NewYearsDayProject | a song a day blog

  Like Search the City , Ivoryline was one of Tooth & Nail Records potential “next Anberlin ” projects. Ivoryline was one of the many “two-album wonders” of the late ‘00s and early ‘10s, releasing their debut There Came a Lion in 2008 and Vessels in 2010. Last year, the Labeled podcast featured an interview with Ivoryline’s lead singer Jeremy Gray , breaking down the band’s successes and untimely demise. Ivoryline was a casualty to the dying record-selling industry and never saw the success of some of their scene- and tour-mates, but their story is worth checking out. THIS SEATLE LIFE HAS CHANGED ME FROM THE INSIDE.  In 2003, Dead End Driveway formed in Tyler, Texas, and changed their name to Ivoryline in 2005. The next year they were scouted by Tooth & Nail Records after playing on the Vans Warped Tour . After signing to the label in 2007, the band released There Came a Lion in February of 2008. The album sold well, charting at number 25 on Billboard’s Christian ...

  It’s time finally to name one of my biggest musical influences from middle school. It’s not a cool ‘90s band by today’s standards, but they certainly influenced Christian music and evangelical thought until today and have given many former church kids enough trauma to unpack. We’re finally talking about DC Talk ’s greatest hits album intermission ,  via the radio hit that comes from the remix of a song “ Say the Words ” from their breakthrough album Free At Last . While the band called their greatest hits record an intermission, the group have only reunited on rare occasions and have not recorded a record since 1998’s Supernatural .  I’VE GOT SOMETHING FOR YOU, MAN. When you’re 12 years old in the year 2000, nothing could be cooler than owning a copy of DC Talk’s intermission. The boys from Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University were known for changing styles. Coming from embarrassingly bad white-boy Hip-Hop on their eponymous debut record to less-embarrassingly bad Hip ...

In the summer of '99, I was 12 years old. I spent the first half of the summer with my dad, a truck driver, as he crossed the U.S. delivering camper chassis and steel. A lot of kids would get bored looking at the Interstate for hours, but I always loved the journey. I loved maps and geography, and I was getting a firsthand experience of seeing what America looked like. Of course there were some boring parts. But what was best about the miles of cornfields was that the radio stations lasted quite a while-- a lot longer than they lasted in the foothills of North Carolina. With my dad, I got to experience new (old) music that my mom didn't approve of at the time. On the road I first listened to  Led Zeppelin ,  Pink Floyd 's  Dark Side of the Moon ,  Steve Miller Band ,  George Thorogood & the Destroyers ,  America , and so many others I could fill a whole blog post listing. We also listened to new music-- Red Hot Chili Peppers ,  Goo Goo Dolls , and...

Kicking off the criminally catchy debut record, A Fire So Big the Heavens Can See It ,  from Search the City , " Son of a Gun " sets the tone of the pop-punk band's two-disc discography, which can be best summed up as tongue-in-cheek, cliché-ridden lyrics and tight upbeat, emotional, well-produced melodies. The band seemed to be both a product of Tooth & Nail Records ' push in the late '00s for duplicating the success of their early '00s roster and a victim of when that strategy didn't work due to the collapse of the music industry when record sales were plummeting. In 2009, the band quietly left the label. SO LET ME GET THIS STORY STRAIGHT. I attended Cornerstone Festival in Bushnell, Illinois for the second time in 2008. The group I traveled with aimed to be up there for at least one of the pre-festival days, but sometimes car troubles or something else unexpected would delay the arrival. In 2008, though, we made it up for half of the day before the ...

In 2005, Denison Witmer released Are You a Dreamer ?  The album was released on the now defunct Chad Pearson -owned record label The Militia Group , home to a plethora of Christian and secular acts in the late '90s and early '00s. The former A&R guy at Tooth & Nail Records founded The Militia Group on similar values as the legendary label: musical variety. From underground punk rock bands like Brandston and The Beautiful Mistake to indie rock gems like Copeland and Lovedrug to mainstream successes like The Summer Set and Cartel  and to indie folk acts like The New Frontiers and Denison Witmer, the label fostered talent for nearly 10 years before the label folded.   HOW YOU FOUND ME, I STILL NEVER UNDERSTAND.  " Little Flowers " opens  Are You a Dreamer?   with  simple acoustic guitar plucking. But in addition to guitar, Denison Witmer's dear friend and occasional housemate Sufjan Stevens appears playing banjo on the...

Prior to signing with  Gotee Records  in 2009, Wichita-based band,  Abandon Kansas  garnered radio play on  RadioU  as an indie band. The band recorded with Gotee for five years before going independent, partnering with  BadChristian Music  to release their final project,  Alligator ,  an album that lead singer Jeremy Spring talked about with the  BadChristian Podcast  as an album dealing with his personal struggles in the band/Christian band circuit, dealing with doubt, substance abuse, and depression. To some Christian music fans,  Alligator  was too profane compared to their previous works and other Christian Rock bands in the scene. To others,  Alligator  proved to be a refreshing take on authenticity which the confounds of most Christian record labels censored. After the album was released, the band planned to tour with the album, but ultimately personal issues forced Spring to cancel the tour. The ban...

