NewYearsDayProject | a song a day blog

Last month,   The Japanese House   released their long-anticipated follow-up album to 2019's   Good at Falling .  The solo project of   Amber Mary Bain , The Japanese House collaborated with a number of musicians from   Bon Iver 's   Justin Vernon   and   The 1975 's   Maty Healy   and   George Daniel   to   MUNA   and   Charli XCX   on their latest project,   In the End, It Always Does .  The English singer-songwriter Amber Bain offers a hybrid between the acoustic and highly processed, like if Bon Iver recorded and produced   Joni Mitchell . It's simple. It's zen. It's nice music for a rainy or slow humid summer day. I'M STILL LOOKING OUT FOR ME.  Before releasing  In the End, It Always Does,  The Japanese House released the lead single, " Boyhood ." The instrumental direction of  In the End, It Always Does  feels less processed than The Japanese House's earlier work. Singer Amber Bain had talked about using The Japanese House to mask the per

  Shakatak  formed in 1980 in London. The jazz-funk has consisted of several changing members in their over forty-year career, but three of the key members— Jill Saward ,  Bill Sharpe , and  Roger Odel —have remained in the band throughout its run, and bassist  George Anderson  joined the band in their first year. After a few minor hits in 1980, the band scored their first major hit in the U.K., “ Easier Said than Done ,” which featured the band singing in unison with an easy instrumental line. The single also helped the group achieve international success in Australia and Europe. Subsequent releases would bring the band success in Japan and the United States as well.  YOU CAN TAKE YOUR LOVE AWAY. “Easier Said than Done” is a very simple song with a repeating verse throughout the song. After each verse there is an instrumental break featuring a funky bass and piano improvisation. It’s a song that I could imagine being played at a grocery store back when I was young and grocery stores p

The music, the legend, the meme. Today we take on  A-ha ’s 1985 summer classic, “ Take on Me .”A-ha is a Norwegian band. Their dream was to get famous in the UK before sweeping the world. To do this, like other European bands and musicians, the band decided to record all of their songs in English. However, getting a massive hit like “Take on Me” took persistent marketing. The song went to #3 in Norway before the band re-recorded it and released the single internationally. But the band’s iconic music video is the reason the song topped the Billboard Hot 100 and went to #1 in 12 other countries. TODAY’S ANOTHER DAY TO FIND YOU.  The guitar riff on “ Everybody Wants to Rule the World ” is perhaps a close second to the synth and drum opening of “Take on Me” for emerging the listener in the ‘80s. What I didn’t realize today when I was enjoying this song was how young the band was. I often think of bands that existed before my time as being forever old. And with today’s song’s heyday two yea

Berlin 's 1986 light-rock hit " Take My Breath Away " in its somewhat cheesy ascending scaled-note chorus speaks to the common human experience of falling in love with someone. The old aphorism, "Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away," speaks to the times when life surprises us so much that if the shock of the good surprise were to kill us, we would have died happy. In other words, I may feel "so happy that I could die." These moments are breathtaking, like seeing a Van Gogh in person, seeing  a beautiful woman, or experiencing a new life.   Perhaps this is what  The Weeknd  intended for his lead single from  Dawn FM ,  " Take My Breath ," but in typical  Weeknd  fashion, the video and the lyrics hint at a darker side of those breathtaking moments. YOU'RE OFFERING YOURSELF TO ME LIKE SACRIFICE.  Since   Beauty Behind the Madness   brought The Weeknd to the forefront of popular

Back in 2010, we learned that yes, a pickle can get more likes than  Nickelback , a band that had become the most hated  "butt rock"  band in the mid-'00s. In fact, the conclusions of the social media study found that a pickle had more likes than Oprah Winfrey or other beloved figures. It turns out that internet users' hate outweighs Internet love, or the terrible outweighs the good. In 2014, the most hated rock band would become  U2  after their release of  Songs of Innocence   was forced into every  iTunes user's library. People tried everything to scrub the songs from their shuffle. Today, people have mostly forgotten about Nickelback, and Apple Music no longer comes standard with that U2 album, so people have other musical axes to grind. Justin Bieber has grown up and is no longer blaring in our cultural continuousness. So who is the most hated band these days? After the 2019 Super Bowl,   Maroon 5 , for taking to the stage when the NFL was in the middle of ra

