Meet the man who made 93 songs about Pennsylvania towns as part of an elaborate streaming scheme

The longest album about Pennsylvania was created by a guy who isn’t even from here.

Pennsylvania Songs: PA Exciting clocks in at a whopping 93 songs and was released in 2014. But the album has found a new set of accidental listeners on TikTok as people rediscover the Guy Who Sings About Cities and Towns — a.k.a. Matt Farley.

Since 2012, Farley’s shtick has been writing mini-anthems — usually clocking in between one and two minutes — about municipalities large and small. After dropping albums dedicated to Mississippi and New Mexico at the end of June, he has now Media/status/1673636583340412928?s=20">recorded one for all 50 states.

The Massachusetts-based singer-songwriter has recorded more than 24,000 bite-sized songs across more than 80 pseudonyms since 2004. He has waxed poetic about Pizza Hut, the Phillies, prom, and just about every other concept in between, resonating on TikTok because of his songs’ length and inherent zaniness.

Farley makes his living by creating something others have dubbed music spam — songs tailored to fit people’s Spotify or iTunes search queries, like songs about their name, or their state, or bodily functions. Farley made $65,000 from these songs in 2019, according to Inc. Magazine, and he told The Inquirer that number has only grown since, but wouldn’t get into specifics.

Farley’s career is symbolic of the toll it takes to be successful in streaming, where independent artists struggle to make a living from pennies-as-royalties. The singer-songwriter plays in more traditional (and less lucrative) bands but uses songs about flyover towns to justify his lifelong dedication to music.

“I write songs about things people aren’t writing about,” Farley said. “I get down to the cities that no one would ever write an anthem about, like the 72nd most-populated town in Pennsylvania.”

Farley, 45, has only been to Pennsylvania a couple of times, to see the smoke billowing out of the ground in Centralia on one occasion and to see the Phils take on the Red Sox on another.

His lack of connections doesn’t stop him from levying superlatives across PA Exciting. Every place — from Lower Merion and Cheltenham to York and Philly — is wonderful, or the best, or a community you need to move to immediately, at least according to his music.

“Philadelphia is the best city in the whole entire world,” Farley sings on the rousing “Best Song about Philadelphia,” which also includes references to the Liberty Bell and getting punched by Rocky.

Likewise, Haverford is the “greatest place in the whole entire world” on “Haverford Township is a Great Township” and Radnor is the “suburban dream” in “Have You Been to Radnor Township?”

(Farley said he has not.)

“I definitely felt that way in the moment,” said Farley when asked if he truly believed Philadelphia is the greatest city in the world. Regrettably, he says he has also bestowed that title upon at least 49 other cities.

People may not be feeling the cumulative effects of Farley’s musical humor, though. Farley said the average listener only stays for two-and-a-half of his songs on Spotify.

And yet, PA Exciting wasn’t Farley’s first musical venture into the Philly region. Farley released three albums about the Phillies, Eagles, and Sixers under his short-lived one-man band aptly titled the Philadelphia Sports Band in 2011.

Some of the songs riff on Philly athletes such as Chase Utley and Michael Vick, but others attempt to capture our fan culture. On the song “I’m a Boo Bird (I Boo Santa Claus),” Farley croons about our city’s propensity to heckle the home team.

“I like Philadelphia. I like the gritty reputation,” Farley said. “You gotta be tough to make it in Philly.”

That mentality still hasn’t swayed Farley from the Celtics, though.

“I’m still an enemy of any Philadelphia sports team,” Farley said.

Farley’s songs about Pennsylvania each clock in at under two minutes and sound like stream-of-consciousness ramblings mixed in with a Wikipedia page.

And that’s exactly what they are.

For his albums about cities and towns, Farley starts by sorting a given state’s municipalities by population and then laying down beats for the top 50 or so. From there, he spends a few long days recording in his basement studio.

Farley doesn’t write his lyrics ahead of time and often relies on Wikipedia.

“When I don’t know what I’m talking about, I just start talking up the school system or saying the government officials work very hard,” said Farley, whose other favorite fill-ins include rattling off zip codes or shouting out public libraries.

Farley’s creative process, then, is built around two tenets: volume and unfettered creativity.

He fell into spam music accidentally, when his band Moes Haven wasn’t making money from streaming, save for a couple of songs about Hugh Grant or how to charge a cell phone.

Farley realized then the goal shouldn’t be producing masterpieces but rather hundreds of silly songs that would accumulate a steady number of streams each year, covering the cost of production and then some.

“I’ve always been a fan of producing quickly and producing a lot,” said Farley. “Your brain is going to stop giving you ideas if you don’t do anything with them.”

Farley calls his process “exhausting” and tries to insulate his two children, 7 and 9, from the sheer excess of how he records.

“It’s embarrassing when I come out of the basement and my kids ask, ‘Why did you say seven different cities were wonderful?’ or ‘Why did you record yourself asking a bunch of people to prom?’” Farley said.

Farley fancies himself a “songwriter comedian hyphenate” who has built a universe around his 80 different personas. They even get their own story lines.

The Guy Who Sings Songs About Cities and Towns has one album dedicated to his fake life, where his girlfriend leaves him for never venturing beyond his hometown. And Toilet Bowl Cleaners — Farley’s potty song venture — released a record full of love songs because they were tired of being disrespected for “singing about poop.”

“Most of [my music’s] value is in the comedy,” said Farley, who has wanted to be a songwriter for as long as he can remember.

“If third or fourth grade me could see me now, he’d think, ‘That’s on brand,’” Farley said. “I haven’t evolved at all, in a good way. I like my childlike approach to things.”