NewYearsDayProject | a song a day blog

In 2017, Aaron Sprinkle released Real Life , his last release on Tooth & Nail Records . The legendary producer had released solo work sporadically since the ‘90s; however, being the go-to producer for some of the most successful bands in Alternative and Hard Christian Rock was time-consuming, and Sprinkle felt that producing great records was more successful than trying to promote a solo career. Sprinkle’s production always felt cutting-edge when he recorded, whether for Anberlin , Acceptance , Demon Hunter , Falling Up , or a host of other bands. Real Life, however, feels very 2017. Today, let's explore the album, track by track. 1. Invincible kicks off the album with that 2017 electronic sound. Featuring Poema ’s Elle Puckett contributing a spoken-word/ rap part, the song sounds nothing like what you’d expect from either artist. The lyrics seem to be the speaker coming to realize that he is not invincible. Puckett tries to convince the first speaker that he never needed to

My Christian school took an annual mission trip in the spring to Chattanooga, Tennessee. The school had partnered with a church in the inner-city that had a Habitat-for-Humanity sort of outreach. It was one of those "I feel more ministered to" type mission trips. We end up doing a lot of grunt-work for ongoing projects, but we were made to believe that we were of some use. Of course, this was before I learned that most of the churches built on mission trips overseas have to be torn down the minute the missionaries step on the plane because of course unskilled builders don't know how to build--but I digress. DO YOU HAVE THE TIME TO WASTE AWAY THE DAY?  One of the rules of the mission trip was that we were only allowed to listen to Christian music. It could be any genre, but it became a time for some of us to show off our CDs of the hard rock, metal, punk, and Emo Christian records that made their way to the Family Christian bookstores. Sometimes we'd listen to Grits be

  In 2011, Thousand Foot Krutch announced that they would be leaving Tooth & Nail Records , releasing music independently. The band had released three LPs and re-released a reworked version of their breakthrough record Set It Off on the iconic label. Thousand Foot Krutch certainly wasn't the first band to leave the Tooth & Nail fold to become an independent artist, but doing so often was career suicide because before the 2010s, record labels served bands in marketing their music, pushing songs to radio, funding music videos, as well as a number of other promotional means of making a band as big as possible.  I DON'T THINK I NEED YOU ANYMORE. In 2008, the website Indiegogo launched. A year later Kickstarter was launched.  These websites, while not the first of their kind, helped to popularize crowdsourcing, a business venture directly funded by patrons who promise funds in exchange for a product and often recognition for funding a new product. Bands started using cro

  Twenty years ago, Linkin Park released their sophomore record, Meteora . Throughout the band's career, their sound would shift to various styles of rock music, but Meteora is not much of a departure from the band's debut Hybrid Theory . The album did, however, embrace Asian musical instruments on several tracks. At the time of its release, Meteora not only debuted at number 1 on Billboard's 200 Album charts but also set the record for the most units sold in a week beating Celine Dion 's One Heart . In 2003, Nu Metal was the ruling dynasty and Linkin Park was the king of the music. I CAN'T FEEL THE WAY I DID BEFORE.  Speaking of deluxe editions, you can stream Linkin Park's 20th anniversary edition of Meteora-- 95 tracks of live performances, B-sides, and demos; some of which have been released like their Live in Texas record and some remastered tracks which had never left the vault. Personally, I don't have fond memories of this record. I thought of it

I'm not a fanatic about space, like many children, I was fascinated with the prospect of traveling to other worlds when I looked out at the sky. From learning about the  nine  eight planets from  The Magic School Bus  to watching Hale-Bopp in the late '90s night sky, the universe seemed like such an interesting place. After school it was   Star Trek: The Next Generation   reruns then to PBS for  Bill Nye the Science Guy  and  Arthur . Fast forward to February 1, 2003 (20 years ago). The space shuttle Columbia disintegrated upon re-entering the Earth's atmosphere. This grounded America's space program for two years.  YOU MADE ME CRY.  This is my memory of the attitude towards the '80s. I talked a little about this when I covered New Order 's  " World (The Price of Love), "  but my memories of the views of the '80s in the late '90s and '00s (what a time warp!) were of awkwardness, terrible hair, men in shorty shorts with hairy legs, girls in

