NewYearsDayProject | a song a day blog

Jennifer Lopez A.K.A. J-Lo hasn't released a full record since 2014. However, with singles, acting, activism, business endeavors, and gracing the red carpet, the now fifty-two year old cultural icon is just as relevant as ever. But in the mid-'00s, Lopez did fail to stay relevant. In 2011, she reemerged with her seventh studio record Love?  and as a judge on American Idol . In 2014, she divorced singer and father of her twins Marc Antony and released her latest record, A.K.A AND NOW, YOU'RE ON MY SKIN. In 2021, J-Lo broke off her engagement with New York Yankee Alex Rodriguez (a.k.a. Arod) and later started dating old flame, actor Ben Affleck . Affleck certainly wasn't the singer's " First Love ," but the two were engaged in 2002, but following the release of their critically-panned film Gigli and the stress of the ever-present lens of the paparazzi, the two called off their engagement. Lopez said of that the end of that relationship was her "fir...

Mae 's sophomore record, The Everglow , is to this day their most beloved record. The band released the album in 2005 and rereleased it the next year as a deluxe edition with bonus tracks and a read-along booklet designed to enhance the listener's Multi-sensory Aesthetic Experience in 2006. With the band's releases of demos and two full-length records, Mae fulfilled their contract with Tooth & Nail Records . Later that year, the band signed with Capitol Records and began recording with legendary producer Howard Benson . Singularity was released in the summer of 2007 and was the only Mae record to be released on Capitol. SMOKE-FILLED CASINOS, BUT WHAT DO WE KNOW WE'LL TAKE A CHANCE.   Singularity  is a unique album for Mae as it features a rock and New Wave sound not featured on the prior records. Drummer Jacob Marshall and keyboardist Rob Sweitzer named the album Singularity based on their discussions from a book by physicist Paul Davies. Marshall said of these ...

They're Only Chasing Safety is an important album both in Christian music and Emo. The fourth studio record from Underoath was a reinvention of the band. First, the band's prior lead singer, Dallas Taylor , left the band while the band was on the Vans Warped Tour in 2003, touring for their third record, The Changing of Times . Between the band's third and fourth records, half of Underoath's members changed, but since 2004, the band's lineup hasn't changed. Frontman Spencer Chamberlain took Taylor's place on unclean vocals and together with drummer Aaron Gillespie on clean vocals, the two created the band's first iconic record, an album that set the standard of hard-edged Emo and screamo.   CAN YOU FEEL YOUR HEARTBEAT RACING? I've written a lot about Underoath, mostly about who they are now and how everything they are doing now is a reaction to who and what they've done. They're Only Chasing Safety is an album about six Christian young me...

In 1946 George Orwell wrote in an essay titled " Politics and the English Language ": "In our age, there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia.” In my lifetime,  there seemed to be a time when we could be ambivalent toward the democratic process. We could sit in our homes on election day in good faith that the majority want the right thing or even stew in our own cynicism that the two candidates were different faces to the same policy. But look at how choice has been effaced.  A BEAUTIFUL WAITRESS WHO JUST COULDN'T MAKE IT. The third record by Irish pop-rock band Kodaline titled  Politics of Living  isn't an overt political statement, but more of a casual jab at 2018 zeitgeist. Cynical reviewers panned the record as Kodaline's attempt to enter the U.S. market. The album's production and song structures do suffer a bit from t...

The Juliana Theory started as a pop-rock side project for Brett Detar , guitarist of the Christian metalcore band Zao . The band's first record, Understand This Is a Dream , underperformed when it released in 1999 and throughout their career, The Juliana Theory suffered from marketing purgatory due to not wanting to be marketed to the Christian market but being on a predominately Christian label. On the band's second record, Tooth & Nail 's founder and CEO Brandon Ebel thought The Juliana Theory had a hit with " We're at the Top the World ," a short, lyrically dearth song that was pure emotion on the ironically titled album Emotion Is Dead .  WE'VE GOT A LOT OF TIME.   Twenty - two years have solidified Emotion Is Dead as a cult classic in the Tooth & Nail cannon. Like Understand This Is a Dream, Emotion Is Dead was r ecorded and co-produced with friend and Zao producer Barry Poynter . While Poynter was most known for heavy records, lead singer B...

