Dan Campbell - Other People's Lives (November 19, 2021) Album

Debut solo album from Wonder Years vocalist Dan Campbell. These were songs written for his custom song shop and re-recorded with new arrangements. Pre-orders here: https://dancampbell.co



1. Conversations with the Flowers
2. Flight No. 5
3. When I Face into the Wind
4. My Break in the Rain
5. Ambassador Bridge
6. Gull Lake (in a Peach-Plum Dawn)
7. The Kings of Halloween
8. In Love in Various Rooms
9. Streetlights Painted You Gold
10. I Love You. I Miss You. Goodnight.

 

Nice!

 

Looking forward to this

 

Cool idea

 

Didn’t some people wind up getting their hands on this months ago, when it was initially scheduled to be released before getting pushed back?

 

Yeah, a few stores put it up for a day in like April and actually shipped it right away. I missed that since I was waiting for the official store to pre-order, but it’s one of the weirder distributor/store errors I’ve seen.

 

this is a bit one note for me

 

Yea I think as far as most song shop things go, you know what you are getting.

I think it’s neat he was able to capture a few stories with such a high production level. A few of the people whose songs these are commented on his IG how excited they are.

Just can’t help feel a little weird about the fact these folks paid to have him write a song and now he’s making money off it as well. I know they gave their blessing and Im sure there was a contract that indicated he owned the works, but still kind of leaves me feeling a bit weird.

 

Has anyone complained? If they haven't, it kind of sounds like you're being oversensitive.

 

If everyone involved is ok with it, we should be ok with it. I agree. Gives the artist a chance to make money off songs they wrote and the fans a chance to share something personal because typically only huge fans do this (and they win by getting other fans songs).

 

I think it’s an interesting idea and do not think he would move forward with it if everyone wasn’t good with it.

Have any other Songshop type artists done this before out of curiosity? Wonder if we will see more of it.

 

Max Bemis did it for his Song Shop songs, after explicitly stating when he started the shop that he would never do so. That's a good example of someone kind of disrespecting fans' trust.

 

I guess as long as you get permission from the artist or fan who purchased it’s ok. I think fans have probably posted songs without permission before, but I don’t think a specific artist or band comes to mind. Didn’t know Max did it, but that’s not cool.

 

I love the artwork. Excited to hear this, Dan's never done anything I haven't loved, so I expect more of the same.

 

These songs also have a lot more care put into them than the Bemis song shop songs.

 

Mark Rose put a few custom songs on The Wild Type (with the permission of the people who commissioned them). I don't think it's too uncommon - if you write enough songs for that sort of thing, some of them are likely to be gems.

 

I think it's an interesting question to think about, if commissioned work like this (to the extent that the lyrical content of these songs is based on input from people who paid for something personalized) is "fair game" for repackaging and selling as a body of solo work. I feel like it'd be more fair to market it as something like a compilation? Which, maybe he is doing, I don't know.

But even as a fan of Dan/TWY (and as someone who did Max's song shop a couple times and was kinda disappointed by how inauthentic-sounding the results were), I just don't have much of an interest in hearing songs that other people paid him to write about topics/experiences that he didn't get to choose.

 

Song released today is really great.

 

Really liked this on first listen.

 

I chatted with Dan about this album, and I think y'all will enjoy reading this.

 

I didn't connect with this all that much. glad he released it still, there's some beautiful moments and it still feels like very personal writing, just didn't engage me musically

reminded me how good the Clear Eyes Fanzine EP was tho! god I want more of those

 

Every time Dan has on his Instagram “ask me question” I berate him with questions asking for more clear eyes and have never gotten any thing back

 

Liking this far mote then I thought I would. The Kings of Halloween is fantastic

 

wonder if they're ever gonna release my preorder on bandcamp lol. it's been out for nearly three days in Australia but still nothing

 

I could be wrong but I think he asked the people the songs were written for if he could use them on an album and then re-recorded them. So they were recorded as an album, I think.