  Today we have another offering from Falling Up ’s Captiva , the transitional record between their mainstream Christian Rock career and their dive into pure lyrical experimentation. I believe that “ Maps ” was one of the last Christian Hit Radio (CHR) singles for the band. Christian Hit Radio was perhaps the least successful Christian music genre. The genre tried to parallel Top 40 pop stations, offering a mix of Christian hip hop, pop, adult contemporary, and rock. One of the best examples of the Christian Hit Radio stations was Air1 .   While Air1 still around, it now claims to be a “Worship Radio station.” ONE LAST HOUR BEFORE THIS PLACE IS ON FIRE.  In the early ‘00s, Christian Hit Radio stations, such as Air1, served as a place where listeners could hear the heavier Michael W. Smith and Rebecca St. James songs and the calmer P.O.D. and Anberlin songs. Air1 also played pop stars like early Jonas Brothers and Jordin Sparks as well as publicly Christian general market artists

  After releasing their fourth album,  Fangs! Falling Up went independent, releasing their albums without a label and crowd-funding to produce them, starting with 2011's Your Sparkling Death Cometh . The album was further departure from their former Christian Radio rock sound, the band expounding upon strange space aesthetics and experimenting with longer song formats and delving deeper into science fiction lyrical themes.  THERE'S A STAR IN THE SKY. In 2013, Falling Up announced the follow up to Your Sparkling Death Cometh would be two records aimed to satisfy two different types of fans the band had gathered. First came Hours , a rock concept album for which lead singer Jessy Ribordy wrote and read an accompanying audiobook. The second record, Midnight on Earthship also had science fiction elements but ultimately the band pushed into their Christian Rock roots to create a spiritually-themed record. But also in 2013, the band released a Christmas record, Silver City . The Ch

Today we take another dive into Aaron Sprinkle 's 2017 record, Real Life . In a sense, Real Life was a farewell record. Sprinkle had scaled back his productions in the early '10s, only working with bands he really wanted to. Real Life is also his final record on Tooth & Nail Records . Since moving to Nashville in the ‘10s, Sprinkle began working on other musical projects outside of the Tooth & Nail world. Real Life blends trendy late ‘10s pop hooks and ‘80s/‘90s electronic sounds. MEET ME WHERE THE LIGHT GETS IN YOUR EYES. Today, I'm updating the hideous album artwork for my Aaron Sprinkle Essentials playlist on Spotify and creating an Apple Music edition. After all, it is Apple Music playlists I'm basing the Aaron Sprinkle list on-- Max Martin , Jack Antonoff , Greg Kurtsin , etc. I think Aaron Sprinkle deserves his own playlist, so here it is: 1. " Step Here " by Aaron Sprinkle. The penultimate track on Real Life feels like a '90s video game

  It's officially spooky season, so I decided to make a playlist celebrating the spookier songs I've blogged about or artists that had a spooky song. The 31 tracks that I included perhaps won't make you writhe in horror, but they have a loose connection to Halloween. Maybe there's a lyrics or a creepy video, or maybe it was just a song that I listened to a lot in October. I will post the Spotify playlist below and links to the posts and the tracks so that you can read the spooky stories behind the tracks.  1.       " Ghost " by Yellow Ostrich 2. " Closer " by Kings of Leon 3. " Unholy " by Sam Smith ft. Kim Petras 4. " I'm Pretty Sure I'm Out of Luck and Have No Friends " by Underoath 5. " Two Graves " by Anberlin 6. " Moonlit " by Falling Up 7. " Panic Switch " by Silversun Pickups 8. " Killer " by Chvrches   9. " Midnight City " by M83 10 " Edge of Seventeen "