NewYearsDayProject | a song a day blog

In 2021  The War on Drugs  returned after four years with their critically-acclaimed album,  I Don't Live Here Anymore .  The title track and lead single features indie pop group  Lucius  as backing vocals on the chorus.  Like their previous works, such as  A Deeper Understanding    (2017) and    Lost in the Dream   (2014),  The War on Drugs is able to play two chords back to back for six minutes and create a song that you never want to end. Those two chords create a warm cadence that's like a bonfire on a cold fall night. And that's reason enough to curl up with a blanket and enjoy The War on Drugs all day long. A CREATURE VOID OF FORM. In addition to producing their own music, The War on Drugs has also produced two seasons of a podcast titled Super High Quality Podcast . The second season is a four-part documentary about how the band wrote and recorded their fifth record. In addition to the band "talking shop" and sharing their demos and jam sessions, listeners

In 2020,   Taylor Swift   released a documentary titled   Miss Americana   which talked about her music up to the release of 2019's   Lover .  While Swift's country music past and her latest ventures with   Folklore   and   Evermore  certainly can touch on  Americana ,  if you placed Taylor Swift's CD leaflets on a table next to   Lana Del Rey 's and asked anyone on the street to which lyricist better embodied the dictionary.com definition of "things associated with the culture and history of America," Lana Del Rey would probably be crowned the real "Miss Americana." But being the real, unrecognized "Miss Americana" can be just as problematic as the tainted past of the great country. Lana Del Rey is no stranger to controversy or acclaim. She is a polarizing star on the pop charts (when she chooses to release a hit) and pop culture.  Sometimes called regressive to feminism, Lana Del Rey has been cancelled more times than most celebrities. Ye

  In every small town to major city in South Korea, there are private karaoke rooms called  noraebang  (노래방). These are used by everyone from middle school students escaping the stress of studying for exams to middle-aged office workers, pressured into going out and drinking with their boss. Since I've been in Korea, I've heard them mentioned in American TV shows or movies in major cities; however,  noraebang  culture is much more permeated in Korean culture than karaoke is in America. So what is sung in these karaoke rooms? You can spend hours browsing the song selection from old Korean throat music (트롯), a kind of old-timey, often disco-sounding music that Korean ajoshis or ajumas (아주씨, 아줌마), or middle-aged people, love. There are K-pop songs throughout the ages and international songs like Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Spanish, and of course English pop, rock, and traditional songs. When you go to a  noraebang,  you select the song you want to sing and the lyrics appear on

March 15th was the Ides of March, the day when Julius Cesar was stabbed. I realized that I didn't celebrate   Casimir Pulaski Day   (March 1st, also a   Sufjan Stevens   song), nor did I celebrate Pi Day with a song about circles on Tuesday, nor am I posting a St. Patrick's Day song today, but I thought that it would be fun to analyze Stevens's most ironic song of all, in which he states to his fans that he doesn't want to be their "Julius Caesar... [nor their] personal Jesus." The pairing of the two figures I found fascinating because in Dante's   Inferno  we meet Judas (betrayer of Christ), and Brutus and Cassius (betrayers of Caesar) in the deepest layer of hell, tortured by Satan himself. Beware indeed the Ides of March. I DON'T WANT TO BE THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE.  Just when we thought we firmly established Sufjan Stevens as a folk singer, perhaps an heir to Woody Guthrie or Gordon Lightfoot , he goes and makes an electronic album. While the

  Today we take another dive into my #1 album from last year, Tyson Motsenbocker 's Milk Teeth , specifically a song that seems unmatched with the other tracks, " Hide from the World ." The song breaks up the musical themes established in the first four tracks. But "Hide from the World" adds a whimsical guitar chords and equally whimsical lyrics. Then it's back to the serious musical tone by track six, " UC Santa Cruz ." I WANT TO HANG IN SNOOPY'S DOG HOUSE AND HE SHOULD BE THERE TOO. Unlike   the other songs on Milk Teeth, in "Hide from the World" Tyson Motenbocker chooses easily accessible references. On other tracks, Motsenbocker references locations, alcohol brands, bands, and uses vocabulary that merit a Genius annotation. But with the exception of extremely sheltered evangelical or ex-vangelical kids particularly with the Harry Potter reference on "Hide from the World" most listeners quickly assimilate the meaning that

The self-identified sad-girl Sasha Alex Sloan made a "mad record" in 2022. There was a podcast I listened to reacting to Sloan's EP  Self-Portrait .  While the podcasters enjoyed the EP, they hoped that Sloan would never make a full-length record. She did  Only Child   is a heart-breaking masterpiece, but it pulls back from the gut-wrenching, sometimes mean-spirited lyricism of her EPs. On last year's  I Blame the World ,  Sloan is caustic as ever. So, this record may not resonate with you. The title track " I Blame the World " is probably the most catchy, but the other songs are worth a listen. Emo surely is alive in 2022.   WHY TALK TO GOD IF I AIN'T GOT PROOF HE'S EVEN THERE?  When I counted down my favorite albums of last year, Sasha Alex Sloan's I Blame the World was my seventh favorite record, which is code in my blog for I didn't listen to it that much. I think that Sloan writes better when she's more sad than angry. There are cer

  Two years ago, I wrote about  Key 's mini album  Bad Love .  I decided to reformat my original post as track-by-track, a kind of home for the songs on this record, should I write about the record at a later date. While SHINee has been the singer's main gig, Key has managed to release music every year as a solo artist. Bad Love is my favorite of his efforts. So today, let's look at this retro-electro-pop EP by the fashionista from Daegu. 1.  " Bad Love ."  The title track reminds listeners of  Lady Gaga 's 2009 hit " Bad Romance ," speaking about the toxicity of a relationship that may have started under good intentions, but devolved into something toxic. The music video feels like a futuristic vision from the '80s, in other words, looking futuristic but dated with '80s technology.  2. "Yellow Tape"  builds on the theme of entering relationships cautiously. 3. "Hate that..."    a duet with Taeyeon,  was also released as