NewYearsDayProject | a song a day blog

Both Taylor Swift and Adele love the album format. This love for the format made both artists resistant to streaming platforms in the mid-’10s. In 2014, Swift removed her music from Spotify to protest the platform’s payment of artists. She didn’t add her music to Apple Music until 2015 and resubmitted her music to Spotify in 2017. Adele fought Spotify to turn off the default setting of albums to be on “shuffle.” She wrote on Twitter (now X) “This was the only request I had in our ever[-]changing industry! We don’t create albums with so much care and thought into our track listing for no reason. Our art tells a story and our stories should be listened to as we intended.” IT'S NO SECRET THAT THE BOTH OF US ARE RUNNING OUT OF TIME.  In 2015, Adele was arguably one of the biggest artists. After struggling with writers’ block to follow up her 2011 breakthrough sophomore album 21 , the singer released 25 . The album was only released in stores and only the album’s singles were availab

The state of the album--a collection of tracks, unusually at least 30 minutes in length, often a minimum of 9 tracks (though that idea has certainly been challenged)--is constantly being questioned. The structure that dates back to vinyl and solidified in the CD era. Singles are nothing new, dating back to the phonograph at the end of the 19th century. In the vinyl age, singles fit on a seven--, ten-, or twelve-inch record. But in the 1960s, music markets started to focus on LPs or long-playing albums. The concept of buying a single song was foreign to me in high school when most of the music I consumed was on full-length albums and the occasional EP, a format between the length of a single and an LP.   TELL MYSELF THAT BOYS WILL BE BOYS.  Chvrches is an album-oriented band. They have released four full-length records, with the most recent being the deluxe edition of Screen Violence , the so-called Director’s Cut of their concept album. The band finally was able to tour the album in

In today’s pop scene, there are more Taylor Swift s and fewer Adele s, at least in terms of output. Yes, both artists release music in the form of full-length albums, but Swift is constantly releasing music. Adele on the other hand waits years between albums to release new music. But the modern pop artist is continually generating music for their fans. The “post-album” single is now the thing, which may or may not lead to a deluxe edition of the album you paid good money for if you still music, but probably just streamed. Two years ago, Olivia Rodrigo shook up the pop chart, bringing pop-punk to the forefront again, and then after SOUR ’s album cycle, the singer kept a low profile.  FAME FUCKER. Olivia Rodrigo returned in June with “ vampire ,” her first single after SOUR with the first single from her album GUTS , released two weeks ago. The song drew immediate comparisons to the lead single from SOUR, “ driver’s license ,” for its mellow, piano-driven tone, which was only partially

  On October 1, 2021, signs and wonders and rumors of a fourth album by international superstar  Adele  appeared around the globe. The singer has been dropping hints of a new record since 2019; however, the recording process was delayed in 2020 due to the pandemic. Adele is a relatively reclusive pop star, taking long breaks between albums and rarely offering fans singles in between. In 2020, she emerged 100 lbs lighter, flexing her acting and comedy muscles hosting  Saturday Night Live . Fans were shocked at her acting range as she wasn’t even the featured musical guest. But in true Adele fashion, the British singer kept a low profile after the comedy performance until Fall 2021. Billboards and holographic writing appeared on the Empire State Building, at the Louvre, and the side of the Colosseum among other landmarks with the number  30 .  Adele fans around the world began to speculate about the singer’s follow up to her Diamond-certified 2015 masterpiece,  25 . I KNOW THERE’S HOPE

Last Friday, Lauren Daigle returned with her first record since 2018’s blockbuster sophomore record, Look Up Child .  Daigle’s music has been featured in movies and television shows from Blade Runner 2049 to Grey’s Anatomy ,  which makes the singer stand out from other artists in her genre, Contemporary Christian Music, a genre she dominated with the number-one Christian song for sixty weeks for the crossover hit, “ You Say .” WE KNOW THE FUTURE’S BURNIN’ BRIGHT. Maybe like me, you spent a part of the ‘10s backsliding from your evangelical upbringing. Don’t worry, I’m not here to tell on you. You probably stopped listening to DC Talk and Michael W. Smith , and maybe became a “ Bad Christian ” with Emery , followed Michael Gungor ’s journey, or went full-out atheist like Underoath . Somewhere along the way, what was playing on Christian Radio sounded like a bad version of what was popular two years ago on the pop station, only mellower. Somewhere along the way, Hillsong and Bethel M

In early 2012 when  Anberlin  announced that they would be returning with an album produced by  Aaron Sprinkle , longtime fans knew that they were in for a good record. While their prior major label releases had stretched the band and had proven how versatile their sound was, the band had not produced an album that matched the lyrical and musical depth of their fan- favorite,   Cities . 2012's   Vital   took Anberlin to both familiar territory and reinvented their sound.   I CAN FINALLY FORGET A PAST YOU SAY YOU NEVER KNEW.  Vital  is a heavier album than their previous two. But, up to that point, the band did very little with electronic music.   Vital,  however, opened to the electro-heavy " Self-Starter ," complete with an autotune chorus, somewhat reminiscent of   Avenged Sevenfold 's " Lost ." In fact, many of the the tracks incorporated electronic elements. The band admits to consuming a lot of   M83   at that time.  Critics and fans both loved  Vital .

  "I~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~I. Don't want a lot for Christmas." *struggles to change the radio dial amid gridlocked holiday traffic* "There's just one thing I need" *hurry up with my damn latte! I think I'm going to die. Why the hell is Starbucks playing Christmas music in mid-October?* "I don't care about the presents" *internal Elaine monologue 'I think I'm going to die in this department store. Ma'am, why must you spray the perfume so close to my face. I can't breathe! What if the earth begins to shake and we're stuck in here forever underneath mannequins and holiday shoppers and that damn  Mariah Carey   song stuck on repeat?'* "Underneath the Christmas tree" "No" *raising a strict finger to students who should be studying in the back* "Not before Thanksgiving." "I just want you for my own/ More than you could ever know." Every year, Christmas music gets earlier and earlier.

  I was wrong about twenty one pilots , and the reason I'm willing to admit that is after I spent time with their album released last year, Scaled and Icy , I realized that this duo was much more than who I thought they were.   Mostly gone--but not entirely--are the emo rapping and trap beats that turned me off of the group when they debuted. The lyrics on Scaled and Icy, though, are emotional, and singer Tyler Joseph masterfully weaves clichés, esoteric messages for fans, current lingo, and new turns of phrase all to a funky piano/guitar groove. Scaled and Icy is in the vein of Paramore 's After Laughter , on the surface it's fun and light-hearted, but when you spend a little time with the lyrics, you're bound to discover a surprising depth. THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH THIS. I was thinking about albums of the year and how last year I didn't seem to have one. In 2019 I was obsessed with Mike Mains & the Branches ' When We Were in Love . And although I di