NewYearsDayProject | a song a day blog

" Grace " was one of the first hits for the South Korean electronic indie band Adoy . The song opens their 2015 debut EP Catnip . In a recent interview with Front Row Live lead vocalist Oh Ju-hwan and keyboardist Zee talked with Rob Herrera while they were on their first U.S. tour.  The two musicians talked about their writing process in Adoy. Although Ju-hwan is the lead singer and sings in English, he is not fluent in conversation, so Zee often handles the English questions and translates the interview questions and answers. So why then, would a band choose to write their songs in a language their lead singer wasn't fluent in? WHY DON'T YOU TELL ME? At   Cornerstone 2011, the year before the festival folded, Blindside flew from Sweden to sub-headline on Saturday, July 2nd, just before Anberlin closed out the main stage. The show was incredible. The band had just released their first album since 2007's   Black Rose EP ,    With Shivering Hearts We Wait , an al

  Harry Styles ' third record Harry's House  grabs listeners with a funky '70s-Jazz-influenced track, " Music for a Sushi Restaurant ." The avant-garde production, scatting, horns, and minimal (though somewhat complexly layered in meaning) lyrics are simultaneously the most and least pop way to start a record. Harry's House is a record that jumps all over the place stylistically track to track, yet "Music for a Sushi Restaurant" is a bombastic-themed track--horns, '70s-inspired tracks--to an otherwise laidback singer. But the imagery of a girl so hot you could fry an egg on her? What a bizarre way to open an album, and possibly a little unappetizing, but I have been suffering from diarrhea for two days and everything I eat quickly leaves my body.  MUSIC FOR A SUSHI RESTAURANT, MUSIC FOR WHATEVER YOU WANT. Last month, musicologist Nate Sloan and songwriter Charlie Harding talked about the horn themes on Harry's House on their podcast Switche

Opening Third Eye Blind 's debut record and becoming the fourth single from the record, " Losing a Whole Year " is quintessential late-'90s rock. The song chronicles the ending of a relationship between the speaker and a "rich girl." When the relationship starts to cool and as the sex stops being so great, the speaker begins to think that the whole relationship was a waste of time. Lead singer Stephan Jenkins penned the lyrics after hearing the riff that guitarist Kevin Cadogan played.  RICH DADDY LEFT YOU WITH A PARACHUTE. Stephan Jenkins is one of the most interesting rock stars I've read about. Graduating from the University of California, Berkeley with a Bachelor's Degree in English and then going on to forming a Shakespeare-inspired rap duo called Puck and Natty , Jenkins brought a variety of new experiences into the alternative rock scene when his new band Third Eye Blind debuted in 1997. Alternative Rock is a hard to define genre, but it

Jennifer Lopez A.K.A. J-Lo hasn't released a full record since 2014. However, with singles, acting, activism, business endeavors, and gracing the red carpet, the now fifty-two year old cultural icon is just as relevant as ever. But in the mid-'00s, Lopez did fail to stay relevant. In 2011, she reemerged with her seventh studio record Love?  and as a judge on American Idol . In 2014, she divorced singer and father of her twins Marc Antony and released her latest record, A.K.A AND NOW, YOU'RE ON MY SKIN. In 2021, J-Lo broke off her engagement with New York Yankee Alex Rodriguez (a.k.a. Arod) and later started dating old flame, actor Ben Affleck . Affleck certainly wasn't the singer's " First Love ," but the two were engaged in 2002, but following the release of their critically-panned film Gigli and the stress of the ever-present lens of the paparazzi, the two called off their engagement. Lopez said of that the end of that relationship was her "fir

Mae 's sophomore record, The Everglow , is to this day their most beloved record. The band released the album in 2005 and rereleased it the next year as a deluxe edition with bonus tracks and a read-along booklet designed to enhance the listener's Multi-sensory Aesthetic Experience in 2006. With the band's releases of demos and two full-length records, Mae fulfilled their contract with Tooth & Nail Records . Later that year, the band signed with Capitol Records and began recording with legendary producer Howard Benson . Singularity was released in the summer of 2007 and was the only Mae record to be released on Capitol. SMOKE-FILLED CASINOS, BUT WHAT DO WE KNOW WE'LL TAKE A CHANCE.   Singularity  is a unique album for Mae as it features a rock and New Wave sound not featured on the prior records. Drummer Jacob Marshall and keyboardist Rob Sweitzer named the album Singularity based on their discussions from a book by physicist Paul Davies. Marshall said of these

They're Only Chasing Safety is an important album both in Christian music and Emo. The fourth studio record from Underoath was a reinvention of the band. First, the band's prior lead singer, Dallas Taylor , left the band while the band was on the Vans Warped Tour in 2003, touring for their third record, The Changing of Times . Between the band's third and fourth records, half of Underoath's members changed, but since 2004, the band's lineup hasn't changed. Frontman Spencer Chamberlain took Taylor's place on unclean vocals and together with drummer Aaron Gillespie on clean vocals, the two created the band's first iconic record, an album that set the standard of hard-edged Emo and screamo.   CAN YOU FEEL YOUR HEARTBEAT RACING? I've written a lot about Underoath, mostly about who they are now and how everything they are doing now is a reaction to who and what they've done. They're Only Chasing Safety is an album about six Christian young me

In 1946 George Orwell wrote in an essay titled " Politics and the English Language ": "In our age, there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia.” In my lifetime,  there seemed to be a time when we could be ambivalent toward the democratic process. We could sit in our homes on election day in good faith that the majority want the right thing or even stew in our own cynicism that the two candidates were different faces to the same policy. But look at how choice has been effaced.  A BEAUTIFUL WAITRESS WHO JUST COULDN'T MAKE IT. The third record by Irish pop-rock band Kodaline titled  Politics of Living  isn't an overt political statement, but more of a casual jab at 2018 zeitgeist. Cynical reviewers panned the record as Kodaline's attempt to enter the U.S. market. The album's production and song structures do suffer a bit from t