Five For Fighting (aka John Ondrasik) had a pair of platinum records in the early 2000s, on the strength of songs like “100 Years” and “Superman (It’s Not Easy),” with the latter becoming an anthem after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and earning him a spot on the lineup for The Concert for New York City.
In recent years, Ondrasik has released a number of topical songs, ranging from the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan (“Blood on My Hands”) to the war in Ukraine (“Can One Man Save The World?”) to the 2023 Hamas attack on Israel (“OK (We Are Not OK”). There hasn’t been any hesitation on his end with tackling weightier subjects.
“Well, when I wrote the one about Afghanistan, virtually everybody except my wife and my daughter said you cannot put that out,” he said with a laugh. “But, again, I’ve never been somebody who likes to stand on a soapbox and preach my views, but music has always had a way of making certain points in a way that’s different than a speech or an op-ed. Particularly with the Afghanistan song, the honor of my career has been supporting our troops.
“I have many relationships in the military and when we abandoned many of their fellow soldiers in Afghanistan, they were gutted by that. They felt voiceless, and that song gave them a voice, similar to the Ukraine song and the song about Oct. 7. You have those songs give people voices that feel voiceless and, of course, not everybody agrees with them, but that’s America, that’s good. We have conversations through music, so particularly the Israel song, the Oct. 7 song, again which to me is just more of a moral song, and to see so many people who have felt abandoned find some solace and that somebody’s writing something that kind of speaks to their reality and especially in a climate where very few musicians or artists are speaking up about things, so it’s something I really didn’t plan on doing. I don’t take a lot of joy in it, but it seems to be impacting.”
Those songs will be on tap when Five For Fighting with a string quartet plays May 17 at City Winery Pittsburgh in the Strip District. The more intimate shows started years ago, according to Ondrasik.
“I was asked to start doing symphony shows, which again is incredible to play these songs with a 32-piece symphony behind your back,” he said. “It was so inspiring to me and people seemed to enjoy it. So we wanted to take it to smaller venues. And so we kind of reduced the arrangements to a string quartet and started playing more sit-down, intimate venues instead of rock clubs and people seemed to really enjoy it. At my age and what I’m doing, I also like the intimate storyteller shows where you can really react with the audience, look people in the eye and have that behind-the-curtain experience.”
In a call last month from Los Angeles, Ondrasik discussed performing in Ukraine and Tel Aviv, backlash over topical songs, the Music Matters Challenge and more:
With “Can One Man Save the World?,” you performed it in Ukraine, so what were your thoughts on that?
It was surreal, of course. We played on what is hallowed ground in Ukraine. It was at the Antonov Airport where their symbol of freedom, the Mriya, the airplane, was destroyed by Putin. So to try to put an orchestra in the rubble in the blown-up tanks and sing that song with them was one of the most moving experiences of my life, for sure, and to meet members of that orchestra, virtually every one of them either had somebody on the front lines, somebody missing or somebody killed. And so certainly the sadness, but the fortitude to see those people up close, and you see why they’ve stood up to this Goliath. That was incredibly emotional, a bit scary, to be honest with you, because missiles were being launched at Kiev when we were there. But again, you see the fortitude of heroic people fighting for their survival, and it can’t help but change how you look at the world.
The song “OK” is about the Hamas attack in 2023 and for that you also performed in Tel Aviv, right?
Which was crazy. I wasn’t planning on doing that, but I went over there to meet with some artists and meet with some of the soldiers and sang for them. I was asked last minute to perform at Hostage Square, which was the closest thing I’ve ever experienced to performing at The Concert for New York after 9-11. I never thought I’d have anything close to that. But performing in Tel Aviv with people six feet from me holding posters of their loved ones who were hostage, again, it’s hard to put that into words. But it’s another example of how music can make a big difference for folks, and I was honored to do it. I look forward to going back, and hopefully, before too long, all of the hostages will be home.
