NewYearsDayProject | a song a day blog

Last year was the 40th anniversary of Talking Heads ’ concert film Stop Making Sense . The concert film was selected as part of the United States National Film Registry in 2021. The media company A24 obtained the rights to the film, remastered it and sent the concert back to theaters globally. After Talking Heads formed in the New York punk scene in 1975, they became pioneers in New Wave and eventually predecessors of Alternative Rock artists. Their musical influence on future generations stemmed from their use of polyrhythms, diverse musical genres such as reggae, traditional African music, and contemporary composers experimenting with avant-garde and minimalism. The band amassed a strong following and rock and minor pop hits. The 1982 concert film Stop Making Sense highlights the band’s greatest hits. After the film, the band released three more albums before officially breaking up in 1991. I CAN’T SEEM TO FACE UP TO THE FACTS. On January 10th, Paramore uploaded a video to their s

  Sebastián Yatra was born in Columbia and raised in Miami, Florida, before returning to Columbia to begin his musical career. From an early age, Sebastián took an interest in music, learning piano, guitar, and voice. At the age of 12, he saw fellow Colombian singer Juanes in concert. That year, Yatra also starred in the lead role of Troy Bolton in his school’s production of High School Musical. At the age of 20, Yatra dropped out of college and returned to Columbia to pursue music. Today, Yatra is a very popular singer worldwide. All of his solo work is in Spanish. He is a voracious collaborator, teaming up with other musicians in the Latin pop world, singing a Spanish verse with an English—or in the case of Monsta X , in Korean—, or occasionally, an English verse. His d iscography varies from reggaeton to rock and many other genre experimentations. IT SEEMS THAT YOU STILL LOVE ME. Many of Sebastián Yatra’s songs are ballads, a tradition in Latin music that has fallen out of favor w

Last month , I started listing my top albums of 2023. Today, I’m going to reveal my top two albums of last year. #2 is Miley Cyrus ’s Endless Summer Vacation . I never thought that there would be a day when Hannah Montana would claim the number two best album of the year in my taste. But Endless Summer Vacation was an incredible album. The album departs from her trip into rock music from 2020’s Plastic Hearts into country-flavored pop. I’ve talked about how the single “ Flowers ” overshadowed the album. The song serves as a thesis statement to the breakup album, but the other songs emphasize the process of breaking up and the happy memories of a relationship. The songwriting is excellent, and the instrumentation on the album is superb. Cyrus’s old-soul lullaby-like post-album addition “ Use to Be Young ” pair nicely with her smoky mezzo-soprano vocals. But the album’s charm is mostly in the songs that got minimal attention, from the summer-by-the-pool guitar track two “ Jaded ” to th

January wasn't too early to start thinking about an  Endless Summer Vacation ,  at least for  Miley Cyrus . The singer's eighth studio album came out last March, and the first single, " Flowers " was dropped in January. The single builds on the theme of her last LP,  Plastic Hearts ,  and its lead single " Midnight Sky ," in which Cyrus declares "I don't belong to anyone / I don't need to be loved by you." In "Flowers," Cyrus realizes that she can buy her own damn flowers rather than accept a half-hearted gift from a lackadaisical lover. The singer's target, of course, is ex-husband  Liam Hemsworth .  WE WERE GOOD, WE WERE GOLD.  Miley Cyrus and Liam Hemsworth met on the set of the 2010  Nicholas Sparks   film adaptation  of  The Last Song   in 2009. The two dated on and off until getting engaged in 2012. They broke off their engagement in 2013 on good terms, dating other people until 2016 when they announced that they again w

  Back to our somewhat weekly countdown of the top songs of last year ranked completely unscientifically by me. Now that we’re in the top ten, these songs either have some critical acclaim or I think that they are critically underrated. These are songs that resonated with me at a time when I wasn’t particularly in the mood to digest a boygenius record--no shade to the extremely talented musicians. So sorry Phoebe Bridgers , Julien Baker , and Lucy Dacus --I hope to get into the record soon. Also, sorry for the exclusion of Sufjan Stevens and Taylor Swift . I was too sad to listen to Javelin and I just dropped Taylor’s “ I Can See Yo u” in favor of a song that was actually new in 2023. 10. “ Chasing That Feeling ” by Tomorrow X Together . I just added this song because it’s been one of my recent favorites. While K-pop girl groups FIFTY FIFTY and NewJeans and BTS soloist Jung Kook had a big year in international acclaim, I feel like TxT was a little lower-key than a few years ago