NewYearsDayProject | a song a day blog

Jars of Clay ' s funky third record, If I Left the Zoo , was produced by Dennis Herring , which took the band in a different direction than their previous two records. Herring had also produced This Desert Life by Counting Crows the same year as If I Left the Zoo, which influenced the direction of Jars of Clay's 1999 record. In the new millennium, Herring produced some of the biggest records for Modest Mouse , The Hives , Ben Folds , and Mutemath .  YOU'RE ALL I'M LIVING FOR. Jars of Clay, however, wanted to return to their acoustic roots on their fourth album,  The Eleventh Hour . The band had tried to work with Herring again, but the producer was unable to schedule sessions with the band. Thus Jars of Clay again self-produced their record like they did for their eponymous record. The lead single from The Eleventh Hour , " I Need You ," was written during recording sessions for If I Left the Zoo, but fit better on the band's fourth record. The song see

  Closing 2019's heart-wrenching  When We Were in Love ,  " Swamp " perhaps sums up   Mike Mains & the Branches ' third album in a single song: love, depression, and religion. Like the songs " Breathing Underwater " and " Around the Corner ,"    Mike Mains   gave an intimate insight into his writing process on   Labeled . Mains talked about earlier   Tooth & Nail   releases from   mewithoutYou   and   As Cities Burn ,     which helped to inspire him to write darker Christian songs and push the genre of Christian Rock lyrically to open an honest conversation about mental health, depression, and questioning one's faith. YOU HAD ME AT MERLOT.  "Swamp" is the conclusion and the title-bearer of the album. Mike Mains asks his wife, bandmate Shannon Briggs Bolanowski -Mains, "Do you remember when we were in love?" On the  Labeled  podcast interview, Mains talks about "Swamp" being about a fear that his wife were

Today, we have another offering from our Lorde and Saviour, Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O'Connor, aka "the prettier Jesus." In January, we talked about the opening track on Solar Power , " The Path ," in which Lorde claims not to be, well a lord for her fans and followers. By the next track, the titular track, however, Lorde points to " Solar Power " but admits that she is "like a prettier Jesus." The answer to the singer's problems lies in the sun and ultimately in nature. NO SHIRT, NO SHOES, ONLY MY FEATURES. "Solar Power" was the summer anthem that never caught on.  Lorde released her third record Solar Power  at the end of the second summer (winter for New Zealand) of the pandemic, 2021, with the titular lead single coming out on June 20th before the record's release on August 20th.  It's hard for me to distinguish time during the pandemic, and each nation dealt with the pandemic differently, completely shattering any s

In 2019, The  Jonas Brothers broke their nearly six-year hiatus and returned with first the single " Sucker ," an album titled Happiness Begins , and an Amazon documentary titled  Chasing Happiness .  The Jonas Brothers had been a massively successful band in the late '00s and early '10s, but had a niche audience of mostly teenage girls through Radio Disney and Nickelodeon  as well as a few Christian radio stations.  I'M A SUCKER FOR ALL THE SUBLIMINAL THINGS. What was the demand for the reunited Jonas Brothers? Like countless childhood stars from the Disney or Nickelodeon universe, Kevin , Joe , and Nick Jonas grew out of their tween image. Nick's solo career was the most successful of the brothers, but that success also included acting and modeling and ultimately becoming a thirst-trap for the gay community. The albums X2 and Last Year Was Complicated tackled mature material beyond anything he sang about with his brothers. Similarly, Joe found success wit

Dabin  is a melodic EDM music producer from Toronto who currently lives in Colorado and  Conor Bryne  is an Irish singer-songwriter known for his YouTube covers. I first heard this song last week when Apple Music played it as "music you may like based on the artists you just played." It's probably the most surefire way for me to discover music these days.  Based on the nursery rhyme, " Ring Around the Rosie ," " Rings & Roses " explores the career path of someone, a friend or a lover, who is pursuing fame. That person has become too popular for the singer, who warns that in the end "they all fall down." Simple enough.   WAITIN' ON THE DREAM YOU BEEN SOLD.  Pursuing a dream takes work and sacrifice. There's something in our youth that makes us believe that anything is possible. But somewhere along the way, the novelist in us, the future basketball player, or the rockstar gives way to the backup plan. Of course, thanks to the Intern

  Today I present a playlist I've been meaning to make for a while. I want to put all of the songs that give me spring vibes in a single playlist. These aren't just songs explicitly about this time of year, but also songs that mention the season. Of course we're going with one song per artist, so unfortunately the equally springlike song  by Troye Sivan " Bloom " won't be making the playlist. This is an ongoing project so expect more songs added as I find them. I will post the playlist below. Enjoy!

