Frog For Sale - Album Release, Thoughts, and a short Frog Q&A!
Frognation is always kicking.
Hi everybody, it's been a while since I've posted here. I ought to reintroduce myself. I am Ayden, and I started this blog as just an outlet for my hype during THE COUNT rollout. Looking back, I wasn't great at saying much, so hopefully I'm better now. I'm a big Frog fan, and thought it would be funny, and also really cool if there existed a blog specifically for Frog. I had ambitions to start a Frog archive, that's why it's called that, but that doesn't really make sense anymore I guess.
Frog For Sale is releasing April 17th, 2026! Preorder it on Bandcamp.
Life happens. But despite everything, I'll still be fumbling together my thoughts on what the brothers at Frog put out. Since GROG, they have been very, very frequently putting out new albums. Daniel Bateman has held up on his insane promise to continue the saga that started just over a year ago in February 2025 with 1000 Variations on the Same Song. Frog For Sale, their latest album, is the third album in that project. This album continues the theme, though dropping the "VAR." naming scheme in favor of a more traditional track list. The twelve songs take inspiration from the works of Paul McCartney and Buddy Holly, according to the description.
Apparently, you can throw emails and they work. I got to listen to this album a month early which is honestly the coolest thing I've ever done. The variation (pun intended) in the production of this album is a lot more layered and generous compared to the last two projects. The lead single, Je Ne Sais Pas, is led by piano, but as the chorus progresses, acoustics can be heard in the mix as well as some creative percussion in there. The chorus goes crazy, it fucks. I've been amazed by both the writing of this album which for me beats their best since 2019, Count Bateman. Frog For Sale is a lovable new addition to the variations, making its own sound and personality, but still showing glimmers of the unapologetic ego shown in THE COUNT.
Photo taken by Collin Heroux. Goes hard, so I'm including it.
As I did with THE COUNT a couple months ago (which unfortunately was never properly published), I'm gonna list my thoughts on the album on a track by track list. Maybe I'll add a favorite lyric, detail, or what not:
Bad Time To Fall In Love Again - Feels like a lost b-side from Count Bateman, even featuring a prominent glockenspiel that old Frog used very frequently.
Best Buy - Led by a synth and a deep guitar, the catchy chorus tops even the lead single. This one hooked me!
Dark Out - A song where the contrast between the pre-chorus and chorus highlight each other in a way I can't quite describe. "Careful, it's dark out."
Yonder This Way Comes - Whenever Frog settles with just acoustic guitar, sparingly backed by other instruments, it always reminds me of a previous project Bateman was involved in, Uncles. "I'm all thumbs."
Stole My Heart - Every time I hear this one, my brain is always thinking the chorus would go perfect as a ringtone.
Max Von Side-Eye - Silly midi horns come in near the end. This one sounded fun to make.
Lois Lane - This is the poster boy of the album for me. Danny nailed it with that chorus. The spoken word section in the middle reminded me of Rubbernecking, and everything after that hits so f*cking hard.
All The Things You Get - Bangs in the car.
Professional - The first song that Frog has ever alluded to the name "Frog" in a song. Not sure why I noticed that. However, there absolutely should be merch with "Professional: Paid To Be Bad" plastered on it.
Je Ne Sais Pas - I think this song will blow Frog up. Safe travels, boys.
Wish Upon a Falling Star - It isn't a Frog album without a strikingly bittersweet song. Shot me when I realized what the lyrics actually meant.
Beg, Borrow, Steal - A very, very strange and fascinating closer. "Game locked up inside, the more I realize, it's not my real life" always gets me going.
A couple weeks ago, I asked everybody for some questions for Daniel Bateman from Frog to answer. I picked my favorites and sent them over via a worn bottle over the Hudson River. A small green hand dragged it into a pile of reeds on the side. I saw a crumpled white paper fly over the bush and quickly ran over. The paper read:
Question 1 by alf4smash - “Dan has mentioned playing in bands when he was younger, any of the songs from that time turned into frog songs / you remember really liking?"
