A grayscale headshot of a man with long hair and a short beard, wearing glasses, looking directly at the viewer while covering his left eye with the fretboard of a guitar held vertically in his right hand.
Grayscale image of an empty shelf mounted on a dark wall, with a beam of light cast from above left, barely touching the left edge of the shelf. Translucent, semi-blurred handwriting reads “The future isn’t what it used to be.” and “Tye Newton”
A reintroduction and a trailer for my debut album
Feb 17, 2026

Hello again, kind humans. It's been a minute.

I feel most alive making songs from my human experience, and it’s good to be back in touch with that part of myself.

It’s been around a decade since I set myself to making and sharing songs of my own, on my own. Old friends will remember that I sang through eight years of my youth in a loud rock band. Since that passion project quietly ended, I’ve been patiently eking out a more personal songcraft.

The future isn't what it used to be.

It’s hard to express my mix of elation and relief to finally complete and release a collection of my own for the first time: The future isn't what it used to be.

It's almost here—I'll have more to say about it soon—but in the meantime, I made this 3-minute trailer for you.

An empty shelf mounted on a dark wall, with a beam of cool light cast from above left, barely touching the left edge of the shelf. A combination of text and translucent, semi-blurred handwriting reads “Album trailer: The future isn’t what it used to be. In 3 minutes” and “Tye Newton”

These songs are not new.

Yet it does make sense that it’s taken this long. While earning a living, I’ve acquired many new hats and skills in order to overcome each challenge on my long, winding path to here. 

  • I’ve learned to work around a chronic voice condition that’s gradually eroded what once came naturally and still feels central to my identity. 
  • With help from dear friends and family, counselors, music, and even social dance, I've healed some deep heartache of many kinds. For this, songcraft was always an essential therapeutic tool, and so it remains. 
  • I’ve developed my modest ability with guitar and keyboard to what once seemed personally out of reach. 
  • To fill instrumental gaps, I've added specialized software instruments and my own system for sampling found sounds musically. 
  • Most fundamentally, I’ve learned to record, edit, program, arrange, process, mix, and produce every aspect of my songs in a fluid workflow that wouldn’t be possible with a traditional recording studio approach. (For this, I owe a great debt of gratitude to educators and peers in this space—most of all my brother, Justin.) 
  • I’m now relearning how to share with the world what I’m doing—and I hope some of you will connect with me along the way. I'll be glad to know if any these songs come to mean something to you. 

There will be more to come, too.

The future isn't what it used to be. is just the first cohesive set out of over three albums' worth of material I've been working through—several songs already recorded: a few time-machine entries from years before The Future… as well as many more recent chapters. 

To me a special part of this process is connecting stories that resonate in music, so I’m choosing to focus on comprehensive albums like this one. Perhaps there may be a few singles along the way to each.

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