NewYearsDayProject | a song a day blog

Hurry Up, We're Dreaming contain's M83 's biggest hit, " Midnight City ." Everything on Hurry Up, is calculated to give listeners, including M83's sole member Anthony Gonzalez, the maximum amount of nostalgia. After a song-length, mood-setting intro, "Midnight City" builds on a riff for three minutes before climaxing in a saxophone solo, unheard in most music since 1988.* Track three, "Reunion," builds on layers of guitars and harmonies by one singer. This guitar-based M83 is a bit rare in their catalogue, as most of M83 is programing in synthesizers with touches of guitar here and there. But a guitar-based track is no-less nostalgic. It's that '80s chord progression heard in New Wave rockers and glam hair metal that sounded so cool to a young Gonzalez, listening to music in his bedroom growing up that bleeds into this song. The lyrics beg for a reunion with a loved one who has gone away.  A NEVER-ENDING DANCE. For today's post

Tears for Fear's debut, The Hurting , caused the pop-rock duo composed of Roland Orzabel and Curt Smith to look to their darker emotions to produce honest lines that were rare in popular music at that time. By their sophomore album, Song from the Big Chair, Orzabel and Smith expanded their sights on bigger issues, but the lyrics still come off as personal.  The band's most recognizable song "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" looks at greed on a personal level, which ultimately expands to an intricate, Cold War era of problems contemporary to the band's hit.  The layered sounds of the Big Chair  are quintessentially '80s, and if it weren't for the '80s renaissance that started in pop music c. 2004 which hasn't ended yet, Tears for Fears might have sounded dated. Today's song "Shout" doesn't sound old, though. It sounds retro.  I'M TALKIN' TO YOU. I didn't realize "Shout" is six and a half minutes long when I

No '80s New Wave playlist is complete without a song from  Tears for Fears . The band was a huge hit producer on a few of their albums; however, like  Third Eye Blind  in the late '90s, Tears for Fears peaked early in their career in the mid-‘80s. Their  second #1 hit , "Everybody Wants to Rule the World," is their "grocery store classic," meaning it's so popular they play it in the grocery store. "Head Over Heels" is a song about falling in love getting older and not meeting the expectations others set out for you. Sinit ger Roland Orzabel said of the song "It is a romance song that goes a bit perverse at the end." One does wonder why there's a gun and who the second verse is about. Is it him or her? Two memories are strongly connected to this song. First was the cover by Christian band  Kids in the Way . Second was the opening montage of 2001's  Donnie Darko . ONE LITTLE BOY, ONE LITTLE MAN, FUNNY HOW TIME FLIES.  Roland Orz