Ah! The weekend: a time when many of us can breathe that collective sigh of relief, leaving our forty hours at the office, forgetting about the boss, and maybe making some time for Number 1. Before I read into  The Weeknd ’s 2015 hit, the upbeat track reminded me of catching a fresh cup of Guatemalan iced coffee before catching a bus to meet friends for a weekend in another city. One weekend, I was in a cafe in Hongdae that was playing covers of hit songs and I heard a female version of " Can't Feel My Face " playing. I can't be sure if it was  Andie Case 's  version . However, after adding Case's version of The Weeknd's #1 hit, I think it gives an interesting, mellow take on the normally, upbeat song. It's the alternate perspectives that makes YouTube cover artists and interesting addition to your music library. SHE TOLD ME 'DON'T WORRY.  ' The Weeknd is known for his melancholy, self-destructive tunes. However, Andie Case's vibey cove

  Last year, I ranked The Weeknd ’s Dawn FM as my fourth-best album of the year, right behind Underoath ’s Voyeurist . While I’d probably re-rank the list and add a few albums I missed like Lizzy McAlpine ’s five seconds flat , I still admire my fifth and fourth-placed records. Although I ranked The Weeknd and Underoath highly last year, I didn’t listen to either artist’s album very much for similar reasons. Voyeurist was a dark album dealing with drug addiction, suicide, and hopelessness. Unlike Underoath’s Christian albums, the darkness had the reprieve of light somewhere within a song or the album. However, the post-Christian Underoath offered an album so dark that I couldn’t listen to it, especially with some of the stuff that I was going through last year. Similarly, The Weeknd's Dawn FM was a beautifully crafted album, but it was too dark for me to enjoy for my mental state last year. I REMEMBER WHEN I HELD YOU. On paper, Dawn FM should have been my album of the year last ye

Last month, The Japanese House released their long-anticipated follow-up album to 2019's Good at Falling . The solo project of Amber Mary Bain , The Japanese House collaborated with a number of musicians from Bon Iver 's Justin Vernon and The 1975 's Maty Healy and George Daniel to MUNA and Charli XCX on their latest project, In the End, It Always Does . The English singer-songwriter Amber Bain offers a hybrid between the acoustic and highly processed, like if Bon Iver recorded and produced Joni Mitchell . It's simple. It's zen. It's nice music for a rainy or slow humid summer day. I'M STILL LOOKING OUT FOR ME. Before releasing In the End, It Always Does, The Japanese House released the lead single, " Boyhood ." The instrumental direction of In the End, It Always Does feels less processed than The Japanese House's earlier work. Singer Amber Bain had talked about using The Japanese House to mask the person behind the music. I've writte

Berlin 's 1986 light-rock hit " Take My Breath Away " in its somewhat cheesy ascending scaled-note chorus speaks to the common human experience of falling in love with someone. The old aphorism, "Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away," speaks to the times when life surprises us so much that if the shock of the good surprise were to kill us, we would have died happy. In other words, I may feel "so happy that I could die." These moments are breathtaking, like seeing a Van Gogh in person, seeing  a beautiful woman, or experiencing a new life.   Perhaps this is what  The Weeknd  intended for his lead single from Dawn FM ,  " Take My Breath ," but in typical  Weeknd  fashion, the video and the lyrics hint at a darker side of those breathtaking moments. YOU'RE OFFERING YOURSELF TO ME LIKE SACRIFICE.  Since   Beauty Behind the Madness   brought The Weeknd to the forefront of popular m