NewYearsDayProject | a song a day blog

My musical history started with hymns and classical music playing in the house, and sometimes classic and alternative rock in the garage. After going back to church, my mom stopped listening to secular music, well  contemporary secular music,  and tried to convince me that rock music was evil when I started liking the sound of it. Little by little, she started listening to modern music--first CCM, especially  Michael W. Smith 's  This Is Your Time   album because of the bagpipes. Then she started listening to music she grew up with, the soundtrack to her teenage rebellion. These were the smooth pop songs of  Hall & Oats  and  Elton John  and some rock bands like  Boston  and  Journey . MY MISSIONARIES IN A FOREIGN FIELD.  All of these songs' artists could be heard on local light rock radio stations along with contemporary hits by  Kelly Clarkson ,  Train , and of course  Coldplay . When my mom heard " Viva la Vida ," she loved it and bought the album. Soon, on lon

Alex Warren was nine years old when his father died of terminal kidney cancer. Before his passing, Warren’s dad left Alex with a love for music. Alex’s father bought his son a Fender guitar and introduced him to the music ‘90s and ‘00s groups such as Coldplay , Train , and Linkin Park . His mother’s alcoholism after his father’s death caused Alex to leave home as a teenager, even sleeping in a friend’s car for a time. Alex pursued music in the age of YouTube , Instagram , and TikTok . In 2019, he was a founding member of a teen TikTok collective called The Hype House . In 2021, he began releasing music. His first single, “ One More I Love You ” dealt with his father’s death. Warren signed to Atlantic Records in 2022 and has released music steadily while creating other content on YouTube and TikTok. THEN YOUR SHADOW GROWS LONGER ON THE GROUND. Yesterday, Alex Warren announced his debut album will be released on September 27th. You’ll Be Alright Kid (Chapter 1) will feature ten tracks

I was first introduced to  Tove Lo  when the Swedish singer appeared on  Coldplay 's colorful, ebullient record,  A Headful of Dreams . Track five's duet, " Fun ," is one of the more subdued tracks on the record. Given that my mom and even my grand-mother love  A Headful of Dreams,   I assumed that Tove Lo was also a "safe for mom" artist. It turns out that Tove Lo is a pretty sexual artist, known for flashing her breasts in concert, which to be fair, isn't as big of a deal for her European audiences. WILL MY OBSESSION PLEASE DIE.   Ebba Tove Elsa Nilsson , better known as Tove Lo, released her fifth record,  Dirt Femme ,   last year. Unlike her previous records, Lo released  Dirt Femme  independently on her own label, Pretty Swede Records . The album deals with the singer's growth over the years and her marriage to Charlie Twaddle. But the liberated singer lays down some ground rules for her marriage in the second track, " Suburbia ," in w

Pride month is coming to a close. Today, I’m posting the 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