NewYearsDayProject | a song a day blog

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

New Order  formed in 1980 after the three remaining members of the post-punk band  Joy Division  lost their lead singer  Ian Curtis  to suicide. Success wasn't instant for New Order with the start of the new band. New Order's sound was distinct from Joy Division's with the inclusion of keyboardist  Gillian Gilbert  and a growing penchant for synthesizers and electronic dance music. The band's breakthrough success came prior to the release of their second record,  Power, Lies & Corruption   with the release of their long-play (12") single " Blue Monday ," which took dance clubs around the world by storm, and even helped to fund the band's own dance club in Manchester called The Haçienda, a dance club named after the word for a Spanish plantation.   I SEE A SHIP IN THE HARBOUR.  New Order spent time in the clubs in New York listening to the latest disco prior to recording their sophomore album  Power, Lies & Corruption.  According to lead singer

Republic was the end of an era for New Order . The band’s popularity was at its peak after scoring hits in America even outside of the dance hall. But it was an album that the band didn’t want to make. According to then-bassist Peter Hook , the band’s music club in Manchester, The Haçienda, was in dire financial straits, and the band’s record label Factory Records threatened to go bankrupt. The band members’ funds were tied up in Factory Record and the finances of the club were also entwined. However, bassist Hook and lead singer Bernard Sumner were “at the point in the relationship where you hate each other’s stinking guts.”   BREAKING IS A CRIME. Republic was released in 1993 and charted the best of all New Order’s albums on the Billboard album charts . The band went on a five-year hiatus after playing the Reading Festival in August, and New Order’s millennial records were nothing like the height of their popularity in the late ‘80s to early ‘90s.  The album artwork for Republic ha

Manchester Orchestra began as a project when lead singer Andy Hull dropped out of his Christian high school in Atlanta to study at home during his senior year. Hull grew up in a religious household ; his father and grandfather both ministers. Hull went on to form a band with musicians who had a similar faith background. But on the band’s sophomore release, Mean Everything to Nothing, Hull assesses his spiritual trauma, critiquing  mainstream Christianity in the album’s twelve songs. Similar to the work of David Bazan and Pedro the Lion , Manchester Orchestra’s  Mean Everything to Nothing is a classic in Ex-Evangelical deconstruction. DIRTY ON THE GROUND IS WHAT I NEED.  The standard evangelical teaching is that Christians and the non-Christian forces in the world are at war. There are constant temptations that try to distract Christians from their main duty in life: to worship God. Though definitions of sin vary, from a list of actions and thoughts one can do or have to an ethereal

New Order formed in 1980 after the three remaining members of the post-punk band Joy Division lost their lead singer Ian Curtis to suicide. Success wasn't instant for New Order with the start of the new band. New Order's sound was distinct from Joy Division's with the inclusion of keyboardist Gillian Gilbert and a growing penchant for synthesizers and electronic dance music. The band's breakthrough success came prior to the release of their second record, Power, Lies & Corruption with the release of their long-play (12") single " Blue Monday ," which took dance clubs around the world by storm, and even helped to fund the band's own dance club in Manchester called The Haçienda, a dance club named after the word for a Spanish plantation.   I SEE A SHIP IN THE HARBOUR. New Order spent time in the clubs in New York listening to the latest disco prior to recording their Power, Lies & Corruption. According to lead singer Bernard Sumner , the mu

At this point, you probably know a little about the story of how a song from 1985 became a number 1 hit in 2022 thanks to being featured in a key scene in the Netflix series Stranger Things . When one of the biggest shows on Netflix returned in May after nearly a three-year hiatus, a key scene featured the opening track to Kate Bush 's fifth record Hounds of Love , " Running Up That Hill" (A Deal with God) . The song never topped the charts during its original promotion, peaking at number 3 in the UK in 1985, and was even banned in some European countries for mentioning God in the song. Today, you'll hear countless covers of the song and hear it in TikTok and Instagram videos constantly. UNAWARE I'M TEARING YOU ASUNDER. Kate Bush is a name I should have been more aware of given how influential the singer-songwriter is on modern electronic dance music and modern pop. I think I first came across her name as influence when reading the music section of Attitude se

