NewYearsDayProject | a song a day blog

Between their debut album  Destination:  Beautiful  and their fan-favorite sophomore record  The Everglow ,   Mae  released   Destination: B-Sides , which includes live and acoustic renderings of some of the standout tracks, songs that didn’t make it to the record, and demos that would make it onto  The Everglow .  The chorus of “ Sun ” contains the the lyrics  “Destination Beautiful,” making “Sun” like the title track of the album, and one of the the most memorable tracks in the middle of the album, and it has one of the finest melodies on the album after " Embers and Envelops " and  "All Deliberate Speed." IF YOU’RE WILLING, LET IT GO . In a 2018 two-part episode of  Labeled   (now available only to  Patreon  subscribers), Mae's lead singer  Dave Elkins  talked about the inspiration for the songs on  Destination: Beautiful . Many of the tracks had to do with a disagreement between Elkins and members of his church. Elkins wrote many of the songs, including the

Here's an update on my  Rain Mix. April is winding down and today is a dreary day. Here's a playlist to celebrate the gloomy seasons. Enjoy this playlist with a book or a hot beverage on a misty afternoon. Pretty soon it will be too hot to enjoy the rain. The songs in this playlist are loosely connected to rain. For example, today's song begins with: "Momentum is hard to gain in this kind of rain." Other songs just feel rainy. Either way, enjoy!

  Brandon Ebel said on the band’s episode of Labeled Podcast that after MxPx and the O.C. Supertones , Tooth & Nail Records ’ third biggest seller in the ‘90s and early ‘00s was Plankeye . Debuting as a punk band with lead singer Scott Silletta , the band released Spill independently in 1994 and then re-released the album after signing to Tooth & Nail Records. The band refined their sound on subsequent releases and even ventured into a mainstream Christian Rock sound on 1997’s The One and Only . The album was their best-selling record in part due to the promotion from a national tour with the Newsboys .    I LANDED THERE, YOU TOOK THE FALL. In 2002, Plankeye released Wings to Fly , a compilation of greatest hits and new recordings as a final farewell to the band. After the success of The One and Only, the band parted with lead singer Scott Silletta who founded the band Fanmail , bringing the singer back to his punk roots. Drummer Adam Ferry also left the band. Guitarist Er

  Eric Nam released his first English mini album, Before We Begin on January 18, 2019. The Atlanta-born, Seoul-based singer-songwriter was beginning a new phase in his career. Prior to Before We Begin, Nam had been busy as an entertainer in South Korea, starting with finishing in the top 5 of a Korean singing competition show and debuted his first single “ Ooh, Ooh ” in 2014. Nam has talked extensively about his experience as a first-generation Korean American who was not fluent in his parents’ language, yet became a pop star singing in Korean. Learning Korean on the fly, he was featured frequently on Korean television both promoting his music and later interviewing celebrities who came to Korea for press tours. THE GRASS IS GREEN, BUT I WISH IT WAS GREENER. Eric Nam’s dream was to be a pop star in America, yet with almost no Asians on the pop charts from his youth in the ‘90s and the ‘00s to his young adulthood in the ‘10s, he felt he couldn’t achieve his dream so he went to school

Last month , I started listing my top albums of 2023. Today, I’m going to reveal my top two albums of last year. #2 is Miley Cyrus ’s Endless Summer Vacation . I never thought that there would be a day when Hannah Montana would claim the number two best album of the year in my taste. But Endless Summer Vacation was an incredible album. The album departs from her trip into rock music from 2020’s Plastic Hearts into country-flavored pop. I’ve talked about how the single “ Flowers ” overshadowed the album. The song serves as a thesis statement to the breakup album, but the other songs emphasize the process of breaking up and the happy memories of a relationship. The songwriting is excellent, and the instrumentation on the album is superb. Cyrus’s old-soul lullaby-like post-album addition “ Use to Be Young ” pair nicely with her smoky mezzo-soprano vocals. But the album’s charm is mostly in the songs that got minimal attention, from the summer-by-the-pool guitar track two “ Jaded ” to th

The idea of a remix album has been around since the 1970s. In 1987  Madonna  released her remix album  You Can Dance , the second most-selling remix album ever after    Michael Jackson 's 1997  Blood on the Dance Floor: HIStory in the Mix.   Jennifer Lopez 's remix album  J to tha L--O! The Remixes ,  in  2002, was the first remix album to top  Billboard 's Hot 200  album sales charts.  There have been some notable rock remix records. Nine Inch Nails released  Further Down the Spiral   in 1995, remixing their classic album  The Downward Spiral.  In 2001 Limp Bizkit released  New Old Songs , which sold 500,000 copies. However, I argue that it was another platinum remix album followed by a slew of Christian Rock artists to copy their style. The band is Linkin Park and the album was  Reanimation , a reworking of their 12x platinum debut  Hybrid Theory.  HE'S IN THIS PLACE TO QUESTION WHO YOU ARE .  Reanimation  featured collaboration between rockers and underground rapper

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

  Paper Route ’s debut record Absence was mostly word of mouth from the band’s existing fan base and getting on major tours with Paramore , Mutemath , and others, despite the band being on a division of a major label. The band’s established fan base, curated through touring and social media, had already been introduced to the band’s evolving sound on the Are We All Forgotten EP released on 2008 from the folk-electronic sound of their early efforts. Absence though was full electronic progressive pop, but one that started with a hypnotic acoustic piano loop. HE STOLE AS BEST HE COULD. The disorienting intro to the song " Enemy Among Us " is a reverberated piano. In the living-room-filmed album promotional performance video (see below) shows a drum set a top the electric piano as Chad Howat plays the song. I have no idea how the band recorded the song, but Absence is an album that I would like to know more technical specifics about how they captured certain sounds. Besides w

Anberlin has been accused of being a band that listeners can identify by every song. I never thought that this criticism was fair because the band has a range of songs of different tempos and tones.  The band did, however, seem to follow an album formula, particularly in their earlier work. But in  2022, the band decided to release an EP rather than a full album. The five songs on Silverline were a little more experimental for the band than their previous work. The electronic and post-hardcore elements the band developed after their breakup were best exemplified in the singles “ Two Graves ” and “ Circles .” Even with the shock of the new Anberlin sound, I was confused when I heard the lead single from Convinced , the 2023 follow-up to Silverline. Rather than a zippy guitar riff from Joseph Milligan and Stephen Christian ’s clear vocals, “ Lacerate ” starts a little slower than many Anberlin album openers with an ambient synth. SLOW FADE, SLOW FEIGN. The first voice we hear on Conv

When  Jonezetta  released their 2006 debut record,  Popularity , they dedicated the album to their recently deceased fifth member. Keyboardist  Timothy Jordan II  took his life in 2015. Jordan had been a promising young musician from Arkansas, which had a small but notable musical scene since acts like  Living Sacrifice ,  The Juliana Theory ,  Evanescence ,  As Cities Burn , and others got their starts in the area. Jordan became a touring member of The All-American Rejects just as their career started blowing up with TV performances and bigger tours. However, just before releasing TAR released  Move Along , Jordan announced his departure and joined an up-and-coming band on  Tooth & Nail Records --Jonezetta.  Popularity  is a very dancy, upbeat album and featuring Jordan on the keys.   THESE HANDS ARE MEANT TO HOLD.  Jonezetta never memorialized Timothy Jordan in their two albums other than dedicating  Popularity  to him. However, The All-American Rejects wrote the song " Beli