NewYearsDayProject | a song a day blog

Pride month is coming to a close. Today, I’m posting my Apple Music edition of my pride playlist. Kicking off this edition is Stand Atlantic with the opening track on their 2020 album Pink Elephant , “Like That.” To me this year Pride is a celebration of the way I am. I’m not against flamboyance and I think that there are years that are suited for grand celebrations. But this year, when I feel like so many people cannot understand that people like me exist, I feel like it’s important sometimes to go back to the basic explanation. That’s why I included songs like Coldplay ’s “ People of the Pride ” and Depeche Mode ’s “ People Are People .” I hope you had a great Pride month that you celebrated in your own way.  

  Fireflight became a massive Christian Rock band in 2006 when their video for the single “ You Decide ,” which featured Josh Brown of the band Day of Fire , became the most-requested video on TVU that year. The band debuted on Flicker Records after touring for years after being founded by husband and wife Glenn and Wendy Drennen in 1999. Glenn was the guitarist and Wendy the bassist of the band, and she would become the backing vocalist when the band added Dawn Michele as the group’s lead singer. The band followed up the runaway success of their debut album The Healing of Harms with Unbreakable . While Unbreakable was a success for the band, the members talked about the difficulty of making their follow-up album. Dawn Michele told Stars & Stripes making the record was “one of the most difficult times in our lives.” IT STARTS TONIGHT. Just as ForeFront Records was in search of the “more Christian” alternative to successful Christian-adjacent acts, Flicker Records signed a

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

  Listening to  Paper Route  makes me wonder, what if  Coldplay , after recording  X & Y   had continued making electronic music and honed in on their lyrics.  Paper Route has a solid pop-rock band, on par with any of their contemporaries (i.e.  OneRepublic , Coldplay), but their somewhat eccentric fidelity to their craft, recording their albums themselves in old Tennessee mansions to let the natural acoustics reverberate on the record, had cemented them as an indie rock band. " Balconies " was kind of Paper Route's first and last hit. The band's music had been featured in movies and television shows, but "Balconies" got them a late-night performance slot on  Seth Meyers . As one of the most obvious hits from their third album,  Real Emotion ,  the song was released to radio but didn't do too well on the charts. After touring to support the album, the band went on "an indefinite hiatus." However, as the band has had long gaps between albums

  In 2018, I met a young man who claimed to like “Indie music. You know, like Coldplay and Imagine Dragons ?” I hope I didn’t roll my eyes in the middle of the conversation because it was extremely hard to bite my tongue when he had just named two of the biggest bands in the world. The kid in his early twenties talking to me in my early thirties at the time did, however, remember a time when calling Coldplay indie was more accurate. My first exposure to Coldplay came in 2001 when they released their third single “ Trouble ” in America. Specifically, I remember watching the music video with my dad on MTV or MTV2. While “ Yellow ” may be the more remembered single from Coldplay’s early days, I only have recollection of hearing the song a while after hearing “Trouble.” THEY SPUN A WEB FOR ME. Coldplay formed in 1997 when the members attended University College London . After releasing two EPs and signing to Parlophone Records , the band released their debut album Parachutes in 2000 an

In 1946 George Orwell wrote in an essay titled " Politics and the English Language ": "In our age, there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia.” In my lifetime,  there seemed to be a time when we could be ambivalent toward the democratic process. We could sit in our homes on election day in good faith that the majority want the right thing or even stew in our own cynicism that the two candidates were different faces to the same policy. But look at how choice has been effaced.  A BEAUTIFUL WAITRESS WHO JUST COULDN'T MAKE IT.  The third record by Irish pop-rock band  Kodaline  titled  Politics of Living  isn't an overt political statement, but more of a casual jab at 2018 zeitgeist. Cynical reviewers panned the record as Kodaline's attempt to enter the U.S. market. The album's production and song structures do suffer a bit from

Ghost Stories was Coldplay ’s sixth studio album. The album follows Coldplay’s most avante-garde record Mylo Xyoto , an album that seemed to revel in Coldplay being one of the biggest bands in the world. But sparse was the tone of Ghost Stories. Rather than extraverted stadium anthems, melancholy piano and synth drums rule the record except for the Avicci -produced “ Sky Full of Stars. ” Lead singer Chris Martin received no vocal help from featured artists like Rihanna or JAY-Z as Coldplay’s star ascended during Viva La Vida and their previous record. While the album may have not been what audiences were expecting from the charismatic band, Martin wrote the lyrics as he healed from the  dissolution  of his marriage to actress Gwyneth Paltrow . CUT ME IN TWO. In March 2014, actress Gwyneth Paltrow and Coldplay’s Chris Martin announced that they were “consciously uncoupling.” The term was coined by author and psychotherapist Katherine Woodward Thomas , building on sociologist Dianne

Formed in 1994 first as Shrug and then as Polarbear but finally changing their name to  Snow Patrol  due to other bands by their former names, the Northern Irish band became very popular in the early '00s. Their first single " Run " was a hit in the UK. But in America, the band would become famous because of their song " Chasing Cars " when it was included in the  season 2 finale of  Grey's Anatomy .  " Chasing Cars" is the song most people know by Snow Patrol, and most wouldn't be able to associate the name with their hit song. The band continues to produce music, most recently releasing 2018's  Wildness .    TRAIN THIS CHAOS, TURN IT INTO LIGHT . If you've had time to get into Taylor's Version of  Red ,  you may have noticed a feature by Snow Patrol's  Gary Lightbody . Once the Indie Rock band became recognized, the band members started working on pop music, and Lightbody writing for  Taylor Swift  and  Ed Sheeran . The Snow P