NewYearsDayProject | a song a day blog

In 1985, Depeche Mode called their sound industrial pop. There is certainly a difference between the band’s early and later discography. When the band from   Basildon, England, debuted in 1980, they started in the new wave scene which was breaking around the world, including in America. Their earlier albums are often classified as synth pop and garnered modest hits in Britain and America.  FORBIDDEN FRUITS FOR ME TO EAT. It was the dark sounds of later Depeche Mode that gave the band their biggest hits. The band’s minor hit career in America started with 1984’s “ People Are People ,” the band’s first entry to Billboard’s Hot 100 . The song became an anti-war Soviet era anthem as well as an LGBTQ+ pride song. The band got darker on a single later in 1985 with “Master and Servant,” a song  alluding to a BDSM relationship. After “People Are People” until 1990, Depeche Mode’s singles fared better on Billboard’s newly introduced Modern Rock chart, later renamed Alternative Airplay . It was

  To say that Demi Lovato has been on a journey is an understatement. Following the singer’s 2018 overdose and rehab, the singer has been deconstructing the meaning of fame and sexual identity and where her/their story fits into those themes. Along the way the singer came out as non-binary, using they/them pronouns , but earlier this year, the singer decided to use she/her pronouns after feeling exhausted trying to educate others about the singer’s identity. But last year the signer released an album on which she processes  this journey. And of course, HOLY FVCK had its own dose of controversy. IS ANYBODY DRIVING? A cover depicting the singer lying tied up on a bed shaped like a cross and a title called HOLY FVCK caused the UK’s Advertising Standards Agency to ban the poster promoting the album and the tour. The cover of the album harkens back to ‘80s “satanic panic” metal album covers and gives listeners a preview of the musical styles the album would contain. The album cycle began

In 2021 the 2015 hit “ Wildest Dreams ” became a  TikTok   trend.  Of course this was in the middle of Swift’s massive project to release re-recordings of her studio records due to her inability to buy the rights to her original recordings. In the spring of last year, she released a massive re-recording of  Fearless , the album that propelled the then teen singer to being one of the biggest internationally-recognized music stars. Responding to the TikTok trend, Swift posted her own take on it with the  re-recorded version , despite the fact that the singer had stated that she would release her version of  Red ,  1989 ’s predecessor and the album that transitioned the singer’s style from Country to Pop, before any of her versions of songs from  1989  would be released.  SAY YOU’LL REMEMBER ME .  We’re still a few weeks away from the release of the  Taylor’s Version  of  1989 . The album officially marked  Taylor Swift  leaving Country music in full pursuit of a pop stardom that had been

Sticking with my theme this year of breaking Anberlin ’s discography into seasonal listening, I should have started last month with “ Breaking ,” the song that, for me, announced that fall is here. Yes, I first heard the song at Cornerstone when the band performed it, and I got a demo version of it on the New Surrender USB bracelet preorder, but when the album was released in September I had left for college, and I associated the new energy of the fall with that album.  The band played a recorded version of “ Two Graves ” during their August 2021 livestream Under a Dying Sun in which they performed Lowborn in its entirety. The single was released in late September that year, and the heavy rock sound gave me Halloween vibes. I decided to design the fall Anberlin playlist with the contrasting beautiful autumn days, spooky nights, and becoming more and more bleak as we approach winter. Happy listening! Listen on Spotify.

COIN has been hard at work even before the COVID-19 pandemic. Releasing the album their third studio record Dreamland in late February of 2020, the band had plans for a world tour that was quickly canceled as live music came to a halt. During this pause, the band recorded and released a three EP series based on the color spectrum, starting in September of 2020. Combined, the EPs formed the Rainbow Mixtape , released in April of 2021. But the band wasn’t finished in 2021. In September, they released the lead single to their 2022 album Uncanny Valley , “ Chapstick ," which had been called the band's most experimental track up to the release of its parent album. HEY CHERRY BLOSSOM, WHAT’S YOUR PROBLEM? In 1970, Japanese robotics professor Masahiro Mori came up with the hypothesis of  The Uncanny Valley. He proposed that as robotics developed to create more and more humanlike robots, even to the point of constructing humanlike imperfections on the robot, the more likely that peo

The state of the album--a collection of tracks, unusually at least 30 minutes in length, often a minimum of 9 tracks (though that idea has certainly been challenged)--is constantly being questioned. The structure that dates back to vinyl and solidified in the CD era. Singles are nothing new, dating back to the phonograph at the end of the 19th century. In the vinyl age, singles fit on a seven--, ten-, or twelve-inch record. But in the 1960s, music markets started to focus on LPs or long-playing albums. The concept of buying a single song was foreign to me in high school when most of the music I consumed was on full-length albums and the occasional EP, a format between the length of a single and an LP.   TELL MYSELF THAT BOYS WILL BE BOYS.  Chvrches is an album-oriented band. They have released four full-length records, with the most recent being the deluxe edition of Screen Violence , the so-called Director’s Cut of their concept album. The band finally was able to tour the album in

We're going back to Australia to visit the one hit wonder,  Divinyls  and their sexy single about masturbation, " I Touch Myself. " Rather than going in depth about the 1991 Alternative Pop-Rock hit or embarrassing myself with masturbation stories, I thought YouTuber Todd in the Shadows covered the hit on his One Hit Wonderland series and it was time to build an Apple Music version of my Sexy Singles Playlist. Whether it's campy or hot and dripping, listen responsibly!    Read “I Touch Myself” by Divinyls on Genius.