How a 40-Year Friendship Became a Song

When Angela told us about her best friend Jennie, she started with a simple sentence: "She's more than my best friend. She's family."

After almost forty years of friendship, Angela wanted to give Jennie something that reflected not just the big moments, but the thousands of little ones that had shaped their lives together.

Even the song's title, Bev & Joy (Forty Years of Us), came from one of their inside jokes. Jennie's middle name is Beverley (a name she happens to hate), while Angela's is Joy. Somewhere along the way, the two became "Bev and Joy," and it felt like the perfect name for a song built around almost forty years of friendship, laughter and stories that belong only to them.

As we read through Angela's stories, we found ourselves smiling almost immediately. There were the daily phone calls that somehow turned into hours. The kind of conversations that start with one story, drift into ten more, and often end in fits of laughter. There were shopping trips filled with bargains that would eventually find their way into cupboards for "someday," and memories of trying on Christmas tree skirts in Target while pretending to be in a fashion parade.

Then there were the stories that only lifelong friends could tell. Like the time Jennie accidentally mounted a curb after a birthday lunch and somehow ended up on a retaining wall, earning herself the nickname "Evel Knievel." Or the day the pair attended what they thought would be a life-changing event, only to find themselves trapped in a very intense gathering where they couldn't stop laughing at the worst possible moment.

Those memories became lyrics, but the song wasn't really about shopping trips, retaining walls or Christmas skirts. It was about the person Angela sees when she thinks of Jennie.

A woman she described as kind, loyal, thoughtful and giving. Someone who always puts the people she loves first. Someone with incredible intuition who sees things in people that others miss. Someone who worries deeply because she cares deeply.

That's why lyrics like "Nothing's ever too much when it comes to love" and "You read me better than I read myself" became such important parts of the song. They were written to reflect the way Angela spoke about her friend, not to be poetic. 

As the song came together, one message kept appearing again and again. It wasn't just in the funny stories, the inside jokes or even the memories. It was in the way Angela talked about life with Jennie in it.

After forty years of friendship, countless laughs, shared experiences and unwavering support, Angela wanted Jennie to know one simple thing:

"I'd be lost without you."

And that's exactly why we do what we do at Verse Things First. Every song starts with a story. The memories, the quirks, the inside jokes and the people who matter most.

We simply turn them into music.