
You Are My Song • Darren Day and the FASD Choir
A creative music campaign to promote awareness of FASD
You Are My Song, which I was commissioned to write and produce for a charity campaign, is aimed at raising awareness of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD). The song expresses how it can feel to live with FASD and how music plays a big role in helping people to express their feelings when words fail.
On lead vocals is musical theatre star Darren Day (who arrived fresh at the studio from starring in Footloose!) and singers from the Voice in a Million choir and the FASD choir. We also had the pleasure to work with record the wonderful Premiere Strings at Bluebell Hill Studios near Maidstone.
You Are My Song is available to download on all streaming platforms and for more information on FASD and Adoption please visit the Adoption UK website.
Production Approach:
Jo Garofalo from Voice in a Mllion contacted me having seen other work that I’d done in this area and asked if I would write a song for this project. She wanted a song that would raise awareness of FASD and also be wonderful for a choir of young voices to perform at the Voice in a Million event at Wembley Stadium.
The song needed to represent thoughts and feelings shared by those who live with FASD, to be uplifting and to be meaningful as well to all the children and young people who will sing it at the VIAM concert.
The first stage was research, including some long conversations with Jo, who has adopted a child who lives with FASD. She was able to give me first-hand experiences of the challenges they face. I also asked for poems and any writings on subjects that matter to people with FASD. I wanted to understand what emotions are prominent. The next stage was a kind of incubation, when I also listened to songs that have a similar point to make and similar tone.
Following on, I had a few writing sessions where I jammed at the piano playing chord sequences and testing lyric lines until I found the hook into the song.
One of the things that inspired me was how music and singing helps unlock communication for people with FASD. It’s a medium that aids expression, memory and understanding, it helps process the events of the day. And those who support people with FASD use music to connect and help them overcome each day’s obstacles. That’s when You Are My Song formed: as music is an anchor in the lives of people with FASD, so are their supporting and loving family and friends.