Download Album (50.5 meg zip file)

Teenage Friday was written during the month of February 2008 for the RPM Challenge (website). There is no prize for this challenge. It's just a battle with yourself - an excuse to work hard to a deadline. It was a very rewarding month, and I'm very happy with what happened. A blog of my RPM experience can be found here.

My view of the world changed a lot in 2007. I went through my 'early life crisis', realised that I was naive about a lot of things, and that western society is moving along a slow downward spiral towards destruction. My songwriting reflected this, and touched upon darker topics such as fear, control, manipulation, power etc. I wanted to change the world by teaching people to follow their dreams, take charge of their lives, and think for themselves. After writing an album or so of material on this subject (tentatively titled Heresy), I felt that I couldn't go on without repeating myself. My message was clear, and needed no more explanation.

But as I continued writing music, I found myself returning to these darker topics again and again. I didn't want to keep saying the same thing over and over though. I'm a happy person, generally speaking, and wanted to inject some fun back into my music. I came across the idea of being a teenager and going out on a friday night partying. Almost everything that happens in life can find an analogy with events that occur on teenage fridays. Additionally, teenagers are at the point in their lives where they see everything as binary - good and bad, right and wrong, friend and enemy. They don't yet have enough wisdom to know that they don't know everything. I thought that Teenage Friday would provide plenty of useful metaphors and melodrama to make an album fun and interesting, whilst still getting my message across.

And right I was. I had a lot of fun making the album, and I avoided treading over the same ground as my previous work. I had a very productive month, and actually ended up with way more ideas than I could possibly use on one album. So my next task is to finish Teenage Friday Part II. I'm looking forward to it a great deal. I won't likely put the same month long restriction on the production time, but I aim to finish it with relative haste. When it's done I'll upload it, so keep an eye out.

I hope you enjoy the album. If you would like to comment on it, or would like any more information, I'd love to hear from you, so send me an email.