Thing a Week
album by Jonathan Coulton

Thing a Week (sometimes as Thing-a-Week) is a series of albums released by the American musician Jonathan Coulton in 2006. He compiled these albums from his weekly podcast, in which he challenged himself to write, record, and produce a new song within a week, every week, for an entire year. He wanted to prove that he was capable of consistently meeting a deadline.
The folk rock series was recorded at Coulton's home in Brooklyn after he quit his computer programming job to spend more time with his wife and baby daughter. His podcast picked up many thousands of followers who praised the few novelty songs he posted before 2006, inspiring him to remake himself as an online musician.
After Thing a Week, Coulton wrote "Still Alive" for the video game Portal in 2007. He sang his songs in concert, and a 2008 performance was captured on video to become the 2009 DVD Best. Concert. Ever. Many of the songs came from the Thing a Week series.
The public source identifies “Thing a Week” as album by Jonathan Coulton. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Thing, Week and album.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7784328. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009.
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This entry incorporates text from “Thing a Week” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.