Composer Daniel Mertzlufft On Latest Musical Projects

You know what they say—“teach them young; teach them right.”

In celebration of Pride Month, children’s network Nickelodeon released a music video called The Meaning of Pride featuring RuPaul’s Drag Race superstar Nina West. With a catchy tune and dazzling visuals, the song teaches viewers the meaning behind the Pride flag’s colors, lifts up voices in the LGBTQ community, and sends a message saying ‘be true to you.’

Composed by NYC-based songwriter and musical arranger Daniel Mertzlufft, he drew inspiration from the iconic School House Rock for their brilliance in educational songs and mixed it with music of queer pop figures like Whitney Houston, Elton John, and Lady Gaga.

In addition to The Meaning of Pride, Mertzlufft is most known for his viral sensations including The Thanksgiving Musical and The Grocery Store Musical, and he is one of the creative masterminds behind Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical, a live streamed concert produced by Tony-winning Seaview Productions that raised over $2 million in COVID relief for The Actor’s Fund. Starring Wayne Brady, Tituss Burgess, and Adam Lambert with a full production team behind it, Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical is the first TikTok production to be eligible for an Emmy Award.

OFM had the opportunity to connect with Mertzlufft and talk more about his musical projects as well as his passion for education and telling stories.

Let’s begin by talking more about The Meaning of Pride video that aired on Nickelodeon, featuring Nina West. How has the response been?
It has been amazing and horrendous from both of the people that you would expect [laughs]. It has been very cool to see a lot of the queer community coming out to support it, and the comments of, ‘this would have changed me if I had seen this when I was a kid’ and ‘this is saving lives.’ It makes me think back to when I was in the closet and seeing something like this would have been life changing. It would have made me feel seen in some way.

So, that response has been amazing, but we have also gotten the response from people thinking we are indoctrinating children and making them do terrible things. We should be arrested; I should kill myself—I have gotten all of it. Fortunately, the positives outweigh the very small, but very aggressive, people.

What was it like working with Nina?
It was so fun! Working with the whole team was amazing. I came in with a couple of concepts the first time I met Nina, and they were so excited. Obviously, I am a big fan, and it was so funny because Nina was very excited to chat and do my work. Like, really? I’m excited to work with you, too! I love the way that they take education so seriously.

I went to school for music composition, which I am doing now, but also education. I am very passionate about education, and I think there is a lot of bad stuff out there where people just don’t care and don’t take the time. I think we need to care about the craft and care about what we are putting out there because what we are exposing our kids to musically is forming their entire opinion of what the arts are. I really love all the education initiatives that they are doing, and I was so excited to work with them on this.

How did you initially get involved with this project and why did you want to be a part of it?
A casting person at Nickelodeon reached out to me.  I had meetings with a lot of different teams over there, lots of fun things in progress and conversations happening, but this is the first thing that I actually worked on with Nickelodeon. I had met with the YouTube team and chatted about various different things, and they said, we are doing a lot of Pride things. I am a huge Avatar: The Last Airbender fan, and they did a whole 20-minute breakdown of Avatar Kyoshi with queens in drag, and it was everything you could want for Pride Month. Kyoshi is famously bisexual, so that was exciting.

I loved all the channels, but Nickelodeon was really where I lived as a kid. Again, to be writing something for them that would have changed my life if I had seen it then was so exciting. We talked about it, I came in with ideas for the song, and the first thing they came to me was the “doesn’t it just fill you with Pride?” hook. I really wanted a good hook that also paid homage to queer icons of the past. That hook was this sort of going back but keeping it in a pop context, so it is still relevant for our ears today.

What does Pride mean to you?
Pride, it’s the hook of the song. Be true to you. I identify as a cis man who is gay, which is one tiny little bit of the spectrum, but it is so big. Just be true to who you are and whatever that could be, and it could change daily. Just be true to you. I think that is really what it is, and be proud of who you are. It took me a long time to be able to be there. Now that I am, it is so incredible. It is nice to celebrate Pride where I am proud of who I am, and I love that so much. I am thankful to everyone who worked so hard and sacrificed so much to get us to where we are now.