Dan: "My first band was in freshman year of high school. If you dig hard enough you can find it lol. Some of the songs are OK - the best songs we had were never recorded. We made one EP at The Lodge Studio in Bronxville - making records has been an addiction ever since."
Question 2 by TakeanSdraw2linesthruit - “Is there a song that made you nostalgic for a time that happened long before you eventually heard it? Top of the Pops evokes the EXACT feeling of meeting my partner in 2014 during the worst Indiana winter since I was a baby. Also, you guys are my favorite band, please come to Louisville, KY someday but I’ll see ya in Nashville!"
Dan: "Thank you! Nostalgia can be a seductive liar- I think that quote was in the crossword I just did. Emotions are the secret sauce of the songwriter, and the strongest ones you've had leave an impression. Top of the Pops is about many things, but a lot of the ingredients are culled from various romantic misadventures that I had in high school. I take something that happened to me and and I chop it up into little pieces and feed it to the song- anything could happen!"
Question 3 by Hammang “How many more albums do you think you guys have left in you?”
Dan: "It could be thousands! It could be one. Maybe I'm done! But probably not."
Question 4 by cosaki "What's your favorite chord progression"
Dan: I love the IV, I love the V. I love all the flavors at my disposal, I could never pick one.
Question 5 by anonymous - “What's your favorite Pokémon?”
Dan: Jigglypuff. My children are in a big Pokemon phase.
Question 6 by tboyswag_throwaway “Does Dan Bateman prefer indica or sativa? the people gotta know”
Dan: "I just get whatever the guy at the deli near me has, lol. I'm from an era where the weed you smoked was the type that the guy you knew had."
Question 7 by Ayden "Last year in a college interview you announced a Kind of Blah anniversary reissue that would would’ve released last year, and it’s become a running joke with myself to continue being a 2026 believer. Is this something that you expect to still happen at some point?"
Dan: Yes!
Question 8 by awwstink - “can you give us some insight into your process for lyricism? on kind of blah specifically, each song has lyrics that (at least to me) seem extremely referential, and dripping in layers of subtext. how do you go about planning out the stories you want to tell in your songs and the references to accompany them? or is a lot of it just off the dome?"
Dan: I don't really have a consistent process, it's more about discovering the process that will work with the song you're writing. You find something that you might like in a piano, in a guitar, in a keyboard, and you might sing something over it that sounds like it's about this or that, and then you keep asking questions about what the words are and what happens in the song until the song tells you. The key thing is you need to keep the song in a state where it's still malleable, where it's not yet hardened into something that can't be changed; you need to keep introducing novelty into it, because that's only way that you'll be able to see the things that it could be. So if you hit a wall, you try it on a different instrument, in a different key, in a different register, on a different day, anything might work. There is no planning, I never plan anything.
Question 9 by music-ly_inclined - "Where/how did Danny learn to mix/master?"
Dan: "Making music is the only way to learn how to make music. I did actually attend NYU for the "Music Technology" program, but I honestly didn't really learn anything about making records, most likely because I barely attended most of those classes. I learned by just trying to do it and failing, over and over again, for many years. My advice if you're trying to learn how is just get Logic, or Reaper, or Pro tools, and just try to make something! If you keep at it, you'll get somewhere. Don't worry about getting plugins or anything - just use the free ones that come with the program. A hammer is a hammer, it doesn't matter which one you use as long as you hit the nail, and in addition, it's much more important that you learn how to use one tool that you get comfortable with vs. using the best tool."
To wrap it up, I enjoyed this more than 1000 Variations and THE COUNT, making it my favorite out of the variations we've heard. Let me hear your thoughts on why you like it or don't like it in the Frog discord :) Join at https://discord.gg/8e7SBtZ5MY!
If you read this to the end, thank you! Thank you to Dan for the answers and thank you to Audio Antihero for allowing me to hear this set early.
Go see Frog near you at https://frog.band/shows! Or, pick up a signed vinyl at https://heyitsfrog.myshopify.com/collections/all (I know I did.)
