NewYearsDayProject | a song a day blog

Hurry Up, We're Dreaming contain's M83 's biggest hit, " Midnight City ." Everything on Hurry Up, is calculated to give listeners, including M83's sole member Anthony Gonzalez, the maximum amount of nostalgia. After a song-length, mood-setting intro, "Midnight City" builds on a riff for three minutes before climaxing in a saxophone solo, unheard in most music since 1988.* Track three, "Reunion," builds on layers of guitars and harmonies by one singer. This guitar-based M83 is a bit rare in their catalogue, as most of M83 is programing in synthesizers with touches of guitar here and there. But a guitar-based track is no-less nostalgic. It's that '80s chord progression heard in New Wave rockers and glam hair metal that sounded so cool to a young Gonzalez, listening to music in his bedroom growing up that bleeds into this song. The lyrics beg for a reunion with a loved one who has gone away.  A NEVER-ENDING DANCE. For today's post

If you believe in the Illuminati, Max Martin would certainly be a candidate of prestigious behind the scenes powers or principalities degenerating the minds of youth through pop music. I've talked about Martin's consistency on the pop charts when I talked about Coldplay's " Higher Power " last year. Since then I've learned a lot more about the Swedish force in the American pop charts. Martin, along with his "disciples" Shellback, Dr. Luke, and Savan Kotecha have been the go-to producers to get a pop act on the radio and charting highly. But if you want a track to go to number one, get it produced by Max Martin. Today, we're looking at one of Martin's first success stories. TELL ME WHY. Listening to "I Want It That Way" always triggers a particular funk. It's 1999 in the back of an old church van. It's middle school, and we're listening to pop radio because the conservative wave of "no music with a beat" leaders

Following up their 2013 album  Big TV , West-London-based post-punk band White Lies released their fourth album  Friends in 2016. The album continues on the band's homage to the '80s, though the synths are not always as prominent as their first and third albums. Lyrical themes deal with friendship deterioration, alienation, and loneliness, yet the ebullience of the music often disguises the sadness in the lyrics. NO, I'M NOT GOING TO BREAK YOUR HEART. White Lies started their career on a high note in the UK, but never really crossed over to the American market. The band formed in 2007 after ending an indie rock band called Fear of Flying the three member members of White Lies played in high school. In high school, the boys enjoyed listening to groups like Talking Heads and Franz Ferdinand , but with the inception of White Lies, the band claimed musical influence from Joy Division , Echo & the Bunnymen, and the Killers. The band decided to take a gap year between high

" Wonderful Christmastime " was rated as the worst Christmas song by Ultimate Classic Rock . Recorded when 37-year-old rock legend Paul McCartney was recording his polarizing second solo record, just before the disbanding of his second band, Wings , McCartney II  was a synth-pop, new wave record in a time when former Beatles fans were yelling, "stick to the classics." Recently, critics have come to understand and even praise McCartney II for its pioneering in electronic music. The intentionally simple lyrics help to draw attention to the synths and the overall Christmasy atmosphere of the song. THE CHILDREN'S CHOIR SINGS A SONG. "Wonderful Christmastime" has been covered by many artists, including Diana Ross, Demi Lovato, Hillary Duff, Jump5, Chicago and Dolly Parton, Pentatonix, Family Force 5 , Jars of Clay , Eleventyseven, and so many other artists. In 2000, the Christian Rock band Earthsuit recorded the track for Tooth & Nail Record's hol

In 2014, I wasn't listening for what was next in Alternative music. Rock music in the early '10s was disappointing me with all of the Imagine Dragons and Coldplay knock offs. When my friend, fellow music blogger Stephen Barry told me I should check out Bastille , I reluctantly did, but I didn't really listen to them. I just listened to them in passing. My music tastes at that time were: rock should be rock (i.e. Linkin Park and Anberlin ), not trying to disguise itself behind big, bright production. I don't think that way anymore. Bastille became a hit in America because of today's song. After reaching #2 on the UK pop charts, the song became a #5 hit on the Billboard Hot 100, and it topped the Alternative Songs chart. While I would love to bring you another Christmas song, today we take a break from Christmas. BUT IF YOU CLOSE YOUR EYES...  "Pompeii" is a strange pop song. It literally describes the conversation between two people about to be killed in

I've written a bit this year about how I'm a Coldplay apologist. I believe that the London-based band is very good at what they do. Though so many artists accomplish their sound, both musically and lyrically, better, there's something uplifting about a new Coldplay album. Earlier this year, I talked about the band's first single from their ninth studio record,  Music of the Spheres, " Higher Power ." The album was released on October 15 this year, but after "Higher Power" the band released the promotional single, the 10:17 track "Coloratura," which was praised by critics for its composition and production, and the second radio single "My Universe" featuring the South Korean boy band, BTS. The song shot straight to number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming the second Coldplay single to top the Hot 100, the first being "Viva la Vida." I JUST WANT TO PUT YOU FIRST .  The reviews for Music of the Spheres  were quite low. M

Dutch DJ Armin van Buuren 's sixth studio album Embrace was released in 2015. The album topped the Dutch charts and reached number 4 on the Billboard US Dance/ Electronica charts. " Heading Up High " was released as a single in February 2016. The song featured Dutch rock band Kensington . The band had formed in 2005 and had modest success in the Netherlands and Belgium. Like groups like A-ha , Scorpions , and Blindside , Kensington prefers to record songs in English rather than their native tongue. "Heading Up High" reached number 40 on the Dutch charts. It's a pop song, but it also has clear rock origins. These days, EDM has mostly ignores rock, yet 'rock bands' such as Imagine Dragons  and Coldplay have incorporated more and more electronic elements to stay relevant. The smokey, rock-vocal style of Eloi Youssef makes for an interesting dance track along with the the synthetic sounding electric guitar.  WHEN YOU'RE HOLDING ONTO ALL THAT YOU

Coldplay's nine-track, piano-driven 2014 album Ghost Stories, ends with a meditative track called "O." Following his divorce to actress Gwyneth Paltrow, vocalist Chris Martin processes the end of his relationship on Ghost Stories. In a video I referenced last month when writing about "Higher Power,"  critic Frank Furtado claims that Ghost Stories is a lyrical failure on the behalf of Chris Martin, who disguises his pain behind universal lyrical themes. Furtado goes on to claim that Martin "trades being personal for commercial viability." He goes on to state that Ghost Stories " is so sparse instrumentally that the lyrics have no where to hide." These lyrics he claims are silly at times and empty at others. And yet the sparse lyrics and instrumentation from this blue album, garnished with angel wings and dotted with stars, can be just the amount of quiet a grey day needs. FLOCK OF BIRDS...This morning I started listening to the latest episode

Turn Off the Stars was a short-lived Canadian pop-rock band. The band was often compared to Coldplay or Keane , but their often wall-of-sound guitars liken them more to Oasis or The Verve. In 2006, their self-titled debut album had one RadioU/Christian Rock hit "Please," the second track from the record. Released in the fall of 2006, this was the soundtrack to freshman year in college, which meant driving on frosty mornings to McDowell Technical Community College to obtain an Associate's Degree that (maybe) saved me $20,000. It was also the year that my family moved to Nebo, buying their first house. But this album took on a new life as it was one of my few albums I could listen to in the car without my mom complaining. So it was an album we listened to several times when we took the long drive up to New York to visit my dad's side of the family, seeing family members we hadn't seen in nearly 10 years. I'VE BEEN RUNNING WITH MY SOUL SO TIRED ABOUT YOU. &qu

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 a 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, I wo

  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 users' 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 it was Maroon 5 , for taking to the stage when the NFL was in the middle of rac