NewYearsDayProject | a song a day blog

As promised, here is my Top 10 list for albums of the year. It’s a bit late and I’m sure that in time, the importance of this list will change and that albums I hadn’t listened to would chart. I decided to give preference to the albums I blogged about most but I also slipped in a few that I thought would be culturally significant. There were a few cuts that I thought hurt a little, Olivia Rodrigo ’s GUTS , the Barbie: The Album soundtrack, and boygenius ’s The Record .   I wanted to include some albums that didn’t make the critics’ picks lists to give light to some underrated artists. I hope you enjoy these albums as much as I did—and am doing now. 10. The Show by Niall Horan . It’s funny how the other One Direction members have been totally eclipsed by Harry Styles . While Styles is certainly talented, and his production team has incorporated some of the most interesting elements into mainstream pop, former bandmate Niall Horan has been sadly overlooked. The Show is an album by an

  Following up their 2020  album,  Dreamland , COIN  dropped three EPs in early 2021, leading up to their full album,  Rainbow Mixtape ,  released in April. The band wrote and recorded their follow-up album after their 2020 supporting tour  for  Dreamland  was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.  Singer  Chase Lawerence  sold his house at the beginning of the pandemic and moved back to his childhood home in Virginia where he began writing music for the next record. The band recorded many songs, yet the songs didn't seem to have a theme. “We broke it down to its elementary form and felt like colors represented the lyrical and sonic themes,” Lawerence told  American Songwriter.   Each song corresponded with a color and was released on three EPs.  Red-Orange, Blue-Green,  and  Indigo-Violet  make up the three sections of the band's fourth studio album. SUNRISE IN ORBIT . Rather than telling a story, like in their 2020 song " Cemetery ," "Sprite" speaks poeti

  Let’s revisit last month’s discussion about The Album , the latest record from Jonas Brothers.  Referring back to the interview with Charlie Harding on the podcast Switched on Pop , Nick Jonas explained that the brothers wanted to put “something together that sounded like what coming to one of our shows is like.” Achieving this sound has the band leaning into the past rather than electronic elements or studio sound effects.  IT’S GON’ GET FIGURED OUT. Charlie Harding referred to the Jonas Brothers’ The Album ’s sound as “album-oriented, band-driven music,” which refers to the music of the ‘60s- ‘80s when many listeners preferred listening to albums over singles. My guess is that the experience of a Jonas Brothers show in the late ‘00s probably wouldn’t be focused on the musicality of the band, but rather the euphoric dopamine rush (for a certain demographic) of seeing the brothers performing. But with only Kevin strumming a guitar in the band’s recent videos, the “band sound” of

I was talking with my Gen X coworker earlier this year about music, and somehow Jonas Brothers came up. He asked me, as a defender of pop, if the band of brothers had ever made a good album. I thought about the question. Of course, I can’t consider the teeny-bopper music from the band’s early days. But I  could say that Nick Jonas ’ latest record Spaceman was a masterfully produced album by Greg Kurstin blending ‘80s and ‘90s R&B with contemporary electronic pop. I thought that the DNCE record was fun. I thought that “ Sucker ” was a great Ryan Tedder production and showed potential for where the Jonas Brothers could go, although Happiness Begins was a bit of a disappointment. But no, I couldn’t say that I liked any Jonas Brothers album. ROCK FOR ME TO STAND ON. But that all changed when Jonas Brothers released The Album last Friday. But being able to call this album great comes with years of breaking down some of my musical biases and hang-ups. The first is a discussion abo

In 2019, The  Jonas Brothers broke their nearly six-year hiatus and returned with first the single " Sucker ," an album titled Happiness Begins , and an Amazon documentary titled  Chasing Happiness .  The Jonas Brothers had been a massively successful band in the late '00s and early '10s, but had a niche audience of mostly teenage girls through Radio Disney and Nickelodeon  as well as a few Christian radio stations.  I'M A SUCKER FOR ALL THE SUBLIMINAL THINGS. What was the demand for the reunited Jonas Brothers? Like countless childhood stars from the Disney or Nickelodeon universe, Kevin , Joe , and Nick Jonas grew out of their tween image. Nick's solo career was the most successful of the brothers, but that success also included acting and modeling and ultimately becoming a thirst-trap for the gay community. The albums X2 and Last Year Was Complicated tackled mature material beyond anything he sang about with his brothers. Similarly, Joe found success wit

  I was wrong about twenty one pilots , and the reason I'm willing to admit that is after I spent time with their album released last year, Scaled and Icy , I realized that this duo was much more than who I thought they were.   Mostly gone--but not entirely--are the emo rapping and trap beats that turned me off of the group when they debuted. The lyrics on Scaled and Icy, though, are emotional, and singer Tyler Joseph masterfully weaves clichés, esoteric messages for fans, current lingo, and new turns of phrase all to a funky piano/guitar groove. Scaled and Icy is in the vein of Paramore 's After Laughter , on the surface it's fun and light-hearted, but when you spend a little time with the lyrics, you're bound to discover a surprising depth. THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH THIS. I was thinking about albums of the year and how last year I didn't seem to have one. In 2019 I was obsessed with Mike Mains & the Branches ' When We Were in Love . And although I di