NewYearsDayProject | a song a day blog

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 users' 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 it was   Maroon 5 , for taking to the stage when the NFL was in the middle

Tiffany Young , born Hwang Mi-Young  (황미영) debuted in 2007 with as a singer with one of Korea's most successful girl groups of all time, Girls' Generation . As a Korean American born and raised in California, Young spoke little Korean when she started her career as a K-pop singer. In interviews she has talked about relying on dictionaries before smartphone translators were invented and popularized. In 2016, Young released a solo EP, I Just Wanna Dance and a single " Heartbreak Hotel " featuring Korean rapper Simon Dominic . Young continued to be a part of Girls' Generation until the group's hiatus, starting in 2017, and has rejoined the group for their comeback this summer.  YOUR EYES THAT SEE THE END.  “Heartbreak Hotel” touches a subject rarely tread upon in K-pop. Sharing the name from the Elvis Presley and Whitney Houston classics, Tiffany Young's "Heartbreak Hotel" eludes to a break up after a sexual relationship. While the Elvis and Hou

Many credit the formation of Seo Taiji and the Boys in 1992 as the birth of K-pop. Singer Seo Taiji had been a member of the heavy metal group, Sinawe in '80s but decided to experiment with electronic music and choreography. Seo, in essence, started the ripple, whereas, today's boy band was part part of a forming Korean wave, or Hallyu (한류) that seems turning into more and more of a tsunami every year. The boy bands and girl groups of early '00s were known by Korean enthusiasts. Korean cinema was known by film buffs. But in 2012 when Psy's " Gangnam Style " hit the Internet, the wave officially hit everywhere. In the late '10s, BTS and other K-pop groups started placing well on Billboard's Hot 100, performing on American television shows, and featuring on American pop albums. Then in 2020, Korean director Bong Joon-ho cleaned up the Oscars with his film  Parasite  (기생충). Korean dramas, too, are part of the wave. While they haven't broken through

The lyrics on Sasha Alex Sloan 's 2020 record Only Child   will leave you emotionally wrecked upon first listen. But by no means let that stop you. Sloan is one of the most poingnat songwriters today, which is why she has been called upon to write for other pop stars including Camilla Cabello ,  Juice WRLD , Lecrae , LANY , Charli XCX , Katy Perry , P!nk , Oh Wonder , and tons more. Only Child is a perfect  Sad Girl    album, with its lyrical honesty--not necessarily telling the whole truth, but holding nothing back about the unpleasantness of reality. However, despite the heavy topics of homelessness,  conflicts with parents when growing up, divorce, and loss, Sloan seems to leave the listener with hope, showing a different perspective on the speaker's thoughts as a child and as an adult.  YOU WON'T BE THE ONE HAVING TROUBLE SLEEPING. " Until It Happens to You " is the penultimate track on Only Child  and it serves as an emotional climax for the album. Sloan expl

Forget and Not Slow Down   is   Relient K 's sixth album. The band had shifted away from " tongue-in-cheek " lyrics in previous albums and had enjoyed mainstream pop radio success as well as topping the Christian charts.   Forget and Not Slow Down , however, starts to see a shift away from the safety of the youth group, as vocalist and songwriter   Matt Thiessen 's writes about the dissolving of a  relationship with radio DJ Shannon Murphy, the   details of which Murphy shared  haven't been confirmed by the Relient K frontman, but the lyrics become clearer in the context of this interview. IT'S NOT THE END OF THE WORLD, JUST YOU AND ME.   Forget and Not Slow Down  is a breakup masterpiece, and one of the most cohesive and listenable, yet under-rated Relient K records, particularly if you don't like Relient K.  Musically, the band is joined by The O.C. Supertones and Project 86 guitarist Ethan Luck , playing on the drums for this record. The band is also

On   December 4, 2015,  Troye Sivan  released his wildly successful first LP,  Blue Neighbourhood .  Building a large Internet fanbase,  Blue Neighbourhood   peaked at #7  on the Billboard Hot 100 charts. The standard edition of  Blue Neighbourhood  contained  3 of the 10 songs from the previously released  Wild  EP . The LP, though, gave Sivan his first US Top 40 single, " Youth ." Four of the ten songs on  Blue   were singles, starting with "Wild," a remix of which was rereleased with guest vocals by Alessi a   Cara as Sivan's fourth single from the album, which was a major hit in South Korea.     TRUTH RUNS WILD.  The final single, " Heaven ," was released on October 17, 2016. The  Jack Antonoff -produced single features a second verse from fellow Australian pop star,  Betty Who . After Sivan came out in a YouTube video in August of 2013, he became an LGBTQ+ icon, as he processed his sexuality in the lyrics of his music. Part of the promotion for  B

Manchester Orchestra began as a project when lead singer Andy Hull dropped out of his Christian high school in Atlanta to study at home during his senior year. Hull grew up in a religious household ; his father and grandfather both ministers. Hull went on to form a band with musicians who had a similar faith background. But on the band’s sophomore release, Mean Everything to Nothing, Hull assesses his spiritual trauma, critiquing  mainstream Christianity in the album’s twelve songs. Similar to the work of David Bazan and Pedro the Lion , Manchester Orchestra’s  Mean Everything to Nothing is a classic in Ex-Evangelical deconstruction. DIRTY ON THE GROUND IS WHAT I NEED.  The standard evangelical teaching is that Christians and the non-Christian forces in the world are at war. There are constant temptations that try to distract Christians from their main duty in life: to worship God. Though definitions of sin vary, from a list of actions and thoughts one can do or have to an ethereal