“INVU” by Taeyeon, Monday, September 30, 2024

Tomorrow I will be changing formats. This is the beginning of the end of The NewYears DayProject as I have started to focus my writing time in a different direction. I will still make playlists and write about songs from time to time. However, I feel like my blog has stagnated and gotten away from my main purpose: enjoying music and exploring how it connects to my life. I will keep posting on this platform until I decide on another. I'm getting a little fed up with how Blogger is stuck in 2014 and the HTML formatting has not been fun. Ultimately, I am starting this new adventure out of envy. I envy the talent of writing and I want to pursue it. Ultimately, I have come to a crossroads: either I continue to pursue research-based "Song a Day" posts which are very time-consuming or I focus on my creative writing. I may settle back on a research-based approach in a different format. But ultimately, I realized that I wasn't writing very well. All of my posts are so quickly researched and written. I give myself two hours a day to write, but it doesn't seem like enough to publish quality content. So starting tomorrow, I will go back to the basics: Playlists. I want to work harder on my playlists to capture an ideal year in life. And then, I'll write about it publically or I'll write about something else. I hope you have enjoyed my blog so far. It's not over yet. It's just realizing its purpose better. 



 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"Photograph" Ed Sheeran, Saturday, February 3, 2024 (updated repost)

Image
  Before " Shape of You ," Ed Sheeran was known primarily as a singer-songwriter. His albums + and X took clear influence from The Beatles , Carole King , Elton John , James Taylor , and the ballad writers of yesteryear. But he had a knack for throwing in a few rap bars along the way. With every record, Sheeran gained more acclaim. His sophomore record produced the mega Billboard #2 hit , " Thinking Out Loud ," which won two Grammys including Song of the Year. The final single from the album, " Photograph " was written in collaboration with Snow Patrol 's Johnny McDaid . Sheeran drew inspiration from his long distance relationship with singer/songwriter Nina Nesbitt (the featured musician on Kodaline ’s acoustic version of “Brand New Day” ). The two spent five months apart. They would eventually break up, but the song remains a gem on Sheeran's second best-selling record.  LOVING CAN HURT . "Photograph" was the song that introduced m
Read more

“Teenage Dream” by Katy Perry (reworked post), Tuesday, February 27, 2024

Image
When I was a Christian teenager, a book started circulating in my church youth group. Joshua Harris wrote about youth with wisdom and authority that seemed logical and categorical for every situation to the young women who read I Kissed Dating Goodbye . The book’s thesis argued that dating was a worldly alternative to the more purposeful Christian concept of courtship. Dating fueled erotic passions, which must be saved for a heterosexual marriage. Dating is casual, even preteens dates. Courtship was about vetting a marriage partner and would happen in the late teen years or early adulthood.  YOU THINK I'M PRETTY WITHOUT ANY MAKEUP ON .  Josh Harris’s I Kissed Dating Goodbye was part of a movement I’ve written about a lot: purity culture. How much this movement influenced young Katy Hudson, a pastor’s daughter in Southern California, touring with a slew of Christian rockers on the heels of her debut, self-titled album , I can only speculate what went through the 17-year-old star’s
Read more

"All of Me Wants All of You" (Helado Negro Remix) by Sufjan Stevens, Sunday, February 27, 2022

Image
I've talked about how Carrie & Lowell , Sufjan Steven 's 2015 masterpiece, is a quintessential portrait of dealing with grief and forgiveness when I wrote about the first two tracks, " Death with Dignity ," and " Should Have Known Better ." By the third track on the record, " All of Me Wants All of You ," explores grief in a different way from the previous two tracks. As with most songs on the album, "All of Me" appears to be deeply personal to the artist. But being personal doesn't stop this track's language from being the most obscured with allusions to geography and possibly an allegory from a little-known Spanish play. ALL OF ME THINKS LESS OF YOU.  There's a debate   on Lyrics Genius about the meaning of this song, especially surrounding the identity of the only other character mentioned by name in this song, Manelich. Is he the one the song is about? Stevens has written vaguely about homosexual attraction throughout
Read more