Meet the UF students behind the reply-all reaction masterpiece “Dear James Martin”

As their inboxes filled up with replies to an accidental mass email, University of Florida students Elizabeth Gerace and Jessica Bailes got an idea: Turn the situation into a song.

“Last night I called Elizabeth just to chat and the first thing we started talking about was the email thing,” Bailes said.

(Didn’t get the emails? Lucky you. Here’s a primer.)

Gerace told her she was thinking about setting the whole debacle to music. They gathered the email and replies into a Google doc, set it to music with Gerace singing and playing ukulele, and two and a half hours later, finished the song.

Gerace, an English major minoring in ethnomusicology, and Bailes, who is double majoring in English and organ performance with a minor in education, perform in the UF Women’s Chorale and in the Catholic Gators praise band, Resound. When performance opportunities grew scarce due to the pandemic, they started creating songs to amuse their friends. This one traveled wider than their group chat, though.

“Something like this to bring us all together is probably exactly what we needed,” Gerace said. “Just finding the joy in the things that you're not really enjoying and finding the small things that we can all laugh at together.”

Gerace and Bailes will be roommates this Fall and plan on teaming up for more collaborations.

Alisson Clark August 11, 2020