Diving into the writing process of the viral speech.
There’s simply no denying that Eric Church is one of the greatest wordsmiths of the current generation of country music. With nine albums worth of brilliance over the past two decades, his songwriting speaks for itself at this point. Recently, however, the Chief showed off his public-speaking skills and delivered one of the best speeches I’ve heard in quite some time at the University of North Carolina’s graduation ceremony.
In case you missed it, the North Carolina native – and die-hard Tar Heels fan – spoke to the graduating class at UNC on Saturday, using his guitar strings as a metaphor for the things that are important in life:
“When all six are in tune, the chords they make can stop a conversation cold, carry a broken person through the worst night of their life, or make a roomful of strangers feel for three minutes like they’ve known each other forever.
If one is off, the whole chord unravels. Not gradually, politely. The moment you strike it, you know. I believe your life runs on this principle.”
Throughout the speech, Church compared his guitar strings to important pillars in life – faith, family, community, and maintaining your own moral compass. He spoke of the importance of finding the right partner and not comparing yourself to the best version of someone else that you see on social media. And he ended it with a performance of his own song “Carolina,” his tribute to his home state from his 2008 sophomore album.
Given how powerful the entire speech is, I’ll leave the entire transcript uninterrupted here:
“You are made uniquely, wonderfully, distinctly. There’s a sound only you can make, a voice that has never existed before you and will never exist again. A contribution only you can bring, a way of seeing that belongs to only you.
The world does not need another cover song. It needs an original.
Six strings, six strings of life and willingness to keep them in tune. Six principles, six pillars. When all six are in tune with each other, the chord your life makes is full and resonant and true.
All six will drift, not one or two, all six in their own time, in their own season. Your faith will go quiet when you need it loud. Your family will get complicated in a way only the people who love you most can complicate things. You will go through hard seasons with your spouse. Your ambition will hollow out and your resilience will wear thin. Your community will start to feel like an obligation and your world will try to sand down the edges of exactly who you are.
This is not failure. This is not weakness. It’s the inevitable universal experience of living in an imperfect world that doesn’t stop to let us tune up. And the difference between a life that sounds like music and a life that sounds like noise is whether you stop and listen. Whether you’re honest enough to hear which string has drifted out of tune, and humble enough to make the adjustment, instead of just turning up the volume and hoping nobody notices.
Because YOU will notice. The part of you that knows what the chords should sound like will always notice. It will not let you go. Life won’t be right until it is tuned. Trust what your heart hears and is telling you about your song.
So graduates, now I encourage you to take your six strings, make it something worth hearing, and play your song as I leave you with mine.”
Since making that speech on Saturday, it’s gone viral online, especially on X (formerly Twitter). In particular, this clip from J.P. Hovey has been the standout, garnering over 1.6 million views since Tuesday, May 12th.
In wake of the speech’s virality over the past few days, Church made an appearance on Fox & Friends this morning to dive into his process behind penning the emotional reflection.
Revealing that he was contacted by UNC eight to nines months ago, the “Springsteen” singer would admit that it was not an easy task. In fact, he go on to note that a whole lot of trial and error involved in the creation of the speech. Additionally, he’d explain that the now-iconic “six pillars/strings” metaphor was birthed out of frustration with trying to write the speech traditionally.
“A lot of trial and error, a lot of frustration. I have so much respect and admiration for not only the university as a lifelong fan, but also the administration and the academics and just the people there. And that’s home for me. This one was a commencement speech, but it was personal for me.
I’ve been working on this. They told me I was going to get to do this eight or nine months ago. So I’ve been working on, in my head, how to do it. You know? I went through a lot of frustration, and finally one night in a fit of frustration, I picked up my guitar just to get away from the frustrating part of trying to write the speech. And as I was strumming the guitar, it just dawned on me. I hit all six strings, and I thought, ‘Hey, what if I could make a speech out of these?'”
After noting how much of an impact his wife, Kathyrn, had on the speech, Church would go on to explain that his two sons, who are now 14 and 11 years old, also had a impact on how he formed it given how radically different their lives are today compared to his was when he was their age.
“It kind of maybe shows you where the youth is today. I have two boys, 14 and 11; I’m 49. Their life today is drastically different than my life was when I was their age. They don’t really watch TV. They’re on their phones or they’re on YouTube or they’re gaming. And I don’t know if they get the fundamentals messages that are not filtered through 50,000 different ways to get to them.”
Candidly, the 49-year-old singer/songwriter would admit that the reason he centered the speech around the six pillars is because he’s “failed miserably” at maintaining a balance between them throughout his life. He’d explain that he wanted the central message of it to be that they’re going to fail — the key is trying to get it right.
“Full disclosure, the reason I know about these things is [because] I have failed miserably at all of these things. I know what it feels like to have certain these pillars of your life not in tune, and I know what it’s like to have them in tune. It was trying to convey that message of ‘You’re not going to get it right, but you should try to get it right.'”
Finally, he’d touch on the virality of the speech, noting that it’s incredibly ironic that a majority of it centered on blocking out external noise like social media and focusing on building a community.
“Really what I think is the most ironic thing about this — I find this fascinating — is a lot of this speech talked about social media and how you have to ignore social media. And then it goes viral, which I find ironic. What are you gonna do with that? A lot of that was the right moment; it was the right message.”
Watch the full speech here:
