Welcome to fiftystatesofsong.com!

Hello, world! My name is Greg Lehner, and welcome to my webpage. It's about, well, a music contest I created!

But it's more than just that.

"50 States of Song" is an independent pet project that, in many ways, aims to emulate one of my favorite things: the Eurovision Song Contest. The main difference being, of course, the fifty United States of America(*), rather than 40-some odd European nations and Australia - g'day, mates.

Don't know what Eurovision is? YouTube it. Or maybe you *do* know what it is, and wish you didn't. Well... that's too bad. In my opinion, the contest got a bad rep about 10 years ago, due to some really... ahem, questionable music entries, and has been trying to wash that off ever since. It's worth giving a second look. But I digress.

The first edition of 50 States of Song (or 50SS) was in early 2016. My primary goal was, and is, to bring unknown and underground music to the forefront. Believe it or not, contrary to popular belief, there is great Top 40 music out there - you just gotta dig through the dirt to find the gold! In this day and age it's really difficult to give this type of music a legitimate platform to stand on. It was important to me to find a wide variety of pop, indie, rock, country, and dance singles, and identify artists who were doing great things in their state: from making music videos, touring, playing concerts, releasing new music, and having fun while doing it. The American music industry is so much more than Los Angeles, New York City, and Nashville. Case in point: our 2016 winner hails from Phoenix!

As 2018 is nearly upon us, there's many decisions to be made regarding the contest itself, including some changes to the voting system. But if you are reading this, chances are you are not familiar with the contest yet. I encourage you to explore and comment; we will be making incremental updates to present prior entries by U.S. state, contest results, information about voting, and - for the first time ever - a submission form for entering YOUR favorite songs into the contest! (And, of course, this blog feed.)

Or maybe you are a singer or front-man for a band, and would like to put your name forward. PLEASE do so, you will officially be our favorite band for ever. We will open the submission form and release the rules for the songs in a couple weeks.

We're an independent, non-profit, online only (!!) group of music lovers who are growing slowly, but surely, towards becoming the closest thing the USA has to Eurovision. So, in the words of Lisbon, All Aboard and enjoy the ride!