Tiger of the Week: Rick Hamlin ’77 Commemorates a Milestone with Songs

Rick Hamlin ’77 turned 60 this year and is celebrating the occasion with a creative twist: Since May 22, Hamlin has recorded himself singing one song each day on his phone and has been posting the videos on social media. Now on day 41, Hamlin plans to continue until he reaches day 60, and even came up with his own hashtag for the project – #60SongsIn60Days.

“I’ve always had lots of songs spinning around in my head, and often a song is linked to a place,” said Hamlin, who began singing when he was a child and was a member of the Glee Club, the Footnotes, and Triangle Club while at Princeton.

Each of Hamlin’s videos is unique because he sings each song in a different location. Most of them are recorded in Manhattan, where he lives and works, and backdrops range from the George Washington Bridge to Times Square to Wall Street. His dedication to the project is unfaltering — Hamlin continued to post songs regularly when his family took a trip to Hungary and Austria mid-June, where he sang “lots of Sound of Music.”

Despite the vast distances he has traveled to record his videos, Hamlin doesn’t necessarily know what song he’ll be singing or where he’ll be performing when he wakes up each morning. “I’ll check the lyrics beforehand, but that’s all the planning I do,” he said.

Hamlin said he often chooses the song based on geographical cues, depending on where he happens to be during the day, but he also has sung special songs relating to holidays or weather conditions. He did a rendition of “Mad Dogs and Englishmen” by Noël Coward during a heat wave in New York last week.

Surprisingly, Hamlin said his favorite place to sing was not in front of any of the churches or castles he visited in Europe, but is instead in a location much closer to home.

“The subway tunnels — I love the acoustics,” he said. “But I have to time [the recording] before a train comes, because once it pulls in, its too much noise. But it’s worth it, you get really nice acoustics.”

Before the 60 days are up, Hamlin plans to tap into his Princeton roots by singing “East of the Sun (and West of the Moon)” by Brooks Bowman ’36 and “Goin’ Back to Nassau Hall.”

“But I’m still taking requests!” he said.

 WATCH: A video from Hamlin’s #60SongsIn60Days (Cole Porter’s “At Long Last Love”)

To watch more videos, visit https://www.facebook.com/RickHamlinPrays.