O'Day also collaborated with Tatsuro Yamashita on a series of popular songs in Japan including "Your Eyes", "Magic Ways", "Christmas Eve" and "Fragile" (which rapper Tyler, the Creator interpolated in "Gone, Gone / Thank You").

Jeannette wrote for the Star News, as well as being a schoolteacher in Thermal, California, and other schools in the Coachella Valley.

At Coachella Valley Union High School, after participating in a band called The Imperials, he started his own rock'n'roll band, The Shoves, with heavy influences from Jerry Lee Lewis, Ray Charles, Little Richard, Elvis Presley, and Fats Domino, who appeared on KABC-TV/Los Angeles' Hub Talent Show on August 25, 1958.

A third band, The Renés (O'Day, Oscar Arias, Eddie Arias, Ernie Gurrola, Sal Velasquez, Johnny Alvarez and Don Duarte), played Latin and Mexican standards mixed with rock and roll tunes and gave him the opportunity to write his own songs.

[7] Around 1965, O'Day was in the band Alan & Bob & Denny, a show group that did pop songs and some comedy.

They played nightclubs in the Pasadena and Hollywood area, and were on The Ed Sullivan Show on November 14, 1965, as the backup band for singer-actress-comedian Virginia O'Brien.

In a 2006 article, O'Day said the song took three months to write; originally, it was loosely based on the character in the Beatles' "Lady Madonna".

[6] O'Day also thought of his own childhood; an only child who was often ill, many of his days were spent in bed with a radio to keep him company.

When an evil-minded neighbor tries to enter her room to take advantage of the girl, he is instead drawn into her reality, literally shrinking him down into her radio, "never to be found."

Co-produced by Alan O'Day and Ken Kaufman featuring country music recording artist Paul Scott, including two new original songs co-written by O'Day: "Uh-Uh (What She Wants)," and an unofficial NASCAR national anthem titled "NASCAR CRAZY".

In 1983, O'Day met San Francisco's singer-songwriter Janis Liebhart, with whom he co-wrote a children's song for a new Saturday morning animated TV show, Jim Henson's Muppet Babies.

The collaboration continued after Muppet Babies, as O'Day and Liebhart co-wrote for other children-focused projects, including National Geographic's Really Wild Animals, a series of videos which they helped produce and on which they also sang.