NewYearsDayProject | a song a day blog

Folklore   is an album without a radio single, according to Taylor Swift . However, the music industry, even with its changes in practices over the last decade and over the course of the pandemic, is still the music industry. And when one of the biggest pop stars releases an album, there better be a single to release. But what song? There was a lot of great music released and produced during lockdown. Charlie XCX , Lady Gaga , and The Weeknd had us dancing in our underwear in the living room with our old cereal bowls stacked up on the arm table (did I just confess something?). Travis Barker produced a shit-ton of music, changing rap into rock. There were a ton of lockdown concerts. For Taylor Swift, lockdown was all about reinventing herself by going back to the basics.  CHASE TWO GIRLS, LOSE THE ONE. Like when Stephen Christian  at a Cornerstone set jokingly called " Like Steps in a Dance " was the "radio hit" from Anchor & Braille 's Felt , an album that

" Cadence " was the third single from  Anberlin .  Vocalist  Stephen Christian  talks about the band overhearing him playing the song on an acoustic guitar one day. Thinking the song was too mellow for Anberlin, he thought the song would be better suited for his solo project,  Anchor & Braille , but t he band loved the song and placed it as the penultimate track on their debut record,  Blueprints for the Black Market .  The song is inspired by Christian's time in college when he roomed with his brother, Paul. The brothers talked about life, philosophy, relationships, and God, and the song was a culmination of those late night conversations. The song features some of the best drumming on the record. Before the band's  livestream  of the album  Nathan Young , who was fifteen at the time of recording  Blueprints,  tells a story about how producer  Aaron Sprinkle 's brother  Jesse , drummer of  Poor Old Lu  and later  Demon Hunter , was brought in to record drums

Stephen Christian  under the appellation of  Anchor & Braille  released their third record,  in February of 2016. Stephen Christian said in an interview that he imagines a movie scene for his Anchor & Braille projects, and the title  Songs for the Late Night Drive Home is descriptive of that movie scene. The electronic sounds imagine an urban setting--New York's " Lower East Side ," Los Angelo’s’ Silver Lake, Orlando--anywhere that, during the day cars would fill the streets. But the late night drive home is peaceful. You're in your car driving past the empty office buildings for 34:23 seconds past midnight. KISS ME LIKE YOU STILL BELIEVE.   Songs for the Late Night Drive Home is a kind of closing of the Stephen Christian electronic era, which started with Anberlin 's Vital   in 2012. In some ways, Vital was like the band had just discovered synthesizers. The band had scarcely used keys or synthesizers on their five records prior to Vital. Christian cite

There were a number of Christian extreme sports shows that featured harder Christian Rock. These shows might be featured late nights on cable tv or on Christian channels. In 2003,   Anberlin   released their first radio hit to Christian Rock radio, " Change the World (Lost Ones) ." However, around that time " Readyfuels " was included in one of those sports shows. The sport: luge racing. "Readyfuels" was the band's first promoted single by the record label. "Change the World" was sent to Christian radio. But "Readyfuels" wasn't a Christian Rock song, in the traditional sense.  GIRLS AND THE BOYS CHASE DOWN RUNNING HOT TONIGHT. “Readyfuels” is   a song that   mostly  glorifies the carnal nights of youth--a prelude to an out-of-wedlock pregnancy. Today’s song would go on to chart on even Air1 , a Contemporary Christian pop radio station. Anberlin's intention was never to be a Christian band, but unlike other Tooth & Nail

  In the welter of the ever-changing music industry, Anberlin decided to call it quits in 2013, but not before a final record, Lowborn ,  and a farewell tour. The band started to feel that they were hitting the glass ceiling of what a rock band could achieve in the 2010s. On the Your Favorite Band podcast, lead singer Stephen Christian revealed that after Universal Republic Records failed to promote radio singles from Vital , the band was able to take their record to an indie label, Big3 Records , re-releasing Vital as Devotion , a massive three-disc deluxe edition of Vital . The band formed a radio team to promote the opening track, " Self-Starter ," as a rock radio hit. But the song didn't catch on. SHUT UP AND ACTUALLY TRY. Stephen Christian   often attributes the success that the band had and that he has had in his solo career as a daily "hustle." I've written about band who debut and experience success, but Anberlin worked steadily and experienced g

