A note on Every Song I've Ever Written

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From 1985 to 2004, PME-ART co-artistic director Jacob Wren wrote songs. Lots and lots of songs. Then he completely stopped. At the time not very many people heard them. In a way, because hardly anyone heard them, we might say that these songs don’t yet exist. Every Song I’ve Ever Written is a project about memory, history, things that may or may not exist, songwriting, the internet and pop culture.


Every Song I’ve Ever Written is a project with four parts:

1) A website (www.everysongiveeverwritten.com) on which you can listen to, and download, all the songs Jacob wrote between 1985 to 2004. You can also record your own versions, send them to us, and we will post them on the site.

2) Karaoké Nights where anyone can sing one of the songs Karaoké-style, with Jacob playing guitar behind them.

3) Solo Performances in which Jacob will perform all of the songs in chronological order (it takes about five hours.) When put all together these songs form a picture not just of Jacob’s life but also of the decades during which they were written.

4) Band Nights where five local bands (in different cities: Düsseldorf, Montreal, Mannheim, Helsinki, Malmö, etc.) will perform one song each. After they perform the song there will be an interview in which Jacob asks the band what it was like to cover the song and the band can ask Jacob what it was like to write it.


We are not doing this because we think these are the best songs ever (we hope at least a few of them are good.) We are doing this because hardly anyone heard them at the time, and we are wondering if there is some new, strange way to bring them out into the world. In doing so we hope to raise a few questions about what songs mean on the internet, about what songwriting is actually like today, and also take a sidelong glance back at the recent past.


(P.S. On the site, the songs are listed in chronological order starting when Jacob was 14, so some of the best songs are probably closer to the middle or end of the list.)



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