Q&A: How to Write an Album in 58 Days with Ethan French
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY ELLA ASSELSTINE ☆
ALBUMS CAN TAKE MUSICIANS YEARS TO MAKE—hours and hours spent carefully reworking and refining recordings, deliberating over lyrics, arrangements and melodies. For self-taught Australian producer Ethan French, 58 days—and an unexpectedly successful social media strategy—was all that he needed. French releases his new album ideas of the day - vol.1 this Thursday. The record is an anthology of 25 tracks selected from French’s viral Instagram video series.
In October 2025, French posted the first video in a series he called “chords of the day,” a posting strategy he hoped would simplify the necessary hassle of regular social media promotion. The formula was simple: post a short-form reel featuring a series of piano chords he’d dreamed up that day. By doing so, he would push himself to post consistently while also promoting his music.
Over the next few months, the series would evolve into “idea of the day.” What had started with a few piano notes transformed into French writing and producing a new song sketch each day, one that incorporated drums, bass, guitar, banjo, cello, synth and more. Pretty quickly, the whole “social media shortcut” plan had gone out the window. In retrospect, “...to do something of that frequency, quality is very time-consuming. So, I completely failed at that. Completely failed at that from the get-go,” French says.
On the plus side, fans loved it. Within two months of his initial post, the “idea of the day” series had taken off. French’s new music strategy—although quite a considerable task to take on—had indeed grown his following while promoting his music. He routinely receives tens of thousands of likes per post. His song clips have received praise from industry heavyweights such as Justin Timberlake, Jon Batiste and SZA—French was even sent a message from his personal inspiration, Grammy-award winning composer Jacob Collier.
What had started off as a small, honest attempt at sharing his love for music resulted in French being celebrated by thousands of new followers, deluged with requests for interviews and even offers to produce—“It’s been a long 10 months, to be honest with you,” French says with a laugh.
Luna sat down with French to talk about his new album, musical process and the balancing act of art and promotion.
LUNA: Within the last year, you've posted 58 “ideas of the day.” How did you decide which songs to expand for the album?
FRENCH: I think I've carved a nice strategy out for myself where every time I make something it goes out into the world and I share it. I've had the privilege of being able to put the songs out, sit on them for a while and then work out how I feel about them. I also see how other people feel about them. Our opinions are not always the same. For example, “idea of the day 56” went very crazy, and that really shocked me, so I did an extended version of that. Whereas 42 was really one that I wanted to expand. It’s probably my favourite.
I think sometimes it helps to be able to make something, wait a few months and then look back on it. I look back on all the stuff I have made in the last few months, and I’m like “This one still resonates with me” or “I loved this one at the time, but now not so much.” I think time clarifies those things. Being able to look back on everything in hindsight clarifies what I actually want to do—what I'm attached to and what I'm not.
LUNA: Hopefully the thousands of song requests and tight deadlines are easier to manage with your many skills. You play the guitar, bass, drums, cello, piano, synths and more, not to mention you write and produce it all. What does your musical process look like?
FRENCH: I usually start with chords. The chords could be on piano or guitar. Could even be some key sound or synth. I will start singing over it, and usually my singing will take the form of “Da da da”—you know, mouthing random vowel shapes. Very rarely do I have lyrics written prior to having a musical idea. Usually I just come up with it on the spot and I work out what I'm drawn to that day—what kind of shape the melody lends itself to. In short, usually I have a musical idea and then I eventually start working on lyrics in a collage-y way. I then clarify it over time, and build things up from there.
LUNA: For the first 50 days of the series, you would post an “idea of the day” every day or two. Even for someone with an excess of talent, writing new melodies and lyrics that often couldn't have been an easy task. Do you think you work better with a time limit? With less time to fixate on small details?
FRENCH: Sometimes I do. Now the “ideas of the day” thing has expanded a bit and it's not literally daily. But when it was, I think it was really fruitful for me. And yeah, I do think part of that was that I couldn't obsess over anything in particular. I'm very detail oriented—I can spend hours just trying to get a take right, or trying to play something in the exact right way. When you have to do it in a day, and you know you have to do something tomorrow as well, you just have to go “Okay, good enough.”
I just had to create more output, my attachment to any given thing was less intense. I wasn't trying to be like, “Look with this one, I gotta impress people”—not in the same way that you would if you're working on the same thing for six months. Especially when I was growing up, songs felt like, “Oh, it's got to show everything I know” because as someone who loves to learn, and is always acquiring new skills, you want to be able to show that off. But when you're doing something every day, you can let it be what it is and just let it go. I think that was really useful for me.
LUNA: On Day 50 of the series, you took a two-month break. You started this series as a way to post on social media “without it taking too much of your day.” I can imagine now, 800k followers later, that social media is a big part of your life and growing career. How do you balance art and promotion?
FRENCH: I think that I struck a lucky balance making and promoting music, in the sense that my content is not unrelated to my creation, right? For some people it's like, “Here's what I'm having for lunch” or “Here's my music-related content and I'm dancing” or whatever. For me, I'm literally making something and going “Here's the thing I made,” so there's not a huge disconnect between what I'm sharing on social media and my actual creative process. I feel really lucky to have found an audience doing that. It's not that radical of an idea for someone who writes songs and creates stuff to just be like, “Well, what if I just share it?”
At times, of course, it’s hard to balance the time it takes for everything. Especially with stuff behind the scenes—getting releases ready and making sure the videos are done. And I'm the type of person who makes things more and more complicated for myself, so now I have little animations I draw on top of all the videos, and I do all those at the same time as I'm trying to work on full versions of songs and new ideas. There's also all the other stuff that inevitably comes along with this. My inbox and DMs are overwhelmingly full. It's all really amazing, but it’s difficult to balance—wearing so many hats. I mix my music, master and produce it and then I do the recording and video editing for all of it. It’s a lot to manage sometimes.
LUNA: How far do you think the “idea of the day” concept can develop? Once you release this anthology album, will the series continue, or will a new one begin?
FRENCH: “ideas of the day” will continue. It will change shape, though—and that's already started to happen. After Day 50, every time I post something it becomes a little less like an “idea of the day.” It's like, “Are these ‘ideas of the day’ anymore or are these just songs now?” But it's a cool framing because it's numbered and if people like something, they can go back and find it. I see it getting more…I wouldn't say polished—because I think the candidness of it is a huge part of what I like about it—but I also want to do a more traditional debut album in the near future, so we'll see how all that works. I've never been a big planner. I think that's evident in this project, given that I was just gonna do four hours a day, and then all of a sudden I've got this crazy series that's the biggest thing I've ever done by accident, essentially.
I’m going to continue it, but we'll see how and at what capacity. It also depends on how much production I will be doing for other artists. For a creative person, working out the ratios between everything that I do is an ongoing adjustment. It always will be, I think.
LUNA: Are you equally interested in producing others' music as much as creating your own? Especially now that you have so many people reaching out!
FRENCH: Yeah, totally. I just want to be involved with stuff that I like—whether it's my own or not. I don't really mind, as long as I feel like I'm contributing in a meaningful way. I've done some producing for others in the past but not on this kind of scale. I'm going to LA in October, and I'm going to meet up with some cool people. We'll see what comes out of that and how much I enjoy it. I've never even been to the States so it'll be a whole new world for me. I think it'll be really exciting.
LUNA: Can we get any spoilers about what you may be doing?
FRENCH: Just writing and producing. I don't want to announce anything that might not happen. But, transparently, it's pretty crazy!
