NewYearsDayProject | a song a day blog

With the release of Found Heaven , Conan Gray has been embracing a glam rock era. Listening to his two previous studio albums, there are hints at the future Max Martin -produced third album, but the singer seems to be more comfortable with the slower lyric-driven real instrument songs. But much like the other Dan Nigro -produced artists, such as Olivia Rodrigo and Chappell Roan , the genre only appears to be a tool to help artists present themselves in their most authentic ways. It’s not a new concept in pop music and it’s becoming more and more common. Some call it the death of genre. For Conan Gray, one of those moments is on his first album Kid Krow , on the song that has been called a “bedroom pop banger,” “ Maniac .” TELL THEM YOU HATE ME AND DATED ME JUST FOR LAUGHS. “Maniac” was Conan Gray’s third single from Kid Krow. The genre seems to follow the subject matter of the song. The lyrics of the songs suggest that the speaker’s ex has been partying all night, so underneath the p

  Max Martin is one of the go-to big-budget record producers when a pop star needs a breakthrough or a comeback hit. His production style shaped the pop music in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s with his use of explosive synthesizers, vocal layering and often nonsensical lyricism. Martin’s work with Ace of Base and Backstreet Boys paved the way for his first U.S. number 1 , which hit came from Britney Spears’ “….Baby One More Time.” His production style has been imitated by many other producers to varying success, and because of his multiple collaborations,  producers he has worked with have also imitated the Max-Martin sound. Martin’s production style has developed over the decades to incorporate rock, hip-hop, and ‘80s synth pop.  I THINK YOU THINK I’M LIKE A VIRGIN. Many millennials are particularly fond of the late ‘90s/ early ‘00s sound of Max Martin productions because it reminds them of their childhood and teenage years.  Indie band MUNA experimented with the Max Martin sound o

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

MUNA ’s first two albums weren’t exactly uplifting, at least as a whole. Sure there are moments of empowerment, but the glass appears half-empty more times than not with songs about breakups and lost loves. On 2019’s Saves the World , two songs act as companions to a terrible breakup. “ Stayaway ” is an if/then song, explaining why the speaker won’t go out. She might see her old friends or the friends of her ex and might be dragged back into a bad romantic situation. “ Who ” is a song that speculates about the person who replaced the speaker. “Who are you singing about now?” Katie Gavin pleads on the chorus.   W HEN I GO OUT AGAIN… In the fall of 2021, MUNA returned with the bright duet with Phoebe Bridgers , the lead single “ Silk Chiffon ” from their third and self-titled album . While the other pre-release singles were not as hopeful as the lead single, all of them were more optimistic than the last album’s twin break-up tracks. There was, however, the album’s final single, release

  Last year, I ranked The Weeknd ’s Dawn FM as my fourth-best album of the year, right behind Underoath ’s Voyeurist . While I’d probably re-rank the list and add a few albums I missed like Lizzy McAlpine ’s five seconds flat , I still admire my fifth and fourth-placed records. Although I ranked The Weeknd and Underoath highly last year, I didn’t listen to either artist’s album very much for similar reasons. Voyeurist was a dark album dealing with drug addiction, suicide, and hopelessness. Unlike Underoath’s Christian albums, the darkness had the reprieve of light somewhere within a song or the album. However, the post-Christian Underoath offered an album so dark that I couldn’t listen to it, especially with some of the stuff that I was going through last year. Similarly, The Weeknd's Dawn FM was a beautifully crafted album, but it was too dark for me to enjoy for my mental state last year. I REMEMBER WHEN I HELD YOU. On paper, Dawn FM should have been my album of the year last ye

Yesterday, we took a deep dive into where Kesha is as a musical artist by looking at a mature work in her discography. When Wikipedia introduces Kesha Rose Serbert, she is said to be an American Singer-Songwriter, a term that signals to significant factors: 1) the singer writes songs and thus has a greater opportunity to monetize the song and 2) the singer is actually an artist, which is more important for music snob conversations. It grafts the wheat from the tares, the Lady Gaga s from the Britney Spears . But recently, I’ve been rethinking this argument, mainly because it doesn’t account for the sexism in the industry. Moreover, I’ve really started to think about how unfair my opinion has been formed about Britney Spears, particularly after watching the documentary Britney vs. Spears .  A TASTE OF YOUR POISON PARADISE. I happened to go through puberty around the time of Max Martin ’s first era of teen pop. MTV was filled with the late ‘90s sounds of boy bands, pop rock, a few Spani