In 2019, Carly Rae Jepsen released her fourth studio record, Dedicated . But the fifteen songs that made it onto the standard edition of the album were nowhere near the amount of songs the surprisingly prolific songwriter wrote for the album. Jepsen revealed that she wrote over 200 songs during the two album cycles of E-M0-TION   and Dedicated. In an interview with Vox , Jepsen said that she turns to her friends and family with whom she has listening parties where she "feeds them and gives them copious amounts of wine so that they have opinions about the music." While many of these songs will never be released, in the tradition Jepsen set with E-MO-TION, she released a B-sides record for Dedicated, titled Dedicated Side B.   HE WAS BORN IN VEGAS. Years ago, I was impressed when I heard that a band wrote 70, 100, 200, etc. songs for a record. Years later, through listening to more and more interviews, I found out that the myth was debunked. Several bands have said that th...

You might know  Filous  if you get the bonus tracks of pop singers. He's an Austrian producer, musician, and remixer, and he's remixed  Selena Gomez ,  Troye Sivan ,  Kodaline , and others. For " Feel Good Inc ." Filous teams up with electro-pop singer-songwriter  LissA  to bring a new interpretation to Gorillaz's 2005 hit, " Feel Good Inc. " The song has been covered by multiple artists, and while the original is the best, Filous's cover highlights the melancholy of the song by stripping the song of its bass line and leaning into its minor chord melody. Filous's "FGI" is laidback. It's a perfect coffee shop cover of the track because coffee shop tracks often don't have rapping or words like "ass crack." While today's song of the day is by Filous, it's the artistry of the musicians behind Gorrilaz that makes this song interesting. DON'T STOP. GET IT, GET IT!  In 2001  Blur  frontman  Damon Albarn  and anima...

Winner is a South Korean boy band signed to YG Entertainment . Debuting in 2014 as a five-piece group, they had several successful singles before group member Taehyun left the group in 2016, citing mental health and personal issues. The next year, in 2017, Winner released two single-records Fate Number For  and Our Twenty For , with two new songs on each single record. Besides emphasizing that the band was now only four members, the records played with a spring/summer Tropical Dance vibe. Unlike many K-pop artists, Winner is largely self-produced, with the band members taking active roles in producing their songs, choreographing their dances, and marketing their music.  TRUST MY HEART. A lengthy K-pop hiatus over a year between the EP Exit: E and Fate Number For, the band emerged with singer Nam Taehyun. The year 2019 was a bad year for K-Pop. Former f(x) member Sulli committed suicide following only bullying. A few weeks later singer Goo Hara took her life as did f...

" Escalates " is the second single  from Falling Up 's debut record, Crashings . All three of the band's singles from Crashings, " Broken Heart ," "Escalates," " Bittersweet "   topped Christian Rock Radio charts. Falling Up signed to BEC Recordings because of industry hype from the band Kutless , who came from the same suburb of Portland, Oregon as Falling Up. Working with the same producer, Aaron Sprinkle , Falling Up was set to be the next big Christian Rock band. I CAN'T FIND IT, BUT MAYBE I'LL COPE.    I've talked about the sonic production on Crashings and how I think that it is perhaps on of Aaron Sprinkle's best feats of production despite the record never coming up in the podcast conversations I've heard with Sprinkle. I've speculated that there's an interesting, perhaps an uncomfortable, story about Falling Up's tenure in the Tooth & Nail universe. Sprinkle and the band maintain high-tempo s...

