By Sara Gregory
Staff Writer
Singer and songwriter Billy Sugarfix says he wants the next song he writes to be silly.
“The weirder the better,” he said.
Sugarfix, also known as Bill McCormick, is hosting a contest and looking for the weirdest, wackiest, wildest lyrics to set to music.
Known for his role in the band Evil Weiner and more recently for his role in the rap he performed with housemate Brian Risk called “It’s Carrboro,” Sugarfix is sponsoring the Song Poem Bizarre Lyrics contest through his blog, Surreal O’Rama, and asking for submissions from anyone and everyone.

Winning lyrics will be set to music and performed by Sugarfix and Risk.
“Basically what I’m looking for is something that will translate into a song,” Sugarfix said. “The stranger the better.”
Sugarfix runs a custom song writing Web site called Custom Serenade, but said most of the songs he is hired to write are fairly standard.
“When you’re doing something for a birthday, they usually have something special they’re looking for,” he said. “I’m more than happy to do that, but I also wanted to do something a little sillier.”
Sugarfix said some of the songs he has been hired to write have been offbeat, and said he prefers writing music to those “that were sort of crazy, kind of non-linear and weird.”
The idea behind the contest is to recreate the song poem and “song sharking” phenomenon of the 1970s Sugarfix said. Then, advertisements would call for poets to send in their work, promising the poems could become the lyrics to a hit song.
Those who submitted poetry would be contacted, Sugarfix said, and asked to pay a fee so the lyrics could be set to music and recorded.
Sugarfix said the premise was essentially a scam, but said it inspired people to take advantage of it by submitting purposefully ridiculous lyrics.
“You had oddball people who would partake in this service to begin with, and then you had people who could see that it was a scam and who would just send in the crudest, most inappropriate lyrics just to see what you’d get back,” Sugarfix said.
Sugarfix teaches a music composition class for children at the Carrboro ArtsCenter, said his work with the children also pushed him to hold the contest.
“I just have a really good time working with them because the way they go about writing lyrics is just refreshing and fun,” Sugarfix said. “It can often be a challenge to create music to the lyrics they come up with.”
The children didn’t have preconceived notions about how lyrics should be written, Sugarfix said, and as a songwriter, creating music to those types of lyrics is a challenge he enjoys.
He said he hopes he will have a similar experience with the contest entries.
Sugarfix said he had received 32 entries so far. Those interested can submit lyrics until March 10.
Then, lyrics will be forwarded to four judges Sugarfix has arranged to oversee the contest.
Originally, Sugarfix said he intended to judge the competition himself, but after looking at initial entries, he realized he would know too many of the entrants to judge impartially.
In his place he found Franklin Bruno, who writes music criticism for Salon.com and The Village Voice; Jad Fair, a singer-songwriter of the band Half Japanese; Seth Falkner, host of the Urban Coffee Podcast; and David Gutowski, creator of the music and literature blog Large Hearted Boy.
“I knew what types of judges I wanted before I knew who I wanted,” Sugarfix said. “I just went fishing on the Internet and I really didn’t have to go very far.”
Sugarfix wanted two songwriters, a blogger and a podcaster to judge, and said he was really happy with who agreed to judge.
“Everyone’s really excited about and everyone seems to be into it,” he said.
Bruno, Fair, Falkner and Gutowski will pick their favorite five entries, looking for both the most original poems and those that will best translate into songs.
Then, Sugarfix and Risk will get to work.
“First of all, I’m just going to look at the lyrics,” Sugarfix said. “I’m just going to look and try to figure out things. At what point do you stop repeating the initial chord pattern and do a different one? Is this going to be a fast song or a slow song? Things like that.”
Sugarfix and Risk will create music to the winning five entries and the first song will be posted on Surreal O’Rama March 20. The remaining songs will be posted twice a week until April 10, at which point readers may cast votes for their favorite song.
The overall winner will be announced April 21, and Sugarfix said he cannot wait to see the result.
“I don’t know if I can contrive the variables (to recreate the 1970s song poems) so we can get something that cool with this contest, but that’s the goal.”