With over a billion streams for his hits " Wolves " and " Silence " and 1.8 billion streams for his song with  Bastille , " Happier ,"  Marshmello 's collaboration with the  Jonas Brothers  is on the path to being a mega Spotify hit, with nearly 600 million streams as of writing this post. In 2015,  Chris Comstock  began publishing remixes of songs online, gaining fame under the pseudonym Marshmello. When he performed as a DJ, he wore a white bucket shaped like the confectionary treat. In 2017, Comstock's identity was confirmed by  Forbes ,  however, Comstock continues all public appearances with a bucket covering his head.   I'M THE TYPE TO GET NAKED.  Nick   and   Joe Jonas   each get a verse on "Leave Before You Love Me," while the eldest brother,   Kevin , plays guitar and sings back up. Some of the conflict resolved over the course of the documentary film   Chasing Happiness  deals with Kevin feeli...

“ I ” was the first single from the first solo EP, or in K-pop terms mini album, by Taeyeon . The mini album is also named  I .  The Girls’ Generation leader’s solo career has been the most successful of the group, and “I” was a massive hit. Released in 2015, the single features Korean Hip Hop artist Verbal Jint, a rapper who is credited with creating a rhyme structure to Korean hip hop after his debut in the early ‘00s. The combination of Taeyeon’s soaring vocals and Verbal Jint ’s rhythm along with the electric guitar feels extremely uplifting to the listener.  FLY HIGH.   “I”  is a celebration of self, as the song suggests. Taeyeon announces in the lyrics that she will no longer be tied down by confinement of being in the spotlight, but will try to be herself authentically. It’s the kind of song to put on when you feel that you can’t achieve your goals. The song will remind you of all that you have accomplished and help you to focus on the future. ...

Last year, my most streamed song on Spotify was Tyson Motsenbocker ’s “Carlo Rossi” (Love in the Face of Great Danger). I wrote about the song in December, but the weather didn’t seem appropriate for Motsenbocker’s tropical sounds. While it’s only April and I’m kind of on a mini-vacation, I thought that this song would be a fun revisit, particularly after the heavy subject matter from the previous two days. That’s not saying that the subject of this song about falling in love when the world is on fire isn’t just as serious—it’s just the chill guitar riff adds that illusion. Enjoy the rest of the original post from December ! TAKE ME ON A NEW VACATION.   " Carlo Rossi " (Love in the Face of Great Danger) is my pick for song of the year for 2022. Tyson Motsenbocker condenses a novel's worth of theme into a single song while offering vivid imagery that feels like a classic film, yet it is uncanny how contemporary that classic film seems. On the  Labeled Podcast , Motsenbocke...

Shoegaze  is a sub-genre of rock music that employs heavy distorted guitars to create what is called a "wall of sound." Shoegaze came out of  psychedelic rock and often creates a hypnotic effect. Not every group that uses "the wall of sound" is necessarily a shoegazer act, but some bands that have famously used this effect are  Oasis ,  The Verve , and the  Smashing Pumpkins . The etymology of  "shoegazing" is said to be a description of the guitarists of these bands because they mostly stared at their shoes.  The etymology of  "shoegazing" is said to be a description of the guitarists of these bands because they mostly stared at their shoes. While music critics don't often place  Silversun Pickups  in the subgenre of Shoegaze, what else would  you classify their 2009 hypnotic hit " Panic Switch "? IT'S NEVER WORTH MY TIME . Silversun Pickups topped the Alternative Rock chart with this song. Released in 2009, at a time when I wa...

  Twenty years ago, Linkin Park released their sophomore record, Meteora . Throughout the band's career, their sound would shift to various styles of rock music, but Meteora is not much of a departure from the band's debut Hybrid Theory . The album did, however, embrace Asian musical instruments on several tracks. At the time of its release, Meteora not only debuted at number 1 on Billboard's 200 Album charts but also set the record for the most units sold in a week beating Celine Dion 's One Heart . In 2003, Nu Metal was the ruling dynasty and Linkin Park was the king of the music. I CAN'T FEEL THE WAY I DID BEFORE.  Speaking of deluxe editions, you can stream Linkin Park's 20th anniversary edition of Meteora-- 95 tracks of live performances, B-sides, and demos; some of which have been released like their Live in Texas record and some remastered tracks which had never left the vault. Personally, I don't have fond memories of this record. I thought of it ...

  In high school I spent a good deal of my lawn mowing money on CDs, like many of kids of my generation and before. A brand new CD cost anywhere between $10 and $25, often depending on where you bought it, but also some retailers would sell lesser-known albums at a discount. On a few occasions, a band would issue a re-release and/or a repackaging of an album. This could happen for remastering with new technology not available when the record was first released, anniversary editions of popular records, or most frustrating were deluxe editions not available during the album's initial release. These deluxe editions held bonus tracks, often a new radio single that didn't make the original album. PROMISE YOU WON'T  REGRET . First, it is important to distinguish between bonus editions exclusive to a store. Artists have released exclusive b-sides on these annoying marketing gimmick, selling one edition at particular store, leaving devote fans to buy every edition of the record. Wh...

I was first introduced to Tove Lo when the Swedish singer appeared on Coldplay 's colorful, ebullient record, A Headful of Dreams . Track five's duet, "Fun," is one of the more subdued tracks on the record. Given that my mom and even my grand-mother love A Headful of Dreams,   I assumed that Tove Lo was also a "safe for mom" artist. It turns out that Tove Lo is a pretty sexual artist, known for flashing her breasts in concert, which to be fair, isn't as big of a deal for her European audiences. WILL MY OBSESSION PLEASE DIE.  Ebba Tove Elsa Nilsson, better known as Tove Lo, released her fifth record,  Dirt Femme ,   last year. Unlike her previous records, Lo released Dirt Femme  independently on her own label, Pretty Swede Records. The album deals with the singer's growth over the years and her marriage to Charlie Twaddle. But the liberated singer lays down some ground rules for her marriage in the second track, " Suburbia ," in which she L...