NewYearsDayProject | a song a day blog

A fan of the funk/disco band  Chic , producer  Bob Ezrin  convinced  Pink Floyd  to include a disco beat backing what would become their only number 1 hit in their career. Ezrin also convinced the band to release the song as a radio single, something the band had been against on previous albums as they wanted their songs to be understood in the context of their greater work. The band had been a psychedelic pop act in the '60s and had done radio, but they felt their artistic concepts were too big for the casual listeners. Classic Rock radio remembers a Floyd that never was, playing tracks from  Dark Side of the Moon   until  The Wall ,  but perhaps without the commercial success of " Another Brick in the Wall ," radio would have forgotten the band.   TEACHERS LEAVE THEM KIDS ALONE.  Recorded with school children singing "We don't need no education" and despised by British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, "Another Brick" is the ultimate protest song

The last week I've been sick. The doctor says it's just allergies and put me on a ton of meds that have me really sleepy. It feels like a cold, but I've been powering through my hell schedule. So today, I decided to make a playlist of songs that I want to listen to when I'm sick. It's an on-going playlist and it also eats up a post as I'm adjusting my algorithm (a Google Sheets document I use for determining the song of the day). Please enjoy!

I take this blog seriously. Maybe a little too serious at times. I want to share the music that I want others to care about as passionately as I care about it. But sometimes we have to remember that music can just be fun. And stupid. That's why I'm updating my Foolish Mix from last April Fools day, this year featuring the bizarre electro-dance hit, "The Fox" (What Does the Fox Say?) by Ylvis. This will be an ongoing list of strange songs that don't usually make my regular format. Enjoy!  

Jars of Clay ' s funky third record, If I Left the Zoo , was produced by Dennis Herring , which took the band in a different direction than their previous two records. Herring had also produced This Desert Life by Counting Crows the same year as If I Left the Zoo, which influenced the direction of Jars of Clay's 1999 record. In the new millennium, Herring produced some of the biggest records for Modest Mouse , The Hives , Ben Folds , and Mutemath .  YOU'RE ALL I'M LIVING FOR. Jars of Clay, however, wanted to return to their acoustic roots on their fourth album,  The Eleventh Hour . The band had tried to work with Herring again, but the producer was unable to schedule sessions with the band. Thus Jars of Clay again self-produced their record like they did for their eponymous record. The lead single from The Eleventh Hour , " I Need You ," was written during recording sessions for If I Left the Zoo, but fit better on the band's fourth record. The song see

  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

Today, we have another offering from our Lorde and Saviour, Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O'Connor, aka "the prettier Jesus." In January, we talked about the opening track on Solar Power , " The Path ," in which Lorde claims not to be, well a lord for her fans and followers. By the next track, the titular track, however, Lorde points to " Solar Power " but admits that she is "like a prettier Jesus." The answer to the singer's problems lies in the sun and ultimately in nature. NO SHIRT, NO SHOES, ONLY MY FEATURES. "Solar Power" was the summer anthem that never caught on.  Lorde released her third record Solar Power  at the end of the second summer (winter for New Zealand) of the pandemic, 2021, with the titular lead single coming out on June 20th before the record's release on August 20th.  It's hard for me to distinguish time during the pandemic, and each nation dealt with the pandemic differently, completely shattering any s

In 2019, The  Jonas Brothers broke their nearly six-year hiatus and returned with first the single " Sucker ," an album titled Happiness Begins , and an Amazon documentary titled  Chasing Happiness .  The Jonas Brothers had been a massively successful band in the late '00s and early '10s, but had a niche audience of mostly teenage girls through Radio Disney and Nickelodeon  as well as a few Christian radio stations.  I'M A SUCKER FOR ALL THE SUBLIMINAL THINGS. What was the demand for the reunited Jonas Brothers? Like countless childhood stars from the Disney or Nickelodeon universe, Kevin , Joe , and Nick Jonas grew out of their tween image. Nick's solo career was the most successful of the brothers, but that success also included acting and modeling and ultimately becoming a thirst-trap for the gay community. The albums X2 and Last Year Was Complicated tackled mature material beyond anything he sang about with his brothers. Similarly, Joe found success wit