Back in 2009, I released my first full-length album, Love Holds On, a collection of original songs written over a period of approximately thirteen years. Since then, I have released ten digital singles, nine of those with original songs and one an original arrangement of a classic hymn, and another full length album with original arrangements of classic Christmas carols.
Through all that time, I’ve had several ideas for additional albums of original material. However, between the time pressures of the day job I’ve had since late 2012 and various life events, alongside trying to get out making music in public as frequently as I can, I’ve never quite gotten as far as making any concrete plans for a new album project. Over the last few months, though, I’ve been taking a closer look at my ideas with a mind to figuring out what might be doable in light of current time pressures, while also delivering something I feel is worth putting out there.
Mind you, I’ve had similar thoughts in the past, getting as far as having multiple tentative album playlists with already-recorded tracks, as well as detailed notes on what would be needed to get from where things stood at that point to where I would deem them worthy of release. Those notes also included administrative considerations, such as licensing needs for co-written songs. Each time, though, it would feel like having a huge plate of vegetables placed in front of me and having to figure out where to start when what I was really craving was a pizza. And some other project would come along and deflect any further thoughts until it felt like I needed to start over the next time I revisited the thoughts.
In this latest round, though, I decided it was time to “go public” (at least to the extent anyone reads what I put out there) with intentions and plans as they develop. The idea has two parts. The first part is the notion that talking about intentions and plans in public makes it a lot harder to let things slide. The second part is that talking about such intentions and, especially, plans in public forces me to get more concrete in my planning. I mean it’s hard to write about fuzzy plans, right?
With that in mind, this blog entry will serve as an announcement of my intention to record and release a full-length album of original pop-flavored songs. For now, I am going to be non-committal on potential release dates beyond saying I hope to target the soonest date possible, and that is not likely to fall in the third quarter of this year. I also will go so far as to say I would hope the date would not be later than the end of the first half of 2016.
I am nowhere near ready to disclose a tentative track list since there are both licensing and recording considerations that will come into play. However, today I will disclose the working (and highly likely) title for the album, including letting you hear the planned title song, “In and Out of Love Again”. Go ahead, have a listen.
I will also divulge the reason for the selection of this title track, which relates to the concept I have in mind for the album. When I looked over the list of recorded and not-yet-recorded songs I felt would be a good fit for a pop album, I realized most, if not all, the songs were either love songs, unrequited love songs, or breakup songs. That probably shouldn’t have been surprising as I am somewhat of a romantic at heart, and only a small portion of my overall song catalog is comprised of songs that don’t relate to love in some way. In this case, though, there seemed to be more polar extremes, so the opposites of “in” and “out” seemed to fit perfectly.
So there you have it, my “announcement of intent” to put out a pop album, with songs about falling in and out of love, sometime between now and the end of June 2016. I will also commit to posting updates periodically as additional concrete developments, such as finalizing additional song selections, occur.