NewYearsDayProject | a song a day blog

  I would argue that since   reputation ,  Taylor Swift   has made a career based on revenge. The singer-songwriter is extremely intentional and calculated when releasing new singles and albums. Last year, Swift released yet another deluxe edition of   Midnights ,  this time calling it   The Til Dawn Edition ,  featuring a new song and two remixes. When she first released   Midnights    in October of 2022, many listeners were wondering what was different about the album. It felt like   reputation  but the singer was in a steady relationship with English actor   Joe Alwyn , and everything was going great, right?   right? KARMA IS A CAT PURRING ON MY LAP.  When tabloids started reporting that Taylor Swift and Joe Alwyn had split in early April this year, the pointed lyrics of  Midnights  started to make a little more sense. Was Swift reacting to the expectations--from others or even Alwyn-- that their relationship should end in marriage? Could the singer stay in a "1950s shit"

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

When I was a Christian teenager, a book started circulating in my church youth group. Joshua Harris wrote about youth with wisdom and authority that seemed logical and categorical for every situation to the young women who read I Kissed Dating Goodbye . The book’s thesis argued that dating was a worldly alternative to the more purposeful Christian concept of courtship. Dating fueled erotic passions, which must be saved for a heterosexual marriage. Dating is casual, even preteens dates. Courtship was about vetting a marriage partner and would happen in the late teen years or early adulthood.  YOU THINK I'M PRETTY WITHOUT ANY MAKEUP ON .  Josh Harris’s I Kissed Dating Goodbye was part of a movement I’ve written about a lot: purity culture. How much this movement influenced young Katy Hudson, a pastor’s daughter in Southern California, touring with a slew of Christian rockers on the heels of her debut, self-titled album , I can only speculate what went through the 17-year-old star’s

In August 2010, Katy Perry released her seminal album Teenage Dream . While the former CCM singer had several big hits from her rebranded debut album, One of the Boys , it was Teenage Dream that solidified Perry in pop music history as the album tied with Michael Jackson ’s Bad for having the most number 1  Billboard’s Hot 100 . Teenage Dream wasn’t exactly a concept album, but many of the songs involved fantasy--romantic and sexual. But Teenage Dream wasn’t the only adolescent themed album of 2010. In April, Secret & Whisper released their sophomore record on Tooth & Nail , Teenage Fantasy . Unlike Katy Perry’s sophomore record, Secret & Whisper faded into obscurity after releasing their follow-up to  Great White Whale .   After one single, “ Warrior ” (Southern Arrowwood), was heard on Christian Rock radio, the band announced an indefinite hiatus in July 2011.  TONIGHT I TRY TO STAY AWAY FROM YOU, LADY OF NORTHERN STAR. Listening to Teenage Fantasy, listeners would be

Following up P.O.D. ’s 2003 self-titled album , Testify brings the band both back to their hard rock and reggae, while going deeper into rap rock. The video for the album’s lead single, “ Goodbye for Now ” topped MTV ’s Total Request Live . It was the band’s fourth video to top the countdown, the most by a single artist until that point. Rather than a hard rock single as all P.O.D. albums had been led with until that point, “Goodbye for Now” was a down-tempo, moody Hip-Hop track featuring an act that co-producer Glen Ballard had signed to his soon-to-be-defunct record label, Java Records . B allard suggested that Katy Perry at the end of the P.O.D. track. “Goodbye for Now” was slightly more successful than the singles from Payable on Death, but the band failed to follow up their lead single. It was also the band's last charting hit on non-Christian charts. WE TORE THIS ROOF OFF THIS MOTHER; NOW IT’S TIME TO BLOW. P.O.D. departs from Howard Benson and instead works with Glen B