coastal alt/indie rock

smiling at strangers

​​Field Notes​​

“Smiling at Strangers” began during COVID lockdown, when I was taking songwriting and production cohort courses through Monthly.com, now Studio.com. The structure was intense: in about a month, you had to write and produce two to four songs, share work, get critiques, and try whatever new approaches the instructors pushed you toward. In July 2021, this one started where quite a few of my songs start: with a guitar riff. It was driving, upbeat, and immediate — power pop, power punk, whatever you want to call it — and the attitude of the song came almost instantly.

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The lyric idea came from a lifelong contrast I’ve felt between the way people armor themselves in big cold cities and the way I naturally move through the world. Growing up in New York State, I remember places like New York City, Boston, and Syracuse feeling physically and emotionally closed off: heavy clothes, guarded faces, little eye contact, not many smiles. I was always the dopey one walking around trying to make eye contact, say hello, smile at strangers. California felt different to me in that respect, but that instinct was already mine.

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The song is also about refusing to let negativity set the terms. I’ve always been accused of being too optimistic, too friendly, too willing to believe something can work when everyone else says it won’t. But I also have a New York edge, and I’ve always believed in keeping your friends close and your enemies closer. So the opening lines came quickly: “You frown at me, I’ll flash a grin / You shut me out, I’ll pull you in / You show me hate, I’ll bring you love / I’ll fight your anger with a branch and dove.” From there, the song became an exercise in answering hostility with joy, not because kindness is weak, but because it can be a form of strength.

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The chorus became the punchline and the anthem: “I’m smiling at strangers, I’m laughing out loud / Singing in the streets and dancing in crowds / Barefoot in my mind though I’m wearing my shoes / I’m smiling at strangers, got nothing to lose.” That line about being barefoot in my mind while wearing my shoes says a lot about the song. I’m not foolish enough to walk barefoot through New York, San Francisco, or Tokyo — but I do carry that beach mindset into city streets. Maybe too much so.

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Verse three makes the point more directly: “Don’t think I’m weak when I’m being nice / You push too far, you’ll pay the price / The strength of love when it’s unfurled / Will blow your mind, will rock your world.” I liked the tension there — the moment where it sounds like I might meet anger on its own level, but then the song swerves toward something more like Gandhi: resistance through kindness, intelligence, persistence, and love. Water on rock.

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There’s also a Dylan Thomas nod in the lyric: “I’m choosing joy, I’m chasing light / I’m living loudly into the night.” Some people in the class thought that reference was too obscure and suggested I cut it. I kept it. If Sting can slip Nabokov and Lolita into “Don’t Stand So Close to Me,” I figured I could earn a Dylan Thomas reference in a rock song.

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In the end, “Smiling at Strangers” was written and recorded in about ten days for the course. It came together quickly and naturally, which is always a gift. It’s a sing-along, it has the post-chorus “heys,” and it carries a message I still believe in: optimism is not naïveté, friendliness is not weakness, and sometimes the most defiant thing you can do is smile first.