Help! I wrote a viral hold song and now I have to write about myself

You are probably thinking: “Viral On hold music?? This guy sounds amazing.” And you’re right, but it wasn’t always like this.

In 2017, I was just a guy with a degree in advertising who had come to terms with the fact that I was going to be a bartender for the rest of my life. I had been in Chicago where everyone told me I needed to go to portfolio school. But since I was already in so much debt from making fake ads, I decided to go the sketch and improv route and figured I’d say “yeah, and…” my way into an agency.

Then I met a guy at a party. By the end of the night, I had a job offer from a company I’d wanted to work for for years, even though I’d always been turned down. My Don Draper dream had come true. In two weeks, I would start in the mailroom.

Over the next three years, I worked my way up from sorting mail and picking up trash in the office to overseeing the whole damn postal service. All the while, I soaked it all up and learned things they don’t teach in portfolio school – like how trash always smells worse in the summer.

Back in the day, I cornered more than one creative in the elevator and said I wanted to be just like them (that wasn’t weird). That eventually led to my first gig at Universal Studios, but ONLY if I dressed like Justin Timberlake and sang songs on the piano at a project manager’s birthday party. Deal.

I went to the party, nailed the Brie, and got my first rejection in advertising. I kept pushing Creative Resources to move me up the ranks, and after a ton of rejections, I finally got the magic word in 2020: “Okay.” I was officially a writer. And as a writer with no proof that I could actually write, they put me on the only projects you’d trust someone who’d just cleaned toilets the week before: radio and on-hold news.

I did that for months at Pizza Hut. Then in 2021 I got to write for the voice actor Craig Robinson for a package of commercials. Knowing his and my own musical talents, I came up with the unoriginal idea of ​​writing a song for him. “Chicken Wings” was born.

@noraeinhellll #holdmusic #pizzahut #wings #chickenwingsong #funny ♬ Original sound – noraeinhellll

It lived on random franchisee’s phones for years until 2024. Someone heard the song, loved it, shared it on TikTok, and so many people hit the “like” button that it got millions of views and media coverage. I didn’t even know about it until my aunt contacted me while I was on paternity leave and asked, “Who made the Pizza Hut song?”

That led to the agency’s first Radio Mercury Award, a shortlist at Cannes, and my mum telling all her Facebook friends that I was now a songwriter.

All of this to say: Be nice to the guy in the mailroom. Even if they aren’t award-winning authors today, they could be tomorrow.