Exclusive: LOVE LOVE Rhode Island, don’t you? CONTEST!

So write your own state song, and win!

Chris Toppin asked Jefferson Riordan to come over and help her finish a murder-ballad she was working on—not your usual come-hither pitch—but the two clicked, and LOVE LOVE was born. Though LOVE LOVE has gone through multiple iterations since Toppin and Riordan got together in that summer of 2013, the constant has always been their two voices that always belonged together.

BUT THAT’S NOT THE POINT.

Love Love’s new release, the Rhode Island eepee, features three songs that are in some way about the State of Rhode Island, and it got us thinking. Most states’ official songs were written a century ago or more (that’s a guess), and maybe it’s time for some updates. So…

HEY, KIDS! Let’s have a CONTEST!

Listen and learn from LOVE LOVE, and write a song about your own home state. Or somebody else’s home state. “Rhode Island,” fun, funny and educational, was written by band founder Jefferson Riordan about co-founder Chris Toppin’s home state.

“I wrote it to cure her of her glass-half-empty view of the place,” Riordan said. “I was shoveling snow and the thing flew into my head. And then I just kept teasing out these little breakdown parts where Rhode Island trivia would be sung out. Cracked myself up. Chris cried the first time I played it for her.” (Rhode Island native Tanya Donelly also guests on the song, for bonus points.)

So listen, learn and improvise. Submit YOUR song to Elmore and we’ll submit our arbitrarily-chosen winning songs to those states’ Governors as candidates for new State Song. Submission details next week, but in the meantime, here’s LOVE LOVE’s “Rhode Island,” to get your creative juices flowing:

“Rhode Island,” the first single off the new LOVE LOVE release , captures the band’s whimsical and joyful approach to music.

Their new EP, the Rhode Island eepee, comes out in May and has other songs that are not even about Rhode Island. They’re about love, murder, getting high in Philadelphia, nostalgia and the state of the music industry. Toppin and Riordan are joined by Chris Michaels on drums, Phil Magnifico on bass, Elizabeth Steen on accordion and keyboards, and Makala Noble on backing vocals. A rock band with Psych-country-soul overtones, groove and grace, poignant, sometimes macabre lyrics. And yes, sometimes they’re about Rhode Island.