In its original incarnation, The Aural Times was a musical newspaper. Published three times a week under the fictional eponym of Josh Millard, Editor-in-Chief, the site presented contemporary news stories in song form, with additional commentary and frequent updates on events in a fictional office staffed by lazy, unpaid fictional interns. The paper’s motto: We Sing the News So You Don’t Have To.

The site ran regularly from February through September of 2006, after which real life got busy and Josh pretty much burnt out on all the lousy news in the world. Despite a few scattered updates (including a cliffhanger promise to spring back into action) the site was effectively dead as of October, 2006.

In that time, Josh wrote and published approximately 70 original songs for the site, spanning politics, sports, pop culture, and everything from international news on down to the headlines from the hometown of The Aural Times, Portland, OR.

After an interminable hiatus, Josh finally sat down and redesigned the site to function as a one-stop-shopping outlet for his ongoing musical output–not exactly the news in song, granted, but still singing so you don’t have to.

All of the original songs–and their corresponding commentary–are available through the site archives; if you’d like to listen to the whole catalog at a go (a bit more than an hour of music total, owing to the short average running time of the compositions), you can do so with the jukebox below.