NewYearsDayProject | a song a day blog

Twenty years ago, Blindside released their second major-label album, About a Burning Fire . The songs on the album helped to form the classic sound for which the band is remembered while pushing the band creatively. The album features a collaboration with The Smashing Pumpkins ’ Billy Corgan on “ Hooray, It’s L.A. ” The song “ Roads ” flirts with jazz and the song “ Shekina ” features orchestration and Swedish yodeling, molding Blindside into more than a hardcore band with a softened sound for radio potential with some of the mellowest songs in their discography. The album’s final song, though, the title track “ About a Burning Fire ,” features mostly unclean vocals similar to the band’s earlier work. Most of the songs on the album are heavy with lead singer Christian Lindskog balancing clean vocals with occasional screams The album’s lead single “ All of Us ” bubbled under the Modern Rock chart but the video was a hit on Fuse TV . The second single, “ Follow You Down ” was a hit o

East West  was a Christian hard rock band that released two albums in the early 2000s. The most successful single from their debut album  The Light in Guinevere's Garden   was the guitar ballad " She Cries ," in which the band didn't scream the lyrics. East West's two releases are between two very important releases in Hard Christian Rock:  P.O.D. 's  Satellite  and  Underoath 's  They're Only Chasing Safety . The band's follow up,  Hope in Anguish  was produced much better than  TLiGG.  The grungy sounds of slow songs and the gut-punching screams of the heavy songs met the drums, effects petals, and truly depressing lyrics--dealing with addiction, child abuse, and the music business. Four of the songs--three of the non-screaming tracks--made their way to Christian Rock radio. East West was a band that showed that they could write a hit and have a heavy album.  I COULD NEVER REALLY FIND THE ANSWERS.  Three years after the release of  Hope in Anguis

I n Western North Carolina, we had two modern rock radio stations. From upstate South Carolina there was  93.3 “ The Planet,”  an Active Rock radio station that played lots of ‘90s rock and neo-90s rock. They loved grunge and post-grunge. They played  Nickelback ,  Seether ,  P.O.D. ,  Flyleaf ,  Puddle of Mudd , and that kind of music. Then there was Charlotte’s  106.5 “The End ,” an Alternative rock station. While playing much of the same music, they also featured some newer groups, such as  Silversun Pickups ,  Thirty Seconds to Mars , and the occasional  The Almost  or  Saosin  song. The Starting Line was one of those emerging bands that was starting to be picked up on radio. The first single, “ Island ,” from the band’s third and final (latest) LP,  Direction ,  was a kind of break out for the band to mainstream alternative rock. The band had toured on their two previous albums and built up a fan base thanks to venues like the  Vans Warped Tour , but some band members grew tired o

  My Christian school took an annual mission trip in the spring to Chattanooga, Tennessee. The school had partnered with a church in the inner city that had a Habitat-for-Humanity sort of outreach. It was one of those "I feel more ministered to" type mission trips. We ended up doing a lot of grunt work for ongoing projects, but we were made to believe that we were of some use. Of course, this was before I learned that most of the churches built on mission trips overseas have to be torn down the minute the  missionaries  step on the plane because of course unskilled builders don't know how to build--but I digress. DO YOU HAVE THE TIME TO WASTE AWAY THE DAY?  One of the rules of the mission trip was that we were only allowed to listen to Christian music. It could be any genre, but it became a time for some of us to show off our CDs of the hard rock, metal, punk, and Emo-Christian records that made their way to the Family Christian bookstores. Sometimes we'd listen to Gr

  OneRepublic had finished recording their second album, Waking Up , but had two more days with the studio. But the band’s bassist/cellist Brent Kutzle told lead singer Ryan Tedder that he wanted to stay in the studio to flesh out an idea he had. That night, Kutzle wrote the band’s biggest hit from the album, “ Good Life .” Waking Up’ s singles paled in the shadow of OneRepublic’s first hit “ Apologize ,” which reached number 2 on Billboard’s Hot 100 . “Good Life,” the album’s third U.S. single, reached number 8 on the Hot 100. The album’s first two singles, “ All the Right Moves ” and “ Secrets ” failed to reach the top 10.  Besides radio play, “Good Life” was played in many television shows and commercials. This upbeat song has optimistic, sincere lyrics, making it refreshing among often negative or trite optimism in pop music. SOMETIMES THERE’S BULLSHIT THAT DON’T WORK NOW. I remember a time in the early ‘00s when so many bands and artists on the radio were Christian or Christia

Pillar ’s third studio record, Where Do We Go From Here ? , was the band’s stylistic departure from rap-rock. The Oklahoma-based Christian Rock band had begun to breakthrough with their 2002 sophomore record Fireproof , even repacking the album for the general rock market. Pillar worked with producer Travis Wyrick on all of their albums until 2009’s Confessions , and together the band and the producer whose credits include Disciple , Spoken , 10 Years , and P.O.D. crafted an undeniable Pillar sound. The differences between Pillar’s 2002 and 2004 records are mostly the difference in Rob Beckley ’s lead vocal styles. On Where Do We Go From Here?  Beckley exchanges bro-rap for melodic singing and a few well-placed screams—most notably on the lead single, “ Bring Me Down .” IT SEEMS JUST LIKE YESTERDAY. Abandoning the kitschy genre of rap-rock proved a success for Pillar. But it wasn’t just the change in vocal stylings on Pillar’s third album Where Do We Go From Here ? that served as an