When songwriter John Beltzer was cut out of a record deal in 1995, he was devastated. “I was left out in the cold,” he recalls. But two weeks later, inspiration struck: “I could create a charity that helps sick children.”
With no nonprofit experience but strong determination, he launched an organization to create free personalized songs for gravely ill children. His first call was to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, which sent him six children’s names, photos and stories.
Two weeks later, five-year-old Brittany, who had cancer, called to thank him for her song. “It was the cutest voice,” Beltzer says. “I cried my eyes out. I knew then that’s what I was meant to do for the rest of my life.”
The nonprofit he created is the Songs of Love Foundation. Now, 30 years after his life-changing epiphany — and more than 46,000 songs later — Beltzer, inspired by his mother’s experience with Alzheimer’s, has launched Memory Initiative, a new project that creates personalized songs for people with memory loss.
Request your song
Caregivers can request a free song by filling out a form on songsoflove.org/memoryrequest with details from the person’s life — first name, children or grandchildren’s names, former occupation, pets of the present or from long ago and any favorite things and experiences. Their life story will be related in each lyric. Songs are delivered preloaded on an 8 GB USB file drive.
Beltzer reached this point with help from more than 1,000 singers and songwriters — most volunteers, some paid only a small stipend. But creating songs for seniors presented a challenge: how to offer songs in the style of their era — big band, Motown and swing. That music would normally cost between $5,000 and $10,000 to orchestrate in a recording studio.
He sought help from the AI music platform Suno, whose CEO, Mikey Shulman, offered his company’s full support.
“This is a really big deal as we will be scaling big time as a result,” Beltzer says. “This is a revolutionary partnership that will, for the very first time, help provide personalized songs for seniors with dementia all over the world.”
By mid-September, after starting the initiative in the spring, he had created more than 100 songs. “It’s the music they grew up with, but we take it a step further. We weave in their entire story to keep their memories alive as long as possible. It’s almost a little biography in a song.” And it’s something loved ones can cherish forever.
Concetta M. Tomaino, DA, LCAT, MT-BC, executive director/co-founder of the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function, sees significant benefit to this new venture: “We have just started to partner with them and look forward to studying the impact of these very special songs in helping people stay connected with their sense of self and memory of the important people in their lives.”