K-pop listeners have watched the once teen star  IU  grow up. Debuting at the age of 15, the star is turning 30 this year. The soprano singer has been called Korea's little sister, and her (mostly) squeaky clean image has propelled her to lasting success in Korea's music scene. Flowers and spring are no unfamiliar topic to this singer, and her sweet, yet powerful voice is perfect for a spring day. My first exposure to the singer was her song " The Meaning of You " (너의 의미)  and her feature on  HIGH4 's " Not Spring, Love, or Cherry Blossoms " (봄 사랑 벚꽃 말고) and she's constantly played in Korea whenever the mood calls for easy listening. IT'S LIKE THE FALLING PETALS, OUR IVORY COLORED SPRING CLIMAX.   IU's  Lilac   album is a pretty spring album. And it's no secret I'm a sucker for a good saxophone part in a pop song. " Lilac " offers that and more. Growing up in central New York, I always considered lilacs to be a late summer f

When Acceptance released their 2017 record, 12 years after their cult classic Phantoms, the band's fans had mixed feelings about Colliding By Design . On the hand, listeners thought it was great to hear the vocals of Jason Vena and the riffs of Kaylan Cloyd and the moody atmospheric rhythm guitar of Christian McAlhaney all produced by the band's "sixth member" Aaron Sprinkle . But some listeners didn't like the pop direction the band took. In 2020's Wild, Free the band offers less guitar, but Sprinkle takes the band further into the pop world, making the band feel even more distant from their 2005 classic.  1. " Midnight ." The album starts with a slightly musically underwhelming track. It seems that the record deals with Jason Vena's romantic history, "Midnight," perhaps addresses his divorce and how the singer was put in the spotlight when his ex became a constant on The Bachelor. The band filmed a video for the song. 2. " Col

Henrik Heaven started his musical career at age 9, winning a talent competition at his school. A few years later, he began touring his home country of Norway. In 2013 he won second place to be selected for Euro Vision Junior. The singer-songwriter is also a dancer and has been releasing music since his 2019 EP, ALLSTAR .  In 2021, he released Sad Boy (Get Better!) , three tracks including the title track . I'm not sure how this track showed up in my library, but I thought it would be a good jumping off point for a playlist that I've wanted to make for a while: sad: a playlist for sad boys and girls.   View Sad Boy (Get Better!) Lyrics by Henrik Heaven at Musixmatch

When March comes, it either appears as a lion or a lamb.  I've also taken a more superstitious meaning to this saying. In Korea, it's the beginning of the school year; however, March 1st is a national holiday. Will the school year start out smoothly or with its own set of thundershowers? If it starts out smoothly, is trouble ahead? So much uncertainty leans on this temperamental spring month as the air warms, clashing with Arctic blasts. And if you throw climate change into the mix, who knows what we're going to get? March is almost half over and I wonder if it started like a lamb or a lion? And more importantly will it get calmer or more chaotic? WHEN I GET FARTHER AWAY, MY SIGHS GROW DEEPER.   Taeyeon   is one of the most successful female solo artists in Korea. From her start with the bubblegum pop girl group   Girls' Generation , she's not the only singer to find success after the ending of her group. In 2019, Taeyeon bravely explained to her fans that she was b

British pop-rock band Bastille had what it took to survive the changing landscape of rock music. Today, the band has 18 million monthly Spotify listeners. Prior to “ Happier ,” a collaboration with anonymous DJ/producer Marshmello , the band has already explored EDM and had cultivated a rather radio-friendly pop sound. Propelled to fame with their number 2 British single " Pompeii ," Bastille is a band that has accomplished what few bands could achieve in the 2010s, relevance.  WHEN THE MORNING COMES AND WE'RE LEFT WITH WHAT WE'VE BECOME.  We all sang " If You're Happy and You Know It " when we were children. It was a standard in Sabbath school, but we also sang it at school. I can't remember if it was on a children's television show or at school where I first heard another verse: "If you're angry and you know it, stomp your feet." I don't think that I was emotionally stunted by my church upbringing, and if I was school may hav

