful choice. It fit the band's punk aesthetic pretty well.
There were quite a few older men singing songs about boats and war and horses and women and cars and warriors and broken hearts.
I left a positive comment on all of these videos. Whether I liked them or not. I found some redeeming value in the video and hopefully the notes that I left will encourage the songwriter to keep writing. Everyone who wants to write songs should do it. Even if the songs suck and they are a shitty musician they should keep writing and singing. They can only get better and it makes them a more creative person. A more positive person.
When I first started writing music I wrote a song every day. I was very aware that my songs really sucked. I didn't perform them anywhere. I just considered those songs to be practice for the real thing. I am not a great songwriter now but I have definitely improved since those early days.
Everybody needs an outlet and I was happy to encourage these people with theirs'.
Money spent so far: $128.89
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