NewYearsDayProject | a song a day blog

It was a rainy summer break during my Freshman year of college. I was still driving my '91 Toyota Corolla, and that was the summer that I binged the first three  Copeland  albums. It started with 2003's  Beneath Medicine Tree ,  the indie/rock concept album about love and loss. About a month later I bought, 2005's  In Motion ,  which was a little more musically diverse. The next year's  Eat, Sleep, Repeat ,  was closer to musical theater than rock. Each Copeland album had its own unique mood. Today's song, " Coffee ," comes from  Beneath Medicine Tree,  which is the most immature of the Copeland albums. Lyricist and singer  Aaron Marsh  was fine-tuning his craft at writing sappy love songs, and this album's lyrics tended to be a little too over the top. The song " Coffee " appears as track 9, with a story as cliche as they get--two small-town kids falling in love while talking all night at the diner. The brief brush drum solo toward the end s

On the  first season of the  Labeled Podcast ,  Aaron Marsh  talked about his writing process for  Copeland 's debut album,  Beneath Medicine Tree . In early 2019, he returned to the podcast to talk about the band’s latest album,  Blushing . If most listeners casually picked up the two records, forgivably, they'd assume they were listening to different bands.  Beneath  is a guitar-driven product of late '90s/early '00s emo rock. The album has mostly an optimistic tone.  Blushing  is a dark electronic-influenced album with darker lyrics. Marsh told  Labeled  host  Matt Carter  that rather than writing lyrics that are easily pinned to real people, like his ex-girlfriend Paula (in the song " When Paula Sparks ") he doesn't "want to write songs about [his] private life." He says, instead, "I want to write poetic songs about my private life." The band's fourth album,  You Are My Sunshine ,  does just that. Listeners don't know the

  It was a rainy summer break during my Freshman year of college. I was still driving my '91 Toyota Corolla, and that was the summer that I binged the first three  Copeland  albums. It started with 2003's  Beneath Medicine Tree ,  the indie/rock concept album about love and loss. About a month later I bought, 2005's  In Motion ,  which was a little more musically diverse. The next year's  Eat, Sleep, Repeat ,  was closer to musical theater than rock. Each Copeland album had its own unique mood. Today's song, " Coffee ," comes from  Beneath Medicine Tree,  which is the most immature of the Copeland albums. Lyricist and singer  Aaron Marsh  was fine-tuning his craft at writing sappy love songs, and this album's lyrics tended to be a little too over the top. The song " Coffee " appears as track 9, with a story as cliche as they get--two small-town kids falling in love while talking all night at the diner. The brief brush drum solo toward the end

  The list of albums turning 20 this year makes me feel really, really old. Earlier this week, I covered the youth group classic The Beautiful Letdown . Anberlin released their debut record Blueprints for the Black Market , which also made a huge impact on my teenage life. But then there were albums that came out that year that I didn’t listen to until later. I had known Copeland from their first low-budget video “ Walking Downtown ,” but it wasn’t until their third record, Eat, Sleep, Repeat , that I started listening to the band. The spring of ‘06 when I was about to graduate from high school I started buying Copeland’s CDs, picking them up on discount if I could from Best Buy. The first two records were perfect late spring/summer listening.  I AM STARVED FOR HER ATTENTION . Copeland’s Beneath Medicine Tree has the most delicate lyrics of all Copeland records. The loose concept of the album deals with the death of lead singer Aaron Marsh ’s grandmother and the hospitalization of h

Tracking the career of Aaron Marsh reveals a musical diversity rarely seen in artists today. Educated at a performing arts high school, Marsh learned horns and strings. He went on to form Copeland , which was a guitar-based rock band in their early days, taking influence from groups like Gin Blossoms and post-grunge bands. The band's trajectory strayed from rock to experimental electronic music, and Marsh took on other musical ventures, featuring on several projects for bands like Underoath and Anberlin and producing other artists, such as The Myrid, Anberlin , and This Wild Life .   I FOUND YOU DARKER THAN THE SKY ABOVE. In 2017, Marsh provided the sung chorus on the politically-charged Propaganda track, " Cynical ," a song that lambastes American Christian white nationalism. However, a month before Propaganda's Crooked Ways was released, Aaron Marsh released a new project,  Rabbit in the Snare ,  with indie rapper Ivan Ives under the moniker The Lulls in Traf

On the first season of the  Labeled Podcast , Aaron Marsh talked about his writing process for Copeland 's debut album, Beneath Medicine Tree . In early 2019, he returned to the podcast to talk about the band’s latest album, Blushing . If most listeners casually picked up the two records, forgivably, they'd assume they were listening to different bands. Beneath is a guitar-driven product of late '90s/early '00 emo rock. The album has mostly an optimistic tone. Blushing is a dark electronic-influenced album with darker lyrics. Marsh told Labeled host  Matt Carter that rather than writing lyrics that are easily pinned to real people, like his ex-girlfriend Paula (in the song " When Paula Sparks ") he doesn't "want to write songs about [his] private life." He says, instead, "I want to write poetic songs about my private life." The band's fourth album, You Are My Sunshine , does just that. Listeners don't know the deep sense of

On the first season of labeled , Aaron Marsh talked about his writing process for Copeland 's debut album, Beneath Medicine Tree . In early 2019, he returned to the podcast to talk about the band’s latest album, Blushing . If most listeners casually picked up the two records, forgivably, they'd assume that they were listening to different bands. Beneath is a guitar-driven product of late '90s/early '00 emo rock. The album has mostly an optimistic tone. Blushing is a dark electronic-influenced album with darker lyrics. Marsh told Labeled host  Matt Carter that rather than writing lyrics that are easily pinned to real people, like his ex girlfriend Paula (in the song " When Paula Sparks ") he doesn't "want to write songs about [his] private life." He says, instead, "I want to write poetic songs about my private life." The band's fourth album, You Are My Sunshine , does just that. Listeners don't know the deep sense of loss, i