NewYearsDayProject | a song a day blog

A coffee-shop singer songwriter and early YouTube music creator, Caroline Glaser  (now Caroline Swon)'s breakthrough came when she auditioned and got a place on season 4 of  NBC 's talent show, The Voice . Three performances advanced her to further rounds, but she was cut on the forth round singing Ed Sheeran 's " The A Team ." After The Voice, Glaser recorded an 8-song self-titled record , from which today's song, a cover of The Outfield 's 1985 debut hit single " Your Love ," comes from.  YOU KNOW I LIKE MY GIRLS A LITTLE OLDER. Other than a 2018 single , Glaser hasn't released any recent music under her name, but rather she started releasing music under the moniker Brother Bird  and has released their first LP, gardens , last year. Also in 2018, Glaser married fellow The Voice alumni Colton Swon  of the country duo The Swon Brothers , a group that had placed third on Season 4. Caroline's voice has a soft, singer-songwriter characterist

Damn you Covid-19! Sir Elton John simply wanted to tour the world and retire. The 75-year-old legend has been making music and touring since 1962. After saying goodbye to touring, he planned to settle down with his husband David Furnish and their two children and lead a quiet, un- Elton John life—out of the spotlight. But instead of stadiums full of fans across generations singing along to John's most famous hits from the '70s to '90s, we got an album of collaborations called The Lockdown Sessions , seventeen tracks featuring a few fellow legacy acts like Stevie Wonder , Stevie Nicks, and Eddie Vader . But mostly the album contained tracks with newer artists--pop, rock, hip-hop, and country acts. IT'S A HUMAN SIGN. In some ways, I feel that this month's playlist is an April Fool's joke on my younger self. I've included mostly catchy pop songs, and my younger self would have refused to see the talent of the pop artists like Joe Jonas , Olivia Rodrigo , or E

  Opening with a the late '90s pop-rock-sounding " Tides ," Ed Sheeran 's fourth record = seems to change genres with every track. Back in October of last year, I asked the question about whether or not Ed Sheeran could successfully integrate all the musical styles he's done in the past and make a cohesive album that would appeal both broadly to all music fans and more specifically to die-hard fans. What I found today was that most of the songs individually are good. But as an album the songs don't play together save for the common themes of falling in love with his wife Cherry, the death of family members, isolation due to the Covid-19 pandemic, recovery from addiction, and the birth of his daughter Lyra.   I WANNA DRINK THAT SMILE. The eclectic mix of singles Sheeran released before the album dropped--" Bad Habits " and " Shivers " sounding similar to  ÷ 's singles and " Visiting Hours " recalling the more sentimental moods

The second single from the 2006 album Eyes Open  after the album opener and rocker, " You're All I Have ," "Chasing Cars" is the most recognized song by  Snow Patrol . The band's frontman and songwriter Gary Lightbody said that he wrote the song after sobering up after a white wine binge in the garden of producer Jacknife Lee 's cottage. Lightbody told Rolling Stone  that "Chasing Cars" is "the purest love song I've ever written. There's no knife-in-the-back twist." He stated that "all the other songs I've written have a dark edge." While the song and video for "Chasing Cars" don't have a dark side, the connotation the song has with dramas like Grey's Anatomy and One Tree Hill  certainly wields the knife so carefully left out by the songwriter.  LET'S WASTE TIME CHASING CARS. As tempting as it is to make a Bad Romance playlist or Sad Romance playlist, I've decided to make my Spotify al

In 2020, Stephen Christian released his fourth Anchor & Braille album, Tension .  When he released his third A&B project, Songs for the Late Night Drive Home in 2016, many of his fans were still mourning the disbandment of Anberlin . But starting in 2018, Anberlin had started to play one-off shows and even started touring the next year. In 2020, the band was supposed to announce a tour with Memphis May Fire and perform at several festivals. But in lieu of the pandemic, the band started a livestream concert series. While Anberlin was active, Christian released Tension, an album of the most straight-forward pop songs Christian has released to date.  TRY TO EXPLAIN YOURSELF TO A STONE WALL. Last year, I wrote about 13 love songs leading up to Valentine's Day. This year, I'm not sticking to that format, but as Valentine's Day approaches, I thought I'd make a few playlists compiling the love songs I've written about.  1. " Madness " by Anchor &a

As the music world has moved on to Adele 's next single, " Oh My God ," I wanted to revisit her first single from 30 today, simply because it's so damn catchy. The inspiration for this comes from watching Rick Beato 's reaction to the song (see the video section below). I wanted to revisit this great song since my initial post back in October . "Easy on Me" is easily  one of the best songs of last year and it has made my 2021+ and 2022+ playlists. When so many Adele haters say that all of her songs sound the same, I can't help but scream, "Are you listening to that piano?" Finally delving a little bit more into 30, the feeling is so different from her previous work. It's literary in the sense that nobody writes an album about trying to convince their young child that divorce was the right decision. GO EASY ON ME, BABY.  Rick Beato started a YouTube channel in 2016 and has had a career in music, producing and recording with bands suc

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 Patrol singe

  If you make a list of the most iconic singer-songwriters, the list would include all of Ed Sheeran 's influences. In fact, many would have had no problem putting Ed Sheeran on that list, if it weren't for his huge mainstream pop hit " Shape of You ." If it weren't for the 2017 song, Ed Sheeran would still have been a driving force in the music industry, penning verses for pop artists and singing semi-acoustic ballads and rapping a few bars here and there. Some listeners are still scarred from the repetitive chorus with its contrived masculine rhyme, so much so that they would prefer not to hear the song's follow up. It's unfortunate enough that I couldn't take songs like " Perfect " or " Castle on the Hill " seriously. And when Ed Sheeran announced that he was back on June 25th, I was less than thrilled. But last week thanks to musical algorithms, AppleMusic played " Shivers " when playing similar songs to Jax Jones ft.

This is one of the most cringe-worthy stories from my teaching experience. And of course all names have been changed. Five years ago the first grade middle school students put on a program. In Korea, first grade middle school equates to seventh grade. The show consisted of presentations for special English classes the student did that semester. Then the English singing class came to stage. A student started playing some stiff piano music and five students started singing in unison. The song was "Love Me Like You Do." Two girls took turns singing the verses and three boys awkwardly joined in the chorus. When they all sang, it reminded me of when the Peanuts kids sang "Hark the Herald Angels Sing!" at the end of Charlie Brown Christmas  and of Cartman, Kyle, and Kenny putting on a highly inappropriate South Park style musical. As Tina* (not real English name or Korean name) sang "I'll let you set the pace, 'cause I'm not thinking straight" my for