For as legendary as  New Order  and the band's predeceasing band Joy Division are today, it's interesting to see how long it took for the the band to enjoy the fruits of their labor. While Joy Division's " Love Will Tear Us Apart " has been featured in so many period pieces leading us who weren't alive back then to think that Joy Division was omnipresent, it seems that Joy Division is actually way more popular today than back then. That being said, Joy Division wasn't an obscure band, with the song being a #13 hit in the UK and charting on the dance chart in the States. So why was New Order's success slow? I FEEL FINE AND I FEEL GOOD. Reforming as a New Order following the suicide of Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis , New Order's early discography was far less commercial than their later work. New Order was a jam band, and in the '80s, synthesizers were all the rage. But while many New Wavers started to kowtow to the pop radio--cutting their s

I really hate to keep pushing reposts, but right now my life is in boxes, and I'm slowly unpacking them. No this isn't purely metaphor. I moved and then school started and there hasn't been much time to dig into the stories behind my songs. So today, I'll share a dusty old memory I shared last year.  Buried under twenty years of dust in my parents garage lies an old Yamaha keyboard. It was my dad's Christmas present to my mom in the mid-90s. This model came with 100 recorded instruments, 100 styles of drum beats, everything from foxtrot to metal, and 25 or so recorded songs. It was a pretty typical family keyboard, but it kept me entertained for  years . Although I started playing guitar at the age of 12, I had spent a long time messing around on that keyboard trying to make music. I loved playing the keyboard but hated how fake the instruments sounded. Strings, brass, woodwinds--all sounded like the vegetarian version served at camp meeting tasted. Still, that keyb

Written by Bob Dylan , yet often remembered as The Jimi Hendrix Experience's biggest radio hit, "All Along the Watchtower" is one of the biggest songs in rock music. Dylan's songwriting earned the 2016 Nobel Prize in literature. The cryptic lyrics of today's representative song, taking inspiration from Isaiah 21:5-9 , have been speculated to be about everything from a conversation between Dylan and Elvis Presley to an allegory for the Vietnam war or the apocalypse. Maybe it's because of Forest Gump    but the guitar solo on Hendrix's version of  "All Along the Watchtower" feels like a zeitgeist soundtrack to the chaotic '60s--a time of war, drugs, assassinations, and Civil Rights.  "THERE MUST BE SOME WAY OUT OF THIS." "All Along the Watched Tower" deserves its own post, and may get a lengthened post next year; however, today, I'm sharing a playlist in honor of the late, great Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. There are 17+

Since I’m on the subject of family, I thought I would share another memory. Buried under twenty years of dust in my parents garage lies an old Yamaha keyboard. It was my dad's Christmas present to my mom in the mid-90s. This model came with 100 recorded instruments, 100 styles of drum beats, everything from foxtrot to metal, and 25 or so recorded songs. It was a pretty typical family keyboard, but it kept me entertained for years . Although I started playing guitar at the age of 12, I had spent a long time messing around on that keyboard trying to make music. I loved playing the keyboard but hated how fake the instruments sounded. Strings, brass, woodwinds--all sounded like the vegetarian version served at camp meeting tasted. Still, that keyboard played such a crucial role for music in my life.     WHEN I WAS A VERY SMALL BOY. I got my first taste of synthesizers from my keyboard. I learned about the Orchestra Hit . It was the sound used in the hits by Britney Spears , Backstreet

Republic was the end of an era for New Order . The band’s popularity was at its peak after scoring hits in America even outside of the dance hall. But it was an album that the band didn’t want to make. According to then-bassist Peter Hook, the band’s music club in Manchester, The Haçienda, was in dire financial straits, and the band’s record label Factory Records threatened to go bankrupt. The band members’ funds were tied up in Factory Record and the finances of the club were also entwined. However, bassist Hook and lead singer Bernard Sumner were “at the point in the relationship where you hate each other’s stinking guts.”   BREAKING IS A CRIME. Republic was released in 1993 and charted the best of all New Order’s albums on the Billboard album charts . The band went on a five-year hiatus after playing the Reading Festival in August, and New Order’s millennial records were nothing like the height of their popularity in the late ‘80s to early ‘90s.  The album artwork for Republic has