NewYearsDayProject | a song a day blog

  Last year, Lizzy McAlpine released her album   five seconds flat . She began writing the songs for an EP, traveling to London after ending a relationship. The song " ceilings " was a part of that writing session, and as McAlpine explains to Genius , the lyrics of the song refer to an experience in the rain in London. The song went viral on TikTok, especially due to the outro which is a "plot twist," according to McAlpine, in which the love interest appears to be a fictionalized story in the speaker's mind. The song is a perfect rainy-day song with the strings backing the acoustic guitar and Lizzy's beautiful voice. I want to dig more into five seconds flat, but today I'd like to make a Rainy Day mixtape to close out this depressing, sad girl summer we've been having in Korea. Of course, these songs won't be specific to the summer but will soundtrack rainy days throughout the year. Enjoy!

My generation has had a few sobering news days, but in 1999 very little struck more fear into the hearts of American students and parents than turning on the news on April 20, seeing the horrifying scenes of the massacre at Columbine High School. In the way that September 11 changed aviation forever, Columbine changed education. There had been school shootings in the U.S. before, but none had the scope of planning of Columbine. So much information came out about the victims and perpetrators after the shooting for years to come. There were several distinct responses I remember growing up immersed in the evangelical South. First, it was that shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were into the gothic scene, wearing all black, keeping nihilistic journals, and listening to music like   Marylin Manson , Korn , and Insane Clown Posse . This music was clearly satanic and could lead teens to commit mass shootings. Second, the testimony of Cassie Burnell, the girl whom, years later, was misrepo

  Ben Gibbard  started performing in 1997 under the moniker  Death Cab for Cutie , the name of a  Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band  song by the same name released in 1967 and featured in  The Beatles ’ film  Magical    Mystery   Tour . When Gibbard signed a recording contract, he turned his solo act into a band. The band released albums on indie label  Barsuk Records , garnering spots in films and television, which got the attention of  Atlantic Records . Their major label debut,  Plans , was released in 2005 and spawned three singles: " Soul Meets Body ," " Crooked Teeth ," and " I Will Follow You Into the Dark. " Despite being on a major label, Death Cab for Cutie is a symbol of Indie Rock music. They consistently produce thought-provoking music and have many Grammy nominations under their belt. However, like most bands with die-hard fans, their older records often resonate best, whether it's  We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes ,  Transatlanticism , or

Paramore 's second album  Riot!   made the pop-punk emo band of late millennial famous with the summer Alternative Rock and pop radio hit " Misery Business ," which is still arguably the band's signature hit. Usually, though, a band's signature hit is either their highest charting song or their located within the era of the band's commercial peak. However, seven years after the summer of "Misery Business," Paramore charted the highest with their 2014 final single from their eponymous record, " Ain't It Fun ." This shift from emo to more conventional pop was in line with fellow bands  Fall Out Boy  and  Panic! at the Disco  did as well. Just as the scene kids were growing up as every generation of rebellious rock 'n' roll had, "Ain't It Fun" is a song about growing up and realizing that the world isn't as easy as you once thought it was. It may not be punk-rock, but it's certainly still got some emo sentimen

BadChristian started as the provocatively-titled book, Bad Christian, Great Savior , written by three friends, Pastor Joey Svenson and Emery ’s lead vocalist Toby Morrell and guitarist Matt Carter . BadChristian quickly grew into a brand--a podcast and a record label--that pushed back on the conservative, family-friendly branding of Christian entertainment that had been curated for years by Christian bookstores, radio, and other Christian media outlets. Emery began releasing their music through BadChristian. In 2018, they released their second LP on their own label, and just like Matt & Toby's edgy podcast, Eve was the most interesting conversation piece to come out of Christian Rock that year. CALL IT TRASH, I CALL IT PEARLS.  From its controversial cover (pictured above), a nude woman on her knees showing a naked buttocks, to its lyrical content addressing alcohol and drug use, profanity, lust, divinity, and homosexuality, Eve doesn't leave listeners with definitive

I haven't been keeping up with updating my playlists these days. So today, I wanted to take the opportunity to create a 2023+ playlist for Apple Music. Recall that my + playlists mean that I include songs from the previous two years, and Kye Kye's "Animal" fits that description because it was released in 2021. In the past I've only included tracks that I blogged about on these lists, but this time I will try to opt for the newer tracks. Furthermore, I'll continue to update this playlist, swapping songs. 

The Cure 's " Lovesong " peaked at number 2 on Billboard's Hot 100 in October of 1989. Hit Parade 's 2019 episode " Lost and Lonely Edition ,"  detailing the British Post-Punk movement, views this unlikely pop hit as a kind of peak of the movement that continued into the early '90s.  Of course, The Cure's commercial success came after years of songs that didn't chart and even the invention of a music chart for Alternative Rock bands, at the time called Billboard's Modern Rock Chart.  HOWEVER FAR AWAY, I WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU. When Billboard launched the Modern Rock chart in 1988, "left of the dial" college radio stations began reporting the songs that they were playing. Some of the bands included on the predecessor to today's Alternative Airplay chart were established on other charts-- U2 , Elvis Costello , Tears for Fears had mainstream rock and pop hits prior to charting on the Modern Rock chart. However, other acts like

