In our continuing celebration of the release of NYPL Sings!, NYPL’s first album of original children’s songs, written and performed by NYPL staff, let's take another look at the method behind the music! (Here's our last conversation, about the song "I Read Everywhere".)

The song "Dealing with Feelings", featured on the album, can help your child think and talk through their emotions. For young children, feelings can often be overwhelming and even scary, and "Dealing With Feelings" is a sweet, simple way to help build language skills and social-emotional intelligence. 

"Dealing with Feelings" was co-written by Joey Picciotto and Andrew Openheimer. Since we already spoke to Joey about the song "Greetings from NYC", we spent time with Andrew , asking about his songwriting process with Joey, how they thought about which feelings to include in the song, and where their inspiration came from!

You and Joey Picciotto co-wrote this song. Did you have distinct roles, or did you sit down and write it all together? What was the writing process like?

Joey did the bulk of the principal songwriting; my main contributions were in the ideas surrounding it. We knew we wanted each feeling to be reflected in the music as well as the words, so I had the idea to change the instrumentation from verse to verse. We found that certain instruments are tied to certain feelings (brass with anger, strings with sadness, etc). This concept was inspired by the 2006 article from Teun Luccasen in the 4th Twente Student Conference on IT.

It's really hard to describe feelings to children who might not have the language yet, but this song succeeds perfectly. Did you have a list of emotions you wanted to address, or did the emotions unfold from the narrative?

We did have a list. In psychology, there classically are six core emotions (happiness, sadness, fear, anger, disgust, and surprise). We opted to use the 2014 study from Glasgow University, which states that there are actually only 4. Lyrically, we wanted to focus on a set of core beliefs going into the song, including problem-solving and conflict-resolution strategies, perspective talking, and coping with typically negative emotions among others. 

My favorite part of the song is the line, "Turn frustration into words", because I think adults could benefit from that lesson too! Did you take your inspiration from experience with children, lessons from children's literature, or somewhere else?

I wish I could take credit for that line, but it's definitely one of Joey's. I definitely agree that it's advice adults would benefit from, emotional maturity isn't something that is formally taught in the United States and it is easy for people to lose sight of who they intend to be. Then again, there are lessons for adults throughout this album, whether they know it or not. It was written so that every audience can enjoy it, not just the extremely young.

Listen to "Dealing with Feelings" here, and download the lyrics to all of NYPL Sings!