About The Project

Hello! My name is Eric Helzer and I am the creator and producer of the United Song Project. I am honored that you are here visiting our website and I am excited to tell you all about the project.

The United Song Project is an online recording collaboration uniting one person from every country and territory in the world together on the same song. The project features diverse artists of every age, musical style and level of experience, all coming together for music and unity.

The International Organization for Standardization list was used to determine which locations around the world to invite from. Territories that did not qualify included Antarctica and Vatican City, as well as a variety of islands used for military/government purposes only. Also, given the recent participation in the Olympics by North Korea and South Korea competing together as Unified Korea, I chose to have Unified Korea represented on the song. In total, 242 countries and territories participated in the project.

The project started in 2020, when I recorded a demo version of the song and started searching online for people around the world to share it with. I searched for people by location, utilizing different options such as: social media, government and university pages, arts and nonprofit groups and other web-based searches. Once I located a potential participant, I would send a message with an invitation to participate, information about the project, and the demo version of the song. If a person liked the idea and wanted to join, I then sent all of the recording materials including the lyrics, a recording track with metronome, and some basic production details.

Each person was invited to contribute to the song by recording themselves singing, playing an instrument, or both.

Each completed recording was then sent back to me, and I would label and save it in preparation for the eventual production of the song. The final recording was received in December of 2025, and with that, we had all of the needed locations represented. Altogether, 242 people sent in recordings from different locations around the world, featuring a vast variety of instruments and vocals of many different languages.

The arrangement of the song took 6 months to complete, as each recording was carefully considered for its best part and placement in the song. I was assisted during this process by my son, Thanos, and together we crafted all of the different recordings together. We started by placing the drum and percussion parts into place, and then added in the instruments including: guitars, pianos, keyboards, violins, ouds, saxophones, kirars, accordions, trumpets, kanteles, and many more. Once the instrumental parts were complete, we added all of the different vocal recordings, including voices in many different languages. Finally, with the vocals all in place, the song was ready for mixing and mastering. Mixing was done by Dave Way and Iacopo Pinna at Waystation Studio in Los Angeles, California. The mastering engineer was Michael Romanowski, of Coast
Mastering, in Berkeley, California.

In addition to being on this song together, each person in the project stays connected with one another by way of a private online group page, and we have become family. Members keep up-to-date on the project, share their own music with eachother, and socialize. Some have even collaborated on other musical endeavors outside of this project.

The mission of the project is uniting the world with music. The song is an invitation to every person on earth to sing along and celebrate the power of a peaceful world. No matter where you are, this song is for you. It will always be available as a free download from our website and you are welcome to share it as much as you would like.

On behalf of everyone at The United Song Project, thank you for listening to our song.

Cheers from the Oregon Coast!
Eric