Did you ever think Nickelodeon would air a music video about LGBTQ Pride and feature a drag queen?
That is a great question, and I am unsurprised that Nickelodeon would post a video like this because they have always been on the edge of progressive. They have always been, I think, the channel who is pushing the limit just enough in the best possible way. If you asked me 10 years ago, I would say, absolutely not, but in the context of who they are as a brand and where we are now, I am not surprised, but I am very excited to even see this.

Not even just with my video, but the amount they are doing. The Blue’s Clues Pride video, the Kyoshi thing, they are doing so much for Pride. They also did an incredible campaign for Black History Month, and I think it is so incredible of them to be able to do that and acknowledge all these things. It sort of goes back to what I said earlier with Nina, education is so important. It is not just for entertainment. They are actively educating as well.

Is education the biggest benefit of exposing children to drag and the LGBTQ community at such a young age?
Yes, and I think it is more of just the normalizing of things. One of my favorite things is seeing queer characters living their lives, where the fact that they are queer is not the crisis point of their storyline. Obviously, I love coming out stories, we have all read those, but I do love seeing queer people just be queer. We don’t talk about sex in the video, it’s for children. Literally, the whole video is about being true to you. If you are straight, that’s amazing. That’s awesome. It’s not knocking it, just be true to exactly who you are. We are not saying this is what a drag queen is, this is what drag culture is, which is amazing as well, but it’s just normalizing all of that.

I just worked on a piece called Breathe, which is a musical led by Jodi Picoult, the New York Times bestselling author, and it is five short vignettes. My vignette was a gay couple played by Matt Doyle and Max Clayton, who are a gay couple in real life. It was fun to write that piece because it is a love story, it ends up being a heartbreaking love story, but it has nothing to do with the fact that they are gay. They just happen to be gay characters, and it was so fun to write those songs. There’s one called “Clear As Day,” that is out on things like Spotify and Apple Music, but it’s about them falling in love at a very specific moment, then they are living their lives falling in and out of love with each other. It was so special and fun to write, and it was the same thing that I felt with The Meaning of Pride.

Not only Nickelodeon, but do you think networks overall that are geared towards children are getting better when it comes to LGBTQ inclusion and representation?
I hope so. I am not actively watching those channels [laughs], but as I see these types of things, it does make me excited, and I hope it is happening. Look at Disney+ and High School Musical. Again, those gay characters are just living their lives and it is accepted. So, I am hopeful with that. Now that I think about it, Nickelodeon did it with Korra in The Legend of Korra, they made her bisexual at the end. It was only at the end, and that was really pushing it. She held hands with a girl going on an adventure, and it was just barely scooting in there. So, it is exciting to see that sort of continually happening.

Have you always had a passion for composing music?
Yes and no. I started as a performer, as I think most people do. I loved singing, I loved playing the piano, and I would write little things, but it wasn’t until high school when I realized that I really liked writing. I didn’t know music theory very well, I didn’t know where to start, and I was lucky to go to an incredible music program that had music theory and allowed us to explore those things. I was able to write pieces for the choir and band to try out, and really experiment there.

That is when I really discovered my love of composing. I moved back with my parents at the beginning of quarantine for a couple months and found one of the first things I had ever written when I was in fourth grade. It was actually really cute. It was like two bars long, but it was cute.

Another one of your more recent projects was developing Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical, and this is the first TikTok production to be eligible for an Emmy. How exciting is that for you?
It is so exciting! The fact that a fun video that I posted because I thought it was funny, and hopefully other people would enjoy, is now eligible for an Emmy is just absurd to me. I really found TikTok as a place of escapism at the beginning of the pandemic, so I started posting some things and realized that musical theater parodies did very well.

At the end of the day, I did not try to go viral. I just thought it was funny, and I hoped my friends and other people would enjoy them as well. It was so exciting to see people suddenly backing it and constantly spreading joy. I think that’s what all of it was about. Let’s make someone laugh during this terrible time that we are living through. It was just so exciting. Going into Times Square and seeing a Ratatouille billboard, it was a very surreal experience. Like, that is something that really happened. I am just over the moon that people enjoyed it as much as they did.

