In the past I’ve considered myself to be a musician. Even further back in time I considered myself a songwriter. The problem is, even back then, I wrote very, very, few songs and now it’s been a decade since I wrote almost anything. I’ve also completely fallen out of actually playing instruments and my singing voice has deteriorated completely due to it not being used. The only recording and mixing I’ve done in a long time has been as part of various short projects at work. I just seem unable to actually create anything for my own sake, whether just for the pleasure of doing it or for the sense of validation when showing it to other people.

This is something I really want to change. I want to be able to write and record things and to play music. I can come up with multiple reasons why I don’t but in the end most of them are probably excuses and the truth is most likely that my problems boils down to striving for perfection. I want the things I create to be perfect and I know that they won’t be. Hence, I don’t finish things because if I don’t finish it, it can’t be criticized by either myself or somebody else and therefore it cannot be deemed as imperfect.

Again, this needs to change. I need to get out of this mindset and realize, truly internalize, that one finished shitty project is a thousand times better than any amount of works in progress that one day, someday, eventually, maybe will become perfect. I need to push myself into something creative and to decide that it needs to be finished, even if the result is not what I initially wanted it to be. These thoughts have probably been swirling in my mind for a long time but they got much more focused a couple of weeks ago when I watched Yahtzee Croshaw’s Dev Diary on YouTube. In it, and in a lot of his other endeavors, he is very clear about the importance of actually creating and finishing creations if you want to be a creative person. It seems so obvious but hearing him hammer it home and following he’s journey to create twelve video games in twelve months, ultimate quality be damned, lit the spark in me to do something similar.

Now, I’m not going to be developing video games. I’m also not going to try to write 100 songs in 100 days or something similar. What I am going to do is actually embark on a project that I’ve been toying with in my head for way too long. Which brings me to the title of this venture, Achtung Perfection.

Achtung as in U2’s 1991 album ”Achtung Baby”, my absolute favorite U2 album, and one of the greatest rock album ever in my opinion. My project, Achtung Perfection, is me making my own versions of all the songs on ”Achtung Baby”, one song every month. For an album with twelve songs, that means a year long project. Some of those songs will probably have an arrangement and a production similar to the original while some might be quite different. Some will borrow ideas from exiting cover versions.

The idea is not to make a perfect version om ”Achtung Baby”. That is something that I can’t do, simply because a perfect version already exists; the actual album itself. The idea is me being aware of, avoiding, (”achtung” in German means ”attention”, ”watch out”, etc.) attempts at perfectionism. I will make one song each month. Each song doesn’t need to be perfect. Each song doesn’t even need to be good, but each song needs to be finished at the end of each month.

Here’s how it’s going to work

At the end of each month for the next year, at the very latest the last day of each month, I will release a finished recording of a song from Achtung Baby, in the order they appear on the album. I am allowed to think about upcoming songs, but I am not allowed to do any recordings for an upcoming months song before that month starts and the previous months song is finished and published. Now, published can be a relative term and the exact definition here might vary. At the very least, I will put up an mp3 file here on my blog. Hopefully I will manage to get any licensing issues solved (I do have an idea for that) and be able to put them up on YouTube and maybe Spotify or Apple Music or something similar without having them taken down for copyrights violations but that is something that I’ll work on during the project and not worry about now.

Also, at around the half point of each month I will publish a blog post or a YouTube video or something reflecting back on last months song and talking a bit about the current months song, This doesn’t have a set release date but the 15th of each month seems like a good target to aim for.

The first month for the project is August 2024, meaning the project has started and I’ve started recording my version of Zoo Station. When I’m writing these words I don’t yet know for certain if they are going to be published as a piece of text or as narration on a video. If it turns out you are getting these words from a video, you will likely hear some drones in the background that is part of my Zoo Station version. For those of you familiar with Nine Inch Nails version of Zoo Station, this might sound similar to that and that is not an accident. I really like Nine Inch Nails’ take of the song and my idea is to fuse that and the original, flying from one version into the other.

When I started writing this text I had recorded the drones and some guitar and bass. Between the first draft of the text and the publishing of it I’ve also recorded vocals. I’m using a combination of my modular synth and a Korg Volca Modular for the drones. They are not the most spectacular or original drones in the world but I think they will get the job done. The guitars are more or less scratch tracks, but I am well aware that I am halfway through the month now so I need to be prepared to make some tough decisions and keep some things that were meant to be re-recorded so that I actually finish on time.

Will it work? Will it be any good? I don’t know at the moment, but both I and the world (ha) will be able to know on August the 31st at the latest.

I’m looking forward to this project, while also being very nervous . What if all twelve songs turn out to be crap? What if this finally reveals my imposter syndrome to be well founded? Maybe I don’t know what I’m doing!

Or maybe I do. Maybe this will be fun and rewarding. Achtung Perfection