And that led to “Song for the Hostages” that just came out in October?
Through my experience with “OK,” and kind of being immersed in the Jewish culture — I’m not Jewish — I met with many hostage families, and one was Rachel Goldberg, Hersh Goldberg’s mom, who I was talking with for a long time. And certainly when Hersh was murdered, it broke all of our hearts. And again, I kind of felt obligated to write a song for the hostages because I wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal about during the Iranian hostage crisis, every tree had a yellow ribbon around it, every mailbox, every newscast led with the hostages. And for some reason, we’ve seemed to forget our hostages. And that song also was a song that some of the hostage families appreciate. … But again, certainly a song you don’t want to write. And it’s a song we’ll be playing on the tour because I think it’s important to play it. Katie wrote a beautiful arrangement for it, but it’s tough to play, but I think important to play.
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Has there been any backlash from the music community for your stances at all?
You get this social media stuff and you get the hatred. It’s been certainly a wake-up call for me, again to someone who’s not Jewish, I get a little taste of what it’s like to be Jewish these days. So the death threats, you have to hire extra security, all that stuff that comes with just speaking common sense. It’s a little frustrating because there are many folks in the music industry who will say ‘Thank you for doing this. Thank you for saying this.’ But they will not publicly speak out.
That’s the frustrating part, and some of them are Jewish icons. And I appreciate you to recognize what I’m doing, but this is the problem because I am an anomaly. I shouldn’t be an anomaly. I shouldn’t have to write these songs. Everybody should be saying them, but for whatever reason, we live in this kind of upside down world. There’s people that don’t appreciate some of my views and you never know who doesn’t hire you and people kind of scream at me at concerts sometimes, but as I said, when you meet with hostage families, Gold Star families, soldiers who’ve lost limbs, and you’re like, a couple of mean tweets and somebody yelling at me and maybe losing a gig or something, that seems pretty trivial.
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What’s going on with the Music Matters Challenge?
We just launched our second Music Matters Challenge. Last year, I partnered with amazing philanthropist Cayley Tull and the Tullman Family Office a few years ago to write a song with some students at Farragut Career Academy in Chicago. And the song was called “Let Music Fill My World.” They wrote all the lyrics and we recorded it and we made a video. And through that effort, the Tullman Family Office funded a music teacher for their school. They’d lost their music teacher. And as we speak today, they have their new music teacher. And if you talk to the principal, he’ll tell you the whole school has flourished, not just the music students. And so last year, we did the first Music Matters Challenge where people were asked to make a video and talk about a music teacher that inspired them and sing a little bit of the song. And through that effort, we had 10 finalists. Jesse Robitaille won the Music Matters Challenge for the individual. And through that effort, he’s working with us to provide another music teacher for a school in need here in Los Angeles. We’ve identified a school in California, and they will get a full-time music teacher in the near future for three years at $300,000. And also a school through the Music Matters Challenge, they won the school prize, which was $30,000. And they were all excited to buy instruments. So we’re launching it again. And as I said, there’s two overall goals with this: raise awareness for the critical need for music in the schools. It’s not just extracurricular. You see all the scores go up. The math, the reading, the social skills. There’s less disciplinary problems. So our goal is to get a music teacher in every school.
It’s a shame that the arts get put off to the side, it’s one of the first things that they cut nowadays with school budgets.
Well it all started, this whole thing, with my mom who in LA Unified cut funding in the 70s all the music teachers were cut and she volunteered and started putting on musicals at our local elementary school. I was Tony in “West Side Story,” so make of that what you will, but 50 years later, those kids who are now in their 60s talk about how critical that was for them and what an experience, whether they went into music or not. I think people think that music is kind of an added value, but it’s just like sports. It’s like the two things that keep kids out of trouble in school are sports and the arts. Music provides so many other benefits to school beyond learning an instrument: discipline, being able to work with others, finding your voice, enjoying school, giving you a reason to enjoy going to school.