UPDATE 21 FEB 2009: The album is now available for download from Demonoid. Check out the Download page to grab a copy.

Listen to the Songs or Get the Album

A Conclusion & An Introduction

366 Songs was a product of the year 2008. I recorded an original song each day of the year, eventually producing eighteen hours, nineteen minutes and thirteen seconds of material. The entire product was released as the longest album of all time.

Prior to starting the project, I had limited musical training and had worked primarily in the genre of poetry. I used this project as a way to test my limits, my dedication and improve my writing in an unfamiliar genre.

The album deals in grand emotions and ideas, but as the project requires, the songs constantly move on. Things were always changing and so were my inspirations and desires.

I recorded at 11 o’clock in London Hotels, after waking up in my mother’s house in Florida, in hotels in Colorado and Virginia, in my study abroad dorm room in Glasgow, Scotland and in my first post-college apartment in Pittsburgh, overlooking a funeral home and a highway.

I sang as an undergraduate finishing my last semester, as a lay-about living with my parents, as a baker working for seven dollars an hour and as a young person worried about the future. I sang as myself, a constantly changing person with a strange project that was always shifting perspectives and falling over itself.

And, the project is done, but my desire to write and record has only increased. What the future holds for my music is uncertain, but of course that’s a feeling we’re all familiar with by now.

I should probably offer a few caveats to my claim. A few people have done what I’ve done before. Most famously thesongoftheday.com run by the Beatnik Turtle, who’s members have even written a book about promoting yourself as an independent musician. Some of these projects may even be technically longer if you consider every song in the project, though I haven’t run across one over eighteen hours long.

Regardless of length, I still stand by my claim because my project is not just a collection of songs, it’s an album. 366 songs, is connected through reoccurring situations, emotions and subjects.

The album reflects the way this last year’s events impacted my life. In the fall when the prospects of America’s future seemed at their lowest, my disposition got darker and the songs followed my weltschmerz.

Some reoccurring themes are prescription medication, debt, computers, death, electricity, gasoline, light, rain and numbers, but the album is primarily a struggle between cynicism, my natural disposition, and that oft-repeated concept of hope.

All songs are published under a Creative Commons license, and I hope that other musicians will use the material. All I ask is an attribution credit and an e-mail to let me know.

Contact

markelliotcullen at gmail.com