In 2017, it had been five years since The Killers released new music, and even longer since they were a “household name.” Lead singer Brandon Flowers talks about starting with the song “ Rut ,” Wonderful, Wonderful ’s third track, which defined the band’s new direction. While The Killers had been on hiatus had released his second solo record, The Desired Effect . Also before recording The Killers’ fifth record, Flowers moved out of his beloved hometown of “ The Fabulous Las Vegas ” which turned out to be a bad place to raise a family in the ‘10s. Still, digging out of the musical rut wasn’t easy. Flowers found on Wonderful, Wonderful it was ok to write about his family. DON’T NEED NO ADVICE, I GOT A PLAN. The first single from Wonderful, Wonderful, though, " The Man ," doesn't fall into the typical storytelling songs we come to expect from The Killers, rather "The Man" is a bragging song. The song was featured in the Netflix original film The Perfect Date ...

Technically speaking, The Great Gatsby is a satire of a wealthy society. But F. Scott Fitzgerald's third novel is often enjoyed as a time capsule to the Jazz Age, and the parts that Fitzgerald criticizes are what the reads indulge in. But Fitzgerald certainly isn't the only artist to have toed the line between criticism and indulgence. In 2002, two freshmen music majors, Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser , formed a band at Wesleyan University, this band would eventually be called The Management, and the band wrote several songs which they never took too seriously because they felt that their pop sound was secondary for their love of old psychedelic electronic music. THIS IS WHAT THE WORLD IS FOR. The Management’s hipster approach to pop made the group famous on campus, and despite never caring for pop music, the group’s most catchy songs eventually caught the ear of Columbia Records . The band prepared their debut record  Oracular Spectacular   and shortened their name ...

  If you play by the rules, you can win the game. At least that's what kids are told when they're growing up. But somewhere along the way, the tales of how it's supposed to be don't seem to match what's actually happening. The prophets who have gone before you have foretold of a golden age when life was easy. Just follow the formula. Of course, there is no formula for being in a rock band, and success is never a guarantee. But in the mid-'00s it seemed that being signed to Tooth & Nail Records was a guarantee into both Christian and mainstream markets. Tooth & Nail was a sure-shot, until it wasn't. WE’LL START A FIRE SO BIG THE HEAVENS CAN SEE IT. Search the City in 2004 formed when two Michigan high school friends decided to make a band. Guitarist Alex Sheldon and drummer Adam McMillion were eventually joined by singer Josh Frost , guitarist James Czech, and bassist Eli Clark. After recording the EP Ghosts in 2008, the band signed to Tooth &...

The lead single and opening song from Shape & Color 's sophomore EP, Love / Sex / War , " Drifting " sets the tone of the mid-teens power pop quintet. Fronted by the former lead sing of Search the City , Travis Bobier , the band shows their penchant for pop melodies in many of their songs, but "Drifting" is an excellent point of entry into the band's short discography. Almost foregoing a chorus with a " millennial whoop " in its place for the first verse, the song serves as a kind of unguent for a dull or bad day, giving energy as it addresses the mid-twenties crisis the lyrics suggest.  WE'VE BEEN LIVING IN A TECHNICOLOR BLUR. The lyrics of "Drifting" talk about getting off course from where you thought your life was supposed to go. Singer Travis Bobier was about 24 when this song was released. At the age of 21, Bobier had been recruited to sing in the band Search the City after their original lead singer Josh Frost had left the...

New Order formed in 1980 after the three remaining members of the post-punk band Joy Division lost their lead singer Ian Curtis to suicide. Success wasn't instant for New Order with the start of the new band. New Order's sound was distinct from Joy Division's with the inclusion of keyboardist Gillian Gilbert and a growing penchant for synthesizers and electronic dance music. The band's breakthrough success came prior to the release of their second record, Power, Lies & Corruption with the release of their long-play (12") single " Blue Monday ," which took dance clubs around the world by storm, and even helped to fund the band's own dance club in Manchester called The Haçienda, a dance club named after the word for a Spanish plantation.   I SEE A SHIP IN THE HARBOUR. New Order spent time in the clubs in New York listening to the latest disco prior to recording their Power, Lies & Corruption. According to lead singer Bernard Sumner , the mu...