Up The Road a Little Bit - Music For Ordinary Lives

By Michael Forty

Some songs are written to entertain. Some are written to impress. These were written simply to remember.

Up the Road a Little Bit - Music Without Ego is a collection of songs about ordinary lives - the people we meet, the places we leave behind, the loves we carry with us and the moments that somehow remain when almost everything else has gone.

Michael Forty writes about childhood and old age, families and strangers, working lives, friendship, faith, heartbreak, humour and loss. Some stories are his own. Others belong to people he has known, people he has imagined, or simply characters who appeared somewhere along the road and refused to disappear.

Behind the songs is another story: what happens when a lifelong love of words and music encounters artificial intelligence.

Rather than replacing the human element, technology becomes an instrument - a way for someone without the conventional voice, musicians or recording studio to hear an idea become music. The machine can provide extraordinary possibilities, but the memories, choices, judgement and emotion still have to come from somewhere.

That is the idea behind Music Without Ego.

Not music created to prove who can sing the highest, play the fastest or attract the biggest audience, but music created because there was something worth saying.

These pages move between yesterday and today, England and Ireland, childhood and old age, laughter and grief, doubt and faith. At their heart is something much simpler: people.

Because eventually every road becomes a collection of memories.

And perhaps, somewhere up the road a little bit, one of these songs belongs to you.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0HG4KLPVF
• ISBN13: 9798194005727
• Release Date: August 2026
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 393 Pages
• Weight: 1.16 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.9" x 6.0"