There’s something brutally perfect about a three-minute rock song.
No wasted space. No meandering intro that takes forty-five seconds to “build atmosphere.” Just plug in, turn up, and detonate. Three minutes to say everything that matters, then get out before you overstay your welcome.
My new single “Time Is A Weapon” clocks in at 3:30âjust thirty seconds past the classic three-minute mark. And you know what? Those extra thirty seconds? They earned their place. Every single one of them.
The Tyranny of Choice vs. The Power of Limits
Here’s the weird thing about unlimited creative freedom: it’s paralyzing.
Give a songwriter infinite time and infinite tracks, and they’ll second-guess themselves into oblivion. They’ll add another guitar layer. Another vocal harmony. Another bridge that “really ties the room together.” Before you know it, you’ve got a six-minute epic that says less than a two-minute punk song.
But force yourself into three minutes? Suddenly every second counts. Every word has to earn its place. You can’t hide behind production tricks or lengthy instrumental passages. You have to mean it.
That’s what happened with “Time Is A Weapon.” The song is about time as this impartial, relentless executionerâa force that doesn’t care about your plans, your dreams, or your desperate bargaining. It strips away everything until there’s nothing left but the void. Heavy stuff, right?
But I didn’t have the luxury of drowning that message in reverb and contemplative guitar solos. I had three minutes to capture the suffocating inevitability of our mortality. So every chord had to hit like a fist. Every lyric had to land like a diagnosis you weren’t ready to hear.
The constraint became the weapon itself.
Breaking the Rule (Just a Little)
Okay, full disclosure: “Time Is A Weapon” actually runs 3:30. Thirty seconds over the “rule.”
But here’s the thingâthose thirty seconds aren’t filler. They’re not some self-indulgent outro that fades into oblivion. They’re the moment where the song stops warning you about time’s inevitability and just shows you. The moment where the music itself becomes the executioner.
Sometimes you need that extra half-minute to let the truth sink in. To let the silence creep in at the edges. To give the listener space to feel the weight of what you just said.
The rule isn’t “never go past three minutes.” The rule is “every second has to matter.” And in “Time Is A Weapon,” all 210 seconds do.
Why Rock and Roll Perfected the Format
Rock and roll didn’t invent the three-minute song, but it weaponized it.
Think about it: “Blitzkrieg Bop” by The Ramones is 2:12. “Anarchy in the U.K.” by the Sex Pistols is 3:31. “Smells Like Teen Spirit” is 5:01, sure, but it feels like three minutes of pure adrenaline with a couple extra punches thrown in.
These songs understood something fundamental: rock is about immediacy. It’s the sound of right nowâurgent, raw, unfiltered. You don’t have time to pontificate when the world’s on fire. You plug in, you scream the truth, and you’re done before anyone can tell you to turn it down.
Modern music has largely abandoned this. Streaming algorithms favor longer songs (more plays = more money), so everything’s stretched to four, five, six minutes. Intros that take forever. Outros that refuse to end. It’s exhausting.
But there’s a reason classic rock still dominates. Those three-minute explosions of sound and fury? They don’t waste your time. They respect it. Ironically, by being shorter, they last longer.
The Clock Is Always Ticking
Writing “Time Is A Weapon” forced me to confront something I usually avoid: my own mortality.
Time is a weapon. It’s ticking away right now as you read this. Every second that passes is gone forever, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it. Time doesn’t negotiate. It doesn’t care about your five-year plan or your bucket list. It just keeps moving, relentless and indifferent, until suddenly you’re out.
That realization could be depressing. And honestly, some days it is.
But it’s also liberating. If time’s going to kill me anyway, I might as well make the most of the time I’ve got. I might as well write songs that matter, even if they’re only three minutes long. Especially if they’re only three minutes long.
Because here’s the thing: you don’t need an hour to change someone’s life. You just need three minutes of truth.
The Revolution Will Be Brief (But Not Rushed)
“Time Is A Weapon” drops January 16, 2026. Three and a half minutes of guitars that bite, drums that pound like a death march, and lyrics that don’t apologize for staring into the void.
I’m not trying to create background music for your commute. I’m trying to shake you awake, remind you that the clock’s ticking, and maybeâjust maybeâinspire you to do something meaningful with whatever time you’ve got left.
Three and a half minutes. That’s all I need.
That’s all any of us really have anyway.
Pre-save “Time Is A Weapon” now and join the revolution. Because time waits for no oneâbut a great rock song? That’s forever.


