Matthew West

Recently, I was asked by KLOVE radio to be part of a contest they do for Valentine’s Day. We’ve done the contest for 3 years now, and each year has been bigger and bigger. Listeners submit their love story in 250 words or less. I then read through the stories, pick a winner, and write a special song inspired by the winning story. This year 5 thousand stories were submitted. Then, from there I have like 2 days to write a song, record it, and this Friday it will be played during the morning show for the first time! It’s a crazy whirlwind experience. PRESSURE!

As I was reading through these stories, I found myself overwhelmed with emotion. One story after another about love, loss, happiness, pain. I felt like I was being given a window into all of these different worlds, and I was surprised by what I saw. I saw myself. I saw my story. See, all of these stories were unique, no two were the same. Yet, it was like I could relate in a way to all of the stories, because my life has love, loss, happiness, pain, and everything in between. It’s like their stories were my story, and mine was theirs. I guess what I’m trying to say is, after reading these people’s stories, I felt like I knew them in a way, and they knew me. This made it easy for me to write a song for the winner. I’ll post the winner’s story for you to read as well. It’s moving. The song I wrote will be playing on KLOVE for the first time this Friday morning. It will also be available on itunes the same day.

I think I like writing songs this way though. People inspire me, and their stories are worthy of being a song. Maybe I’m on to something here…

-mw