How long is the typical album, maybe 10 or 15 songs? How about 199 songs? Not nine, or 19 songs but in fact 199 songs. The album titled “One Wayne G” was released on April 21st by Mac DeMarco. It has a run time of just under nine hours and is widely considered the longest studio album or mixtape ever to be released. 

DeMarco is not a very well known artist and many have never listened to any of his music. Because of this, the media and public perception around this album is extremely bizarre. Some see it as a publicity stunt to grow the artist’s name, or an excuse to just release unfinished songs. While others view it as an infinitive concept album that could revolutionize the industry. 

All of the song titles consist of numbers that are meant to represent the date that the track was recorded. Out of the 199 songs, only about 17 actually contain any real lyrics. The rest are almost entirely instrumental.

This reliance on instrumental is a testament to DeMarco’s skills as a multi-instrumentalist. This becomes even more true when considering he wrote and produced all of the 199 tracks. This is a feat that is extremely uncommon in the music industry which makes this even more impressive considering the length of the album. DeMarco handled every single detail, even down to the distribution of the album which is done through his own label. 

Now for the actual album itself the name “One Wayne G” is an ode to the all-time great hockey player Wayne Gretzky who just like DeMarco is Canadian. Gretzky is likely someone who DeMarco looked up to in his youth. 

While a majority of the songs are just instrumental, the songs that include lyrics focus on DeMarco expressing his identity and questioning the relationships in his life. These songs are good but nothing special, slow paced folk and R&B tracks that are easy to listen to. 

As for the instrumental songs, they are good with a wide variety of styles and tempo riddled throughout the album however some of the songs are extremely similar. This is unsurprising considering the length of the album. 

While not anything special, a majority of the songs are good and DeMarco’s talent on instruments shines through. However, almost all of these tracks are nothing more than relaxing music to listen to while doing work, but some might consider it just glorified elevator music. 

While this album isn’t terrible by any standards, it is just somewhat strange. It doesn’t feel like an actual album. It feels like DeMarco woke up one day and decided to upload one of his hard drives with music onto streaming services. Because of this the album will likely just end up being lost to time as a failed experiment by a little known artist.