Do you remember a song that lay dormant until its time finally came?
Songs, too — even some really good ones — can wind up long-forgotten, sometimes for years, until the time comes from them to burst into the limelight. Do you remember a song that lay dormant until its time finally came?
There are so many songs that lie around waiting for their proper time and messenger. “Vekareiv Pezureinu” waited a few years in my drawer before MBD took it. My song “Shehecheyanu” was sitting by Avraham Fried for a few years as he was undecided about it, until eventually Yaakov Shwekey came on to the scene, took the song for his first album, and made a huge hit out of it. Fried didn’t mind, though. When I see him, he always tells me that everything is arranged from Above, and the song obviously wasn’t supposed to be his.
Yossi Green’s song “Tanya” on the other hand, which I arranged, was definitely destined for Fried. There was a really popular chassidish singer at that time named Dov Hoffman, and he was going to sing “Tanya,” but it waited around a few years — he never felt the time was right for the song, and Fried sang it in the end.
A long time ago, I wrote a song and called it “Chikka Oy,” because that was how it sounded, almost like the plucking of a guitar. It was a happy, fun song, but I wrote it just for the fun of composing and then put it away, thinking possibly it would be Yeshiva Boys Choir material one day. Close to 15 years later, I was working on the Chizuk Project with Jeremy Strauss, in the aftermath of Covid and other tragedies. We knew we wanted something upbeat and happy that would make people smile when they heard it. We knew we wanted Shmueli Ungar’s energetic presentation. But we didn’t have a niggun that could hit that spot yet. Then I remembered “Chikka Oy.” We renamed it the “Chizuk Niggun,” Shmueli knocked it out of the park, and I get such a kick seeing videos of people smiling and laughing when it’s being played.
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