NewYearsDayProject | a song a day blog

Not since Michael Jackson has an artist had five number one singles top the Billboard Top 100 chart in as quick succession as " Dynamite ," " Savage Love ," "Life Goes On," " Butter ," and "Permission to Dance" from late August 2020 to July 2021. Of course, the hit parade continued in late 2021, as a featured spot on Coldplay 's " My Universe ." The South Korean phenomenon Bangtan Boys, better known by their acronym BTS , don't seem to be slowing down anytime soon. GOT ARMY BEHIND US WHEN WE SAY SO. It's no secret that BTS's fan ARMY is strong. According to Quora, there are estimated to be anywhere between 40-60 million fans worldwide. It's because of this ARMY buying multiple copies of the groups singles that propelled the boy band to number one. Some have called this chart manipulation, mainly because of the strategic planning to buy the song, overtaking any other single that would be pushed up the charts

Director Luca Guadagnino approached Sufjan Stevens to provide narration to Guadagnino's 2018 film Call Me By Your Name and Stevens refused. Guadagnino reached out to Stevens again, but this time asking him only to provide music for the movie. Stevens accepted and provided three songs to the critically acclaimed film. He reworked a track from his 2010 album Age of Adz , " Futile Desires ," and wrote two new tracks, " Mystery of Love " and " Visions of Gideon ." The songs were used throughout the film along with classical, jazz, and early '80s music as a backdrop to the setting of Northern Italy in the early '80s.  Sandro Botticelli's The Birth of Venus I FLEW UP TO YOUR ARMS. I often think of Elaine Benes stuck in the theater with her boss J. Peterman, forced to watch The English Patient , a movie that received so much praise in the '90s. Seinfeld ' s Elaine can't stand the long, pretentious movie, despite everyone in her cir

Last year I taught a lesson on Irish music to my students. I played examples of Celtic instrumental music. I showed videos of  River Dance . I played sad songs like " The Parting Glass " and " Danny Boy ." Then I played some famous Irish artists like  Enya , U2 , and T he Cranberries . Then I played Kodaline 's " High Hopes ." When I asked my students which they like the best, they said Kodaline. But that was  kind of a stupid question for a music lover. There are times when I want to listen to Celtic bagpipes and jigs. There are times I want to go out and have fun an Irish pub and hear Celtic-punk rock. There are times I want to listen to U2, and it's certainly not the same day I want to listen to Enya, but those days happen too. But like my students, I think Kodaline's first album fits more into my everyday listening habits. BROKEN BOTTLES IN THE HOTEL LOBBY. While  In A Perfect World   is a great everyday listen, you have to be careful watc

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

You could probably derive 2000s Christian Rock and Christian Rock adjacent bands from two sources: Linkin Park and Jimmy Eat World . Falling Up was an example of how Linkin Park influenced Christian Rock. Today's example is Jimmy Eat World, particularly their 2001 hit " The Middle ." The first single released from  Never Take Friendship Personal   sees   Anberlin   remembering their poppier tracks from   Blueprints for the Blue Market ,  but taking a much more mature approach to writing the lyrics. Rather than a complaint about how " Girls speak in code " and cliches that sound a bit sexist in today's world, " A Day Late " relies on storytelling about something that could have happened in the past, and really shouldn't happen now. SO LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT... Never Take Friendship Personal  is an album all about relationships, and it was a perfect album for high school. While certainly not as big as  Fall Out Boy , I found the lyrics on  Fr

Born in 1964 to African American actress Roxie Roker and to Jewish-Ukrainian NBC executive Sly Kravitz, Lenny Kravitz built a musical career in the '90s based on Rock 'n' roll nostalgia. As a biracial rocker, Kravitz had a hard time securing a record contract with the labels telling him that he wasn't "black enough" or "white enough" for a specific genre. However, when Kravitz did become a rockstar, he was often criticized for his regressive, old-time rock sound.  I WANT TO GET AWAY. " Fly Away " comes from Kravitz's fifth album 5 . It peaked at #12 on Billboard's Hot 100 singles, and it topped the charts in several countries. The song was used in a commercial for the French-made automobile, the Peugeot 206 supermini car , making the song popular wherever the car was sold. Years later, the song would appear in the American commercial for Nissan's Xterra . And while "Fly Away" hit the airwaves in 1998, about a year be

I've talked about how Carrie & Lowell , Sufjan Steven 's 2015 masterpiece, is a quintessential portrait of dealing with grief and forgiveness when I wrote about the first two tracks, " Death with Dignity ," and " Should Have Known Better ." By the third track on the record, " All of Me Wants All of You ," explores grief in a different way from the previous two tracks. As with most songs on the album, "All of Me" appears to be deeply personal to the artist. But being personal doesn't stop this track's language from being the most obscured with allusions to geography and possibly an allegory from a little-known Spanish play. ALL OF ME THINKS LESS OF YOU.  There's a debate   on Lyrics Genius about the meaning of this song, especially surrounding the identity of the only other character mentioned by name in this song, Manelich. Is he the one the song is about? Stevens has written vaguely about homosexual attraction throughout