“Lucky Me” - A Music Video For The Troops By Helene Cronin

Description: A LITTLE HISTORY I grew up in a family where music and creativity mattered. My brothers and sister and I would grab our guitars and sing together for entertainment. We could kill a whole afternoon singing our favorite stuff off the radio. I wrote my first real song my Freshman year of college when a friend decided to drop-out. It was a good-bye song that I played for our hall in the dorm. I discovered the power of a song to connect with a listener's emotions, and that's what hooked me on songwriting! Since that time, I recorded 3 album projects of my own material, only 2 of which are still available to the public. They can be found on www.cdbaby.com or iTunes. All of these projects were Contemporary Christian in genre. After I joined a local songwriters association, I met other people like me who were writing for the Country music market, and became inspired to write about some of the stories I found in life, including my own. I began to make trips to Nashville to immerse myself as much as possible in the incredible songwriting community there. Now, I continue to write for both Christian and Country markets. I still travel to Nashville to pitch my songs, network and grow as a writer. I'd love to have a well-known artist record one of my songs! THE STORY OF "LUCKY ME" I was in the Nashville airport, waiting to catch a plane home after a trip where nothing happened that looked like "success" as I wanted success to be defined. I had met with people, attended a conference, and gotten my usual mix of pats on the back and "don't let the door hit you" responses. As I waited in line to check seat assignments or something, a young man in uniform stood next to me. I don't usually strike up conversations with people I don't know, but, he seemed so young, and I just started talking to him. When he asked me where I was flying off to, I don't know why I didn't just say my hometown. Certainly that would not have elicited the response that the word "home" received. When he looked at me and said "Lucky you", it hit me hard. I didn't know why at the time, but I did know there was a song in there! It took 2 years before I sat down and faced the blank page to write about it. Then the song poured out. When I got to the second verse and wrote the words about hearing "all the things he did not say", that was the moment I discovered why his statement that afternoon had seemed so poignant. This summer, I decided to do a simple demo of the song. I didn't spend a lot of time in the studio. Didn't try to get a perfect vocal. Didn't plan to release the song on Facebook. Didn't plan to use that demo as the basis for a YouTube video. Didn't think the song would ever make it to anyone else's ears, other than a few publishers willing to pitch it to a few artists. My sister, who loves the song, saw the response that I was getting to it. She believes in me and sometimes dreams for me when my dreams stall out! She shot some video of a live performance, then did a rough sync-up of the video with the demo, added some stock photos and made me open a YouTube account. We uploaded it on Sept. 5th. Less than two weeks later, we hit 25,000 views and the 6,000 repostings on Facebook! I have no control over it anymore. I sent "Lucky Me" out into the universe and shared it openly and I am hearing back that my song matters to people. It doesn't get much better than that.