NewYearsDayProject | a song a day blog

In December 2022, I opened up my Instagram one morning as I often did after my 5 a.m. alarm. There was a post from mikemainsmusic, who hadn’t been very active on social media. Mike Mains and the Branches hadn’t released an album since 2019 and had only released a few singles between 2020 and 2021. In the post, Mike Mains wrote about his suicide attempt in 2021. He wrote: “1 year ago today I attempted to take my life. I am here because of my wife Shannon.” He went on to say that we wrote the post “to encourage those who’ve danced with this dark devil.” After his suicide attempt, he wrote that he “bought a one way ticket to the desert to get help.” DARLING, MY HEART IS FULL OF REGRET. After talking about his suicide attempt, Mike Mains told fans that he and the Branches would return with new music in 2023 and tour dates. Mains also talked about how his sobriety contributed to his mental healing after his suicide attempt with the Bringin’ It Backwards Podcast In June, Mains released

  Closing 2019's heart-wrenching  When We Were in Love ,  " Swamp " perhaps sums up   Mike Mains & the Branches ' third album in a single song: love, depression, and religion. Like the songs " Breathing Underwater " and " Around the Corner ,"    Mike Mains   gave an intimate insight into his writing process on   Labeled . Mains talked about earlier   Tooth & Nail   releases from   mewithoutYou   and   As Cities Burn ,     which helped to inspire him to write darker Christian songs and push the genre of Christian Rock lyrically to open an honest conversation about mental health, depression, and questioning one's faith. YOU HAD ME AT MERLOT.  "Swamp" is the conclusion and the title-bearer of the album. Mike Mains asks his wife, bandmate Shannon Briggs Bolanowski -Mains, "Do you remember when we were in love?" On the  Labeled  podcast interview, Mains talks about "Swamp" being about a fear that his wife were

  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