In 2021  The War on Drugs  returned after four years with their critically-acclaimed album,  I Don't Live Here Anymore .  The title track and lead single features indie pop group  Lucius  as backing vocals on the chorus.  Like their previous works, such as  A Deeper Understanding    (2017) and    Lost in the Dream   (2014),  The War on Drugs is able to play two chords back to back for six minutes and create a song that you never want to end. Those two chords create a warm cadence that's like a bonfire on a cold fall night. And that's reason enough to curl up with a blanket and enjoy The War on Drugs all day long. A CREATURE VOID OF FORM. In addition to producing their own music, The War on Drugs has also produced two seasons of a podcast titled Super High Quality Podcast . The second season is a four-part documentary about how the band wrote and recorded their fifth record. In addition to the band "talking shop" and sharing their demos and jam sessions, listeners

In 2020,   Taylor Swift   released a documentary titled   Miss Americana   which talked about her music up to the release of 2019's   Lover .  While Swift's country music past and her latest ventures with   Folklore   and   Evermore  certainly can touch on  Americana ,  if you placed Taylor Swift's CD leaflets on a table next to   Lana Del Rey 's and asked anyone on the street to which lyricist better embodied the dictionary.com definition of "things associated with the culture and history of America," Lana Del Rey would probably be crowned the real "Miss Americana." But being the real, unrecognized "Miss Americana" can be just as problematic as the tainted past of the great country. Lana Del Rey is no stranger to controversy or acclaim. She is a polarizing star on the pop charts (when she chooses to release a hit) and pop culture.  Sometimes called regressive to feminism, Lana Del Rey has been cancelled more times than most celebrities. Ye

  In every small town to major city in South Korea, there are private karaoke rooms called  noraebang  (노래방). These are used by everyone from middle school students escaping the stress of studying for exams to middle-aged office workers, pressured into going out and drinking with their boss. Since I've been in Korea, I've heard them mentioned in American TV shows or movies in major cities; however,  noraebang  culture is much more permeated in Korean culture than karaoke is in America. So what is sung in these karaoke rooms? You can spend hours browsing the song selection from old Korean throat music (트롯), a kind of old-timey, often disco-sounding music that Korean ajoshis or ajumas (아주씨, 아줌마), or middle-aged people, love. There are K-pop songs throughout the ages and international songs like Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Spanish, and of course English pop, rock, and traditional songs. When you go to a  noraebang,  you select the song you want to sing and the lyrics appear on

March 15th was the Ides of March, the day when Julius Cesar was stabbed. I realized that I didn't celebrate   Casimir Pulaski Day   (March 1st, also a   Sufjan Stevens   song), nor did I celebrate Pi Day with a song about circles on Tuesday, nor am I posting a St. Patrick's Day song today, but I thought that it would be fun to analyze Stevens's most ironic song of all, in which he states to his fans that he doesn't want to be their "Julius Caesar... [nor their] personal Jesus." The pairing of the two figures I found fascinating because in Dante's   Inferno  we meet Judas (betrayer of Christ), and Brutus and Cassius (betrayers of Caesar) in the deepest layer of hell, tortured by Satan himself. Beware indeed the Ides of March. I DON'T WANT TO BE THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE.  Just when we thought we firmly established Sufjan Stevens as a folk singer, perhaps an heir to Woody Guthrie or Gordon Lightfoot , he goes and makes an electronic album. While the

  Today we take another dive into my #1 album from last year, Tyson Motsenbocker 's Milk Teeth , specifically a song that seems unmatched with the other tracks, " Hide from the World ." The song breaks up the musical themes established in the first four tracks. But "Hide from the World" adds a whimsical guitar chords and equally whimsical lyrics. Then it's back to the serious musical tone by track six, " UC Santa Cruz ." I WANT TO HANG IN SNOOPY'S DOG HOUSE AND HE SHOULD BE THERE TOO. Unlike   the other songs on Milk Teeth, in "Hide from the World" Tyson Motenbocker chooses easily accessible references. On other tracks, Motsenbocker references locations, alcohol brands, bands, and uses vocabulary that merit a Genius annotation. But with the exception of extremely sheltered evangelical or ex-vangelical kids particularly with the Harry Potter reference on "Hide from the World" most listeners quickly assimilate the meaning that