NewYearsDayProject | a song a day blog

When We Were in Love covers a wide range of topics. Most of the songs are love songs in which Mike Mains reminisces about falling in love with his wife and bandmate Shannon Mains. A few of the songs mention God and religion, but mostly in the way that a country song would. However, the most notable tracks on the album deal with Mike Mains' battles with depression and his marital problems. The songs most explicitly dealing with those topics are " Breathing Underwater " and " Swamp ." Today's song, "Around the Corner"thematically matches with "Breathing Underwater" and "Swamp," though it doesn't seem to be an "in the moment account" of a depressive episode. Instead, Mains is reflecting on his experience, and hoping to give hope to his listeners.  WITH HEAVEN’S MANSION OUT OF REACH.  There are two sides to this song. Though I believe that ultimate message is one of hope, Mains doesn't belittle the depressed exper

I'm a music snob. I'll admit it. That snobbery can make it take a long time for me to come around on some bands or artists who I dismiss as phonies. Sometimes I never come around to an artist. Sometimes that group becomes one of my favorites. Then there's Imagine Dragons , a band I have one of the most complicated relationships with. I could write a pros and cons list that would fill a blog post or twenty about this band. But instead of talking about how sickeningly synthetic most of their albums taste, how much I want to exit the conversation when someone says something like "I really like indie bands like Coldplay and Imagine Dragons," or the good points about how the band deals with faith deconstruction or champions LGBTQ+ rights, I'd like to talk about how one mediocre got stuck in my head today. Imagine Dragons' lead singer  Dan Reynolds performing live I WANNA PUT YOU IN THE SPOTLIGHT.   I watched the music video for “ Follow You ” last year shortly

Hearing IU always reminds me that spring is on the way. Commonly called South "Korea's Sweetheart," the 30-year-old singer-songwriter and former teen singer, born Lee Ji-eun (이지은), explains the meaning of her stage name as "You and I become one through music." Today's song comes from her 2014 EP of covers of folk/rock ballads made popular in the '80s and '90s, A Flower Bookmark . The song was written by Kim Chang Wan and originally recorded with his punk-rock band Sanulrim (산울림, meaning Mountain Echo ), which was a hit in 1984. Kim also is featured on the IU cover version. Although the IU version was not released as a single, it was featured in an SK Telecom commercial and was often played in cafes, grocery stores, and everywhere in Korea in 2014 and still today. The original version was used in the zeitgeist drama Reply 1988 (음담하러 1988)   SADNESS BLOOMS AS COSMO FLOWERS AT THE TRAIN STATION. Today I'll present my final Romantic Mix  version

The second single from the 2006 album Eyes Open  after the album opener and rocker, " You're All I Have ," "Chasing Cars" is the most recognized song by  Snow Patrol . The band's frontman and songwriter Gary Lightbody said that he wrote the song after sobering up after a white wine binge in the garden of producer Jacknife Lee 's cottage. Lightbody told Rolling Stone  that "Chasing Cars" is "the purest love song I've ever written. There's no knife-in-the-back twist." He stated that "all the other songs I've written have a dark edge." While the song and video for "Chasing Cars" don't have a dark side, the connotation the song has with dramas like Grey's Anatomy and One Tree Hill  certainly wields the knife so carefully left out by the songwriter.  LET'S WASTE TIME CHASING CARS. As tempting as it is to make a Bad Romance playlist or Sad Romance playlist, I've decided to make my Spotify al

Leagues has long since broken up. Lead singer Thad Cockrell has a solo project. He appeared on Jimmy Fallon  with The Roots after the late-night host Shazam -ed one of Cockrell's songs while he was at a hardware store. " She Kissed Me " appears on the deluxe edition of Leagues's debut, You Belong Here . Unfortunately, the songs on the deluxe edition do not appear on streaming services. Thanks to iTunes Match , I can enjoy this song whenever I want. The overwhelming '60s wall of sound can build in my AirPods, baptizing me with the sweet guitars of Tyler Burkum and the falsetto of Cockrell, anytime I want. I WAS TAKEN BY THE LUXURY. The problem is what about everyone else? I'm left with this gap in my main-feed playlists for Spotify and Apple Music. Fortunately YouTube has several live performances of this song, so 1/3 of the problem solved. Last year, when I researched this song, I realized it was a cover of The Crystals' " Then He Kissed Me ,&quo

Spencer Chamberlain didn't grow up in a Christian home, but became a Christian, influenced by his step brother who was a pastor. Chamberlain's conversion story was a perfect marketing tool for the Christian music industry: a young man who struggled with mental health and substance abuse turns to Christ and makes rock music about how God helped him through his struggles. The problem was that when Chamberlain relapsed, he had to stick to his conversion story or face being ousted at first from the band, which happened briefly in 2006, or the Christian music scene. The band was divided on how to handle the secret. THESE EVENTS ARE ALREADY IN MOTION.  Last month , I dug into a new song by Underoath from their latest album Voyeurist . Today, I listened to Episode 1 of Labeled: Deep Dives . Last month's  Episode 0 provides an overview of the band's creative process, but Episode 1 focuses on the contributions and perspectives of guitarist Tim McTague and engineer JJ Revell

If you search "City of Auburn" on YouTube, you'll find several YouTube channels for city councils in various states. But today, we're not talking about any of those places, nor Auburn University, located in Auburn, Alabama. We're talking about a small Christian Rock band with about 32,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. The band comes from McKinney, Texas, and have released several EPs starting with 2014's Soul Searcher , which was a solo project of lead singer Michael James Osborn at the the time. For City of Auburn's second EP Spinning  in 2018, the band recorded with producer Matt Goldman . You may recall Goldman is especially known producing most of the Solid-State era Underoath records as well as producing a wide range of mostly Christian records from Casting Crowns to The Chariot .  I'M TAKING THE NEXT TRAIN. You may also recall that   Goldman is also responsible for recording Anberlin 's demos that garnered the interest from Brandon Ebel