Opening  Third Eye Blind 's  debut record  and becoming the fourth single from the record, " Losing a Whole Year " is quintessential late-'90s rock. The song chronicles the ending of a relationship between the speaker and a "rich girl." When the relationship starts to cool and as the sex stops being so great, the speaker begins to think that the whole relationship was a waste of time. Lead singer  Stephan Jenkins  penned the lyrics after hearing the riff that guitarist  Kevin Cadogan  played.  RICH DADDY LEFT YOU WITH A PARACHUTE.  Stephan Jenkins is one of the most interesting rock stars I've read about. Graduating from the  University of California, Berkeley  with a  Bachelor's Degree in English  and then going on to forming a Shakespeare-inspired rap duo called  Puck and Natty , Jenkins brought a variety of new experiences into the alternative rock scene when his new band Third Eye Blind debuted in 1997. Alternative Rock is a hard to define genre,

  In 2011, Thousand Foot Krutch announced that they would be leaving Tooth & Nail Records , releasing music independently. The band had released three LPs and re-released a reworked version of their breakthrough record Set It Off on the iconic label. Thousand Foot Krutch certainly wasn't the first band to leave the Tooth & Nail fold to become an independent artist, but doing so often was career suicide because before the 2010s, record labels served bands in marketing their music, pushing songs to radio, funding music videos, as well as a number of other promotional means of making a band as big as possible.  I DON'T THINK I NEED YOU ANYMORE. In 2008, the website Indiegogo launched. A year later Kickstarter was launched.  These websites, while not the first of their kind, helped to popularize crowdsourcing, a business venture directly funded by patrons who promise funds in exchange for a product and often recognition for funding a new product. Bands started using cro

When Eisley began their career, they were the indie band that had the opportunity to open for Coldplay on the North American leg of A Rush of Blood to the Head tour. Soon, the band "became too big" for RadioU and Christian rock radio. The only problem is that Eisley came up in a time when every major label was trying to suck up indie talent, but the indie talent rarely made it to radio. Hence these bands actually didn't keep their major label deals. YOU WON'T TAKE THE BREATH FROM THROAT. I'm sure there's a backstory to Eisley's second record, 2007's  Combinations, especially regarding lead singer Sherri DuPree-Bemis . My intention today is to tread respectfully with the dating dynamics that the Christian-adjacent indie scene, particularly as it relates to two up-and-coming bands in 2007: Eisley and Paramore  and how they are related. Both female-fronted bands had gained acclaim both in and out of the Christian circle. In 2007, Paramore had just rele

My mom didn't let me play video games unless they were educational. So I didn't grow up on Mario or Donkey Kong at home. Instead I got to play educational games like The Oregon Trail or Math Blaster . My favorite game, though, was Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego ? Despite the implausible premise of being a detective, tracking down a criminal who stole intangible cultural heritage, I loved flying around the world to fifty countries--some of which no longer exist--listening to strange music, and discovering the cultures that made the world so interesting.  IT'S GONNA TAKE A LOT TO DRAG ME AWAY FROM YOU. TOTO  is often classified as a Yacht Rock band today, a somewhat pejorative term for the smooth sounding light rock of the late '70s and early '80s. The term "Yacht Rock" actually comes from a YouTube mockumentary from the early age of YouTube. Music critic Chris Molanphey goes to great pains to define the imaginary genre in his episode of The Bridg

  I hope you've been having a nice  Vampire Weekend . Honestly, the band is one I've never gotten into, like other heady rock bands such as The National and Tame Impala . Formed in 2008, a time when vampires were all the rage, many rockers took issue with the band calling themselves a rock band, which singer Ezra Koenig addresses in an episode of Song Exploder discussing today's song, " Harmony Hall ." Part of that controversy comes from a featured interview with Koenig in The Guardian titled, "Rock music is dead, so it's more joyful to me." In the article, Koenig talks about the state of the genre as well as the band's extensive hiatus over the 2010s. ANGER WANTS A VOICE, VOICES WANNA SING. The four original members of Vampire Weekend boasted an Ivy League-educated band, leaving a critic to call them "The whitest band in the world." Ezra Koenig responded to this biting critique, saying, "Nobody in our band is a WASP." Ko

When Relient K had been together for ten years, they decided to treat their avid fans with some of their best scrapped tracks on 2008's The Birds and the Bee Sides . But the album wasn't exactly a straight b-sides project, but rather called a "double EP"--a combination of new tracks recorded for a project called the Nashville Tennis EP and their b sides spanning from their the time of their second record, The Anatomy of the Tongue in Cheek ;   tracks from out-of-print EPs; and rarities from special editions of their commercial second era, Mmhmm   and Five Score and Seven Years Ago . While a release like The Birds and the Bee Sides certainly plays into boyish Relient K wit that made the band famous, the experimental songs on the  Nashville Tennis EP show a notable shift in the band's musical output.  I FOUND MY NEW BLACK SHOES WHILE CLEANING OUT THE BONES LEFT IN MY CLOSET.  Relient K started out as three small-town friends who signed a record deal. The band had

Following the singles " Hallucinations " and " Death of Me " from the band's EP  Hallucinations ,  Pvris   released the single " Dead Weight " from the third album  Use Me .  The band has talked extensively about their new sound, moving from a conventional female-fronted rock band to, well, how would you classify Pvris? Each song on  Use Me  could fit into the genre of Alternative, one of the loosest genre descriptions today. Whether it's the programed drums, the pop hooks, the noisy guitars, or the throbbing bass, Pvris is now a rock-inspired dark pop band, or duo as of now. TAKING WINGS OFF A GODDESS.  Of course music doesn't need to be neatly classified. I spend a lot of time thinking about what gets classified as Alternative, though, and it makes me think that my definition that I coined back in the early '00s was correct. At that time, I began to see rock bands that incorporating instruments and electronic programing that had not been