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

Back in 2010, we learned that yes, a pickle can get more likes than  Nickelback , a band that had become the most hated  "butt rock"  band in the mid-'00s. In fact, the conclusions of the social media study found that a pickle had more likes than Oprah Winfrey or other beloved figures. It turns out that internet users' hate outweighs Internet love, or the terrible outweighs the good. In 2014, the most hated rock band would become  U2  after their release of  Songs of Innocence   was forced into every  iTunes user's library. People tried everything to scrub the songs from their shuffle. Today, people have mostly forgotten about Nickelback, and Apple Music no longer comes standard with that U2 album, so people have other musical axes to grind. Justin Bieber has grown up and is no longer blaring in our cultural continuousness. So who is the most hated band these days? After the 2019 Super Bowl,   Maroon 5 , for taking to the stage when the NFL was in the middle of ra

  Today our representative song is  Wham!' s " Last Christmas ." Maybe it's overplayed, but it's a synth-pop classic. It's the kind of song that gets stuck in your head for days, and it's okay because it's Christmastime. It's one of the signature songs of Wham!  and one of the most played songs of Christmas. It's been covered by many artists from Jimmy Eat World to  Carly Rae Jepsen  to Hawk Nelson and each cover has its merit. But today, my Christmas mix begins with the original, the band that was somewhere between cringe and critical darlings. Enjoy the mix! Listen to the mix on Apple Music.

Producer Reanna Cruz of the Switched On Pop podcast pointed out a song that was huge this summer in America, but only for a certain demographic. The song was a massive comeback by the fifty-five-year-old Australian singer Kylie Minogue who had hits in America in the late ‘80s and the early ‘00s. Last month, I covered the second single, “ Hold on to Now ,” from her sixteenth studio album Tension , but today it’s time to get a little campy and just focus on the beating of the heart and the effect music has on that heartbeat when dancing in the club as Kylie invites us in the lead single “ Padam Padam .”   I HEAR IT AND I KNOW. After a disco era, Kylie Minogue tapped into current sounds with producer LOSTBOY to craft a perfect comeback record that harkens back to her biggest hit, “ Can’t Get You Outta My Head .” “Padam Padam” is lyrically simple and straightforward. It’s a club anthem about trying to get lucky. It’s a song by a cis-gender, presumably straight woman with a hell of a lo

Music critics weren't expecting much from Carly Rae Jepsen when she released her third studio record, E-MO-TION .  Her second record Kiss contained two top-10 hits, " Good Time ," a duet with Owl City , and the number 1 song of 2012, " Call Me Maybe ." But Kiss was immature as was the lead single from E-MO-TION, " I Really Like You ." However, the parent album of the single was much more grown up than Kiss. And while Jepsen may no longer be a hit maker on the Hot 100, her fan base and critical acclaim has remained consistent since releasing her pivotal third record E-MO-TION. Today we take a look at the original track list. We'll look at the deluxe editions and bonus tracks later.    1. " Run Away with Me " is perhaps the best Carly Rae Jepsen song. It's the beginning of an adventure, even if its just a weekend trip. The music video for the song features Jepsen and her band on their off days on tour, running around the cities of Par

Kelly Clarkson 's over twenty year career since winning the first season of American Idol has made the singer one of the most successful voices in music today. Twenty years ago, her debut album Thankful debuted at number 1 on the Billboard 200 album sales charts. Clarkson was both the first Idol winner, the most successful, and the most lasting, and she has worked hard to keep her music and her overall brand in the spotlight for twenty years, doing so without much controversy. Later this month, twenty years after her debut, she will release Chemistry , her tenth studio album. TAKE ME HOME TONIGHT. Kelly Clarkson has entertained her fans with a wide-range of sounds. American Idol helped Clarkson sell the sounds she was unable to market prior to the show. She told The Guardian in 2015 that she was turned down by every record label and she was told she “sounded too black.” But with American Idol and the management she was signed to because of the show, Clarkson wasn't exactly

Today, I'm going to present an evolving list. Last year, I chose an album of the year. In 2021, it was difficult because so much music was re-releases and nothing seemed dynamic enough to be album of the year. I finally settled on Scaled and Icy by twenty one pilots, but I actually didn't listen to it much in 2021. It seemed that 2021 was a year for good music outside of my immediate band preferences. Like many music listeners, my tastes are evolving, and I'm continuing to discover or just listen to older albums, which may change today's list. However, I'm going to try to present a list of the best albums from every year that I have been alive. I get this rank based on how much I've listened to the album, rather than by critical reception. Enjoy! 1987 The Joshua Tree by U2 . This was arguably when U2 became a cultural phenomenon. The first four tracks are the biggest hits from the record. The band always tackled issues of faith and doubt, but The Joshua Tree

Carly Rae Jepsen announced the second single, " Now That I Found You " from her fourth record Dedicated as part of the promotion for the third season of Netflix 's Queer Eye . Many of the songs on Jepsen's 2019 record dealt with break ups and loneliness, much like her latest record, The Loneliest Season . The lead single and the album closer, " Party for One " deals with a love for oneself above the fleeting, divided attention from another. MY HEART'S A SECRET. While Dedicated contains songs of self-actualization and self-acceptance, many of the songs deal with sex and love. " Want You in My Room " is probably the horniest the singer has ever gotten, and still she never explicitly says what those "bad things" she wants to do to the listener. "Happy Not Knowing" is a song about willful ignorance in order to keep a relationship going. And yet some of the songs are straight-forward love songs. "Now That I Found You"

Coming to the end of the year, it's time to remember some of the musical highlights of 2022. I listened to a lot of music this year and maybe more new music than last year. But there certainly were albums that slipped under the radar. I had every intention of digging into  The Weeknd 's  Dawn FM   ,  but somehow I was never in that dark of a mood to resonate with the characteristics of that record. Today, I'm going to reveal my controversial list. Enjoy! #10 .  The Loneliest Time  by  Carly Rae Jepsen . The latest from the " Call Me Maybe " singer is a record that isn't immediately catchy and could easily fall between the cracks because of all the big releases of this year. The diverse singles showed different camera angles of a maturing pop singer who has solidified her status in music nerd-dom and gay music listeners alike. And with her first explicit labeled song, Jepsen is distancing herself from former tween-friendly aesthetic. I'm sure next year I