Song of the Week: Cool To Be Weird by Tai Shan | inspired by Dr. Seuss

I remember my father reading Dr. Seuss’ The Sneetches and Other Stories to me as I lay on the floor and colored one night for reading time. Reading was always a nightly event. It started when my mother would leave to work the night shift and would go until my brother and I would fall asleep in our crayons. When The Bushwick Book Club Seattle asked me to write a song inspired by one of Dr. Suess’s stories I told the curator, Geoff Larson, that I’m a late addition to the show so let everyone else choose their favorite story and I will take what’s left. The Sneetches was the last picked mostly because it shirted around issues like segregation and bigotry, some of our darkest parts of society.

I thought it might be fate to return to this old book from my past once more. I remember I was washing dishes when I thought “wait all these Sneetches are running around trying to fit in, trying to be acceptable, but it’s cool to be different, it’s cool to be weird.” With soapy hands and wet pages I wrote the entire chorus while finishing the dishes.

“You got to be comfortable in your own skin, don’t you let them win, because it’s cool not to fit in, so go a little crazy and don’t you fear, because it’s cool to be weird.”

As a one on one guitar and songwriting teacher to teens and young girls I feel this is an important message for our youth. In the following video you will see a number of my students making a statement that it’s okay to be yourself, it’s cool to be weird.