NewYearsDayProject | a song a day blog

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

In 2020, Stephen Christian released his fourth Anchor & Braille album, Tension .  When he released his third A&B project, Songs for the Late Night Drive Home in 2016, many of his fans were still mourning the disbandment of Anberlin . But starting in 2018, Anberlin had started to play one-off shows and even started touring the next year. In 2020, the band was supposed to announce a tour with Memphis May Fire and perform at several festivals. But in lieu of the pandemic, the band started a livestream concert series. While Anberlin was active, Christian released Tension, an album of the most straight-forward pop songs Christian has released to date.  TRY TO EXPLAIN YOURSELF TO A STONE WALL. Last year, I wrote about 13 love songs leading up to Valentine's Day. This year, I'm not sticking to that format, but as Valentine's Day approaches, I thought I'd make a few playlists compiling the love songs I've written about.  1. " Madness " by Anchor &a

I was first turned on to Propaganda on The BadChristian podcast . Back in 2014, when the podcast started, the goals of the hosts were to question the status quo of the evangelical church. In 2015, Propaganda first came on to talk about hip hop as social commentary and racism of the day. I heard the song " Precious Puritans ," a song calling out conservative Christians who elevate conservative figures of the past despite their spiritual blindness in matters of race. When Propaganda came back on the podcast, he promoted his 2017 album Crooked , an album which dug deeper into the political and culture divide, particularly with white evangelicals acceptance of the policies and personality of the forty-fifth president. WHY DO YOU LOVE YOUR GUNS THAN OUR SONS. I dug deeper into this song last year . Unlike yesterday, when I wanted to keep the focus on " Fast Car ," I'd like to take the rest of this post to explain my picks for my Black History Month playlist. I'l

In 1988, Tracy Chapman 's first single " Fast Car " rose to Number 5 on Billboard's Hot 100. Her performance at Wembley Stadium in Nelson Mandela's 7oth birthday tribute helped to kick-start the singer's career. At the time Mandela was still serving time in prison, and the tribute concert gave a strong message to world against South African apartheid. Chapman produced a string of hits in the late '80s and early '90s, but she is best known for today's song, "Fast Car." SPEED SO FAST, IT FELT LIKE I WAS DRUNK.   I'm kicking myself because this song is incredible, and it's kind of like I'm just now understanding its beauty. Last week, listened to a cover by Boyce Avenue and Kina Grannis , and that was my first exposure to the song as a whole, but today I listened to the original, which is better than the Boyce Avenue version. For the life of me, I can't remember where I've read about Chapman, whether it was Malcom Gladwel

With the release of their sophomore album, (What's the Story) Morning Glory , Oasis were on track to be one of the biggest rock bands in the mid-'90s. With a sound decidedly different from the grunge of the early ‘90s, Oasis looked to fellow British bands from the '60s and '70s, taking the chords of The Beatles  and other acts and combining those elements with a heavy "wall of sound." While it's not fair to credit Oasis with the foundation of Brit-pop, they certainly enjoyed the crest of the wave. The story of Oasis is one of arrogance and the fleeting attention of music listeners. From a band that claimed to be the next Beatles to brothers who couldn't stand to be in the same room as each other and who could be forgotten to their predecessors Radiohead or their successors Coldplay , Oasis encapsulated a short period in the '90s when listeners wanted to hear Top-40 friendly guitar music without the intensity of Kurt Cobain or the gruffness of E