NewYearsDayProject | a song a day blog

In  Season One of  The Big Bang Theory ,  Leonard is moping after his love interest, Penny, starts seeing another man. He comes into the apartment singing Augustana 's  " Boston ,"  quite horribly. "Boston" is Augustana's biggest hit. It placed on the Billboard Hot 100 , it was a Top 40 hit, and a top 10 Adult (light rock) hit. The band formed at Greenville University , a conservative Christian college where Jars of Clay formed before them and Paper Route after them. While  the two other bands were comfortable with the Christian circuit, Augustana's lead singer, Dan Layus , talks about breaking free from the strict rules of Christian college and choosing not to be a Christian band.  BOSTON, WHERE NO ONE KNOWS MY NAME . "Boston" is not only a breakup  with a lover, but a place too. If you've never moved to a city where no one knows you, it's freeing. You possess the ability to rebuild your reputation and become whomever you want to be

Heavy metal music is quite scary to many people even without the visuals. But add the visuals and the backstory along with titles like " Raining Blood ," you've got a genre of music that's pretty great for Halloween. But then you add the macabre images of  classic acts like Alice Cooper and Ozzy Osbourne or Nu Metal giants like Rammstein or Rob Zombie , metal is horrifying. Stone Sour isn't a shock metal group, but cofounder and lead singer Corey Taylor left the band in 1997 to replace Slipknot 's original frontman, and became known for an outrageous, downright brutal stage image.  DON'T KNOW HOW MUCH TIME HAS PAST. In 2000, Stone Sour reunited, and Corey Taylor fronted both Stone Sour and Slipknot concurrently. While Slipknot released some of their heaviest music, Stone Sour had radio rock singles. The band released their debut self-titled album in 2002 with the single " Bother ," which was on the Spider-Man soundtrack , though Corey Tayl

Stephen Kellogg   parted with his band,   The Sixers , in 2012. Though the band doesn't consider themselves right-wing, they were named the “Armed Forces Entertainer of the Year” in 2010. Kellogg continues to play for the troops and raises money for St. Jude's every holiday season. His last album with the Sixers,   Gift Horse  is a treasure of Northeastern folk rock tunes, delving into topics of family, love, religion, and existential dread.  HIS RANTS COULD BE CONTAGIOUS.   In a concert clip, Stephen Kellogg describes " Charlie and Annie " as his memories from middle school during a time he didn't feel very safe. The song talks about an ill-fated romance between alcoholic Charlie, who shows his kindness just enough to partially redeem himself through the singer. He's a victim of his addictions, though the singer doesn't let him off the hook. Annie is a beautiful woman who had quite the past before she got tied down by "Charlie and motherhood." C

Let's take a look at one of my favorite fall albums, Copeland 's 2005 sophomore record In Motion . I consumed the first three Copeland albums around the spring and summer between senior year and college.  I think that Beneath Medicine Tree was on sale at Best Buy  so I picked it up maybe around April. Then I picked up In Motion in the summer and Eat, Sleep, Repeat in the late autumn. I always associate Copeland albums with the seasons in which I listened to them. And like the brown leaves on the album cover of In Motion, I'd like to talk about a short memory with each song.   1. " No One Really Wins ." The album opens with grungy guitars, a sound that Copeland would soon abandon in later albums. The song also sets the album up with a spiritual theme--the fight between "heart and mind" and "grace and pride." The message of the song is to "change if you want, but don't . . . change for me" which was something very different fro

Listening to Michael Stripe and Peter Buck talk, I couldn't place R.E.M.  as southerners from Georgia. The Netflix   Song Exploder 's episode on " Losing My Religion " wasn't the first time I had heard R.E.M. talk about their music; however, I was both intrigued and put off by Michael Stripe in the extended interview. He is perhaps one of the most articulate rock stars I've ever heard speak; however, I picked up on an underlying arrogance when he talked about this song. According to most accounts, the band recorded  Out of Time  using the mandolin as kind of a throw-away record before they returned to more conventional writing approaches. The band chose "Losing My Religion" as the lead single, thinking that it wouldn't chart or that it would just be a minor hit. The band would quickly record more material and go on charting in the lower regions of the Rock Charts. However, "Losing My Religion," despite its unconventionality became a n

A short lived indie-rock band from Dallas, Texas,  The New Frontiers  released one full-length album on  The Militia Group  in 2008 before calling it quits the following year. Their album  Mending   was produced by  Matt Goldman , the Atlanta-based producer known for heavy-hitting bands, like Underoath , The Chariot ,  As Cities Burn . Goldman, however, isn't exclusively a hard rocker. Working as the drummer of the Christian Rock band Smalltown Poets , Goldman's early production credits include Luxury , Copeland , and Casting Crowns . The New Frontiers' mellow folk-rock album,     Mending  drew critical acclaim from Paste and Daytrotter. The band contributed the track "Mirrors" to the the 2008 Cornerstone Festival digital mixtape along with many other indie rock acts who performed at the festival. "Mirrors" deals with coming to terms with an inescapable realization of who one is by "mak[ing] peace with the world." TURNED 22 WHEN YOU WERE FOUND

In 2015,  Sufjan Stevens released his saddest album. The songs on  Carrie & Lowell   give listeners insight into the folk singer's upbringing and his process of dealing with the grief of losing an abusive parent. Stevens' mother Carrie had passed away in 2012 from cancer, and " Death with Dignity ," the album opener, finds the lyricist struggling for the words to tell the story. He says "I don't know where begin," showing how something deeply personal is hardest to talk about. The song structure is unique in that there is no chorus, but rather five verses--this is a fact I never noticed in all the times I listened to the song before I wrote about it last year. "Death with Dignity" is best in the context of the entire album, but if you don't have the time to dive into the depths of sorrow like a mourner's kaddish, the song is a sweet twinge of sadness to throw into an otherwise happy playlist.  AMETHYST AND FLOWERS ON THE TABLE. I w