On Friday, Watashi Wa released their latest record People Like People   on Tooth & Nail Records . Over the past two decades, lead singer Seth Roberts has had three bands: Watashi Wa, Eager Seas , and Lakes , but in a recent episode of As the Story Grows  podcast , he said that he feels that he will only make music with Watashi Wa from now on because all of the other monikers were basically the same band as Watashi Wa. Roberts is a collaborating force, so when the latest Watashi Wa record was announced a list of bands in the milieu of Tooth & Nail pop-punk, nostalgic listeners got even more excited about the resurrection of the sound of 2003's The Love of Life . PISSED OFF AND BLEEDING. While collaboration is one of the strongest selling points of  People Like People , Scott Fryberger from  JesusFreakHideOut.com  in a review of the album called out the band on their overselling the featured artists. Listeners are often hard-pressed to identify the featured artists. The alb

Musically, Underoath ’s most recent record Voyeurist pays homage to different points in their 25-year career. On the band’s breakthrough album, They’re Only Chasing Safety , Underoath experimented with elements not always heard in Metal. One example was including a church choir on the song “ It’s Dangerous Business Walking out Your Front Door .” According to Tim McTague on the episode of Labeled Deep Dives about today’s song “ Hallelujah ,” the Underoath guitarist said he made up a story about how the 2004 single had religious significance in order to record a youth choir in a church basement. Eighteen years later, the second song on Voyeurist prominently features a choir, this time in the chorus. But unlike “Dangerous,” Underoath had distanced themselves from the Christian music scene.  In an interview with Loudwire , Tim says that “Hallelujah” is about “struggles with everything – faith, life and so on.”  The presence of a choir on “Hallelujah” and the track’s title serve as a kin

With fans’ hearts freshly broken from the whirlwind year of 2014– when Anberlin announced their disbandment,  final album , and last world tour—lead singer Stephen Christian certainly wasn't walking away from music. First settling down in Nashville, he began exclusively writing songs for other artists. But in mid-2015 he released two Anchor & Braille tracks, " Detroit Stab " and " Fatal Flaw ." In February of 2016, Anchor & Braille released Songs for the Late Night Drive Home , the third full-length project with the lead single, " Watch You Burn " and a lyric video proceeding the album's release. I WANNA WATCH YOU CATCH FIRE. In interviews Stephen Christian has stated that Anchor & Braille projects usually reflect the style of music he's currently listening to. For the third installment, Christian talks about listening to Washed Out and M83 , which can be heard in the chill, "late-night" synth sounds of the album. Work

If you search "City of Auburn" on YouTube, you'll find several YouTube channels for city councils in various states. But today, we're not talking about any of those places, nor Auburn University, located in Auburn, Alabama. We're talking about a small Christian Rock band with about 32,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. The band comes from McKinney, Texas, and have released several EPs starting with 2014's Soul Searcher , which was a solo project of lead singer Michael James Osborn at the the time. For City of Auburn's second EP Spinning  in 2018, the band recorded with producer Matt Goldman . You may recall Goldman is especially known producing most of the Solid-State era Underoath records as well as producing a wide range of mostly Christian records from Casting Crowns to The Chariot .  I'M TAKING THE NEXT TRAIN. You may also recall that   Goldman is also responsible for recording Anberlin 's demos that garnered the interest from Brandon Ebel

Dark is the Way, Light Is a Place is a portrait of band stylistically in their element, but there is something lacking. Following Anberlin 's major label debut New Surrender , the band worked with legendary rock producer Brendan O'Brien. Critics, fans, and the band didn't like New Surrender . Critics didn't like how the album lacked cohesion. Fans didn't like how Surrender departed from the band's darker, heavier sound on fan favorites Never Take Friendship Personal and Cities . And according to the band's livestream for New Surrender, Paper Tigers , they were so busy touring and promoting their hit " Feel Good Drag ," many of the songs on their longest album were neglected live. I FEEL THE CHANGE IS HERE. Dark Is the Way, Light Is a Place  returned the band to a darker sound and would have been a more natural follow-up to Cities, but the darkness in the album comes mostly from moody instrumentals, rather than the heaviness of the guitar, bass, an

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+