And this production helped raise over $2 million in COVID relief. That is amazing!
Yes! It was The Actors Fund singular most successful benefit. Since the beginning of the pandemic, The Actors Fund has given over $18 million in relief funds all around the country. And that money is not just going to actors. It goes to theatres, writers, stage crew, everyone in the performing arts. The fact that we were able to make $2 million for them was so exciting. Especially as we continue to do the For Your Consideration Campaign, I am hopeful that people continue to go and donate because it only exists because of The Actors Fund. The whole benefit was conceived as a benefit for them.

This unique production was born out of you just posting a silly video?
Yes. It started with a girl named Emily Jacobsen, she posted a little video of her singing a song called “Ode to Remy,” that did very well on Tik Tok. People thought it was really funny, but there was no talk about that musical. So, I heard it, thought it was hilarious, and gave it the full Broadway treatment. Big orchestra, big choir, which is really just me and my best friend Cori Jaskier, who is in the ensemble of the benefit as well, and I posted that thinking it would be funny and not realizing it would launch a movement that had hundreds of thousands of people writing songs, designing costumes, and doing all that.

You said you found TikTok as a place of escapism during the pandemic, and so did millions of others. Do you think the platform will keep its momentum or slowly die out over time?
I think most social media have their peak and then slowly get less popular, but I do not think it is going to happen anytime soon with TikTok. I actually don’t think it is anywhere near its peak, and the reason is the collaborative capabilities that the platform offers are unmatched in comparison to any other social media.

Specifically with the use of the duet feature, which allows someone else to do a video with my video, the use of the sound, so that you can continually hear a sound that is trending, and especially the “For You” page, where if I watch a video that is musical theater based, the algorithm says, hey, this guy really likes musical theater, there’s this other video that people who like musical theater like. Why don’t we show him this? It allows people who have no followers to put their stuff out there. That was the first thing that happened to me. I had like three followers and ended up getting 50,000 views. The collaboration ability and the way to connect with others is unmatched on any other social media platform.

Is there a specific film story or production that you would like to see adapted as a TikTok musical?
Oh, that is such a loaded question! There are an endless amount of things that I would love to see adapted. Something that I am obsessed with right now is a Legend of Zelda musical. I have a whole plan in my head. I think it would be brilliant. I would also love an Avatar: The Last Airbender musical. Apparently, I just love big, epic things. Those are the two that are really on my mind right now, there’s a million things. Any of my favorite movies, I have ideas of the way to musicalize them. I don’t think I can watch a movie or read a book without imagining what a stage production would look like.

@danieljmertzlufft

For your consideration… #ratatouille #ratatouillemusical #timessquare #nyc #broadway #foryourconsideration #emmys #fypシ #remy

♬ original sound – danieljmertzlufft

What are some future goals you would like to accomplish as a musical artist?
I just want to keep writing and telling stories in whatever way that is. Of course, the Emmy eligibility is exciting, and any award like that is, in quotes, the ultimate goal of a writer, but I just love telling stories. Whether that’s with Ratatouille or Breathe, which is a very serious piece, or writing an educational song about the meaning of Pride, I love writing and telling stories. So, I don’t think I have any specific end goals, besides continuing to do what I am already doing. I love it, and I am so thankful that I get to do what I love every day.

Before we wrap up, are there any other upcoming projects or anything else you would like to mention or plug?
Breathe is still streaming right now. You can watch it on Overture+, and you can stream the entire album anywhere you stream music. I am really excited for that, and there are also some other incredible writers on there. The cast is amazing. It includes Kelli O’Hara, Brian Stokes Mitchell, an all-star cast, and that is still happening. Then, most of the other things I am not allowed to speak about, but follow me on all the things and you will get more information as I am allowed to say them!

Stay up-to-date with Mertzlufft by following him on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok, or visit his official website.

Photos Courtesy of Daniel Mertzlufft and Will Parker