THE DECISION

Well………………{long, pregnant pause},{drum roll}

I have decided to release an album.

There. I said it.

This has been bouncing around in my head for a while now. I’ve gone back and forth on it more than once. In fact, I’ve spent a fair amount of time asking myself the very practical question: Why?

Why put out an album in a world where releasing singles is so much easier?

Why spend the time organizing it, sequencing it, packaging it, making artwork for it, and generally creating more work for myself when I could just keep releasing songs one at a time?

I have yet to come up with a particularly compelling business case. But then again, I’ve never been very good at making music based on compelling business cases.

I like albums.

I like the idea of a collection of songs becoming something more than a collection of songs. I like giving them an order and letting one song bump into the next. I like the artwork. I like the feeling that these various pieces of music, which may have been created at completely different times and for completely different reasons, somehow belong together.

So I’m going to do it.

And there is something else I've been thinking about.

I've spent a lot of time making these songs. Some came easily. Some didn't. Some started as little scraps of an idea and somehow turned into something I never expected. Others wandered around in my head for a long time before I finally figured out what they wanted to be.

Then I released them.

One by one, they went out into the world.

And now I find myself wanting to gather them back up.

Not because they need fixing.

Not because an album somehow makes them more important.

I think I just want to see what they look like together. Maybe there was never some grand master plan behind all of this. I certainly didn't have one. But maybe there was a plan of sorts. Not an ego plan. Not some carefully engineered career strategy. Something quieter. Something that happened while I wasn't paying attention. The songs kept showing up. I kept making them.

And here we are.

So, yes. I am making an album.

There is one tiny complication, however.

You have already heard every song on it.

Yep.

Every single one.