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" Eef Barzelay, the solo artist and songwriter for the alternative rock group Clem Snide, is through with middlemen. After 20 years of scraping by on an indie musician&amp;#039;s meager earnings, Barzelay, 43, has taken up a direct marketing approach to reaching his fans, writing them personalized songs for $200 a pop. The decision came about as a result of financial &amp;quot;desperation,&amp;quot; Barzelay says, despite the fact that he has released more than a dozen acclaimed Clem Snide albums and two solo efforts.  &amp;quot;I tried doing it the normal way, with a record every two years or so, touring and so forth, but it was becoming painfully clear that was not working,&amp;quot; says Barzelay, who moved from New York City to Nashville nine years ago and now lives with his wife and two kids.  Though Sire records released Clem Snide&amp;#039;s Your Favorite Music in 1999, and the band&amp;#039;s follow-up, The Ghost of Fashion, sold 20,000 copies, Barzelay, like so many independent artists, still struggled to pay his bills. So, in 2011, he decided to try a new approach. &amp;quot;To achieve sustained profitability in the music business is really almost impossible at this point, as far as I can tell,&amp;quot; Barzelay said. &amp;quot;So for me it is satisfying because I like to write songs and whenever I&amp;#039;m in a real pinch for money I offer it up to my people and they go for it.&amp;quot;  To date, Barzelay has penned 157 of the personalized ditties, earning him over $31,000. While not a fortune, the money helps augment what he takes from tour and royalty payments. Intrigued to see what Barzelay could come up with on short notice, Esquire tasked him with writing a song on the topic of what it means to be a man. [Scroll below to listen to the song.]  Forty-eight hours after receiving our request, he sent back an mp3 for &amp;quot;The Ballad of a Man,&amp;quot; which is full of trademark Barzelay lyrical turns and deals with the difficulty of confronting outsize female \u2014 and societal \u2014 expectations, like the following refrain: &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m sure there are men with positions so much higher than mine who could make you feel safe and excited somehow at the same time. But what you are failing to see is that this man that you want me to be he would have left you a long time ago&amp;quot;  In fact, &amp;quot;Ballad of a Man&amp;quot; perfectly fits into Barzelay&amp;#039;s catalog, feeling at once off-the-cuff and meticulously composed. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve been both praised and panned lo these many years, so what does it all mean? I don&amp;#039;t know. But I&amp;#039;ve met many people who&amp;#039;ve been very touched by my shit so I know it&amp;#039;s real,&amp;quot; Barzelay says. &amp;quot;I think when I die the world will finally realize what they&amp;#039;ve been missing and then feel really guilty and ashamed \u2014 that&amp;#039;s my ultimate goal, a worldwide pandemic of guilt and shame.&amp;quot; One thing speaks in favor of Barzelay&amp;#039;s latest gambit: Few people (or magazines) can say that someone has written them a song, let alone one that is any good.       -- If you want a personalized song from Eef Barzelay, you can e-mail him at snideco@yahoo.com.  Follow The Culture Blog on RSS and on Twitter at @ESQCulture. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/music/news/a25754/song-eef-barzelay/>