NewYearsDayProject | a song a day blog

Twenty-one years ago,  Linkin Park  released their sophomore record,  Meteora .    Throughout the band's career, their sound would shift to various styles of rock music, but  Meteora  is not much of a departure from the band's debut  Hybrid Theory .  The album did, however, embrace Asian musical instruments on several tracks. At the time of its release,  Meteora  not only debuted at number 1 on  Billboard's 200 Album charts  but also set the record for the most units sold in a week beating  Celine Dion 's  One Heart .  In 2003, Nu Metal was the ruling dynasty and Linkin Park was the king of the music. I CAN'T FEEL THE WAY I DID BEFORE.  Speaking of deluxe editions, you can stream Linkin Park's 20th anniversary edition of  Meteora-- 95 tracks of live performances, B-sides, and demos; some of which have been released like their  Live in Texas   record and some remastered tracks which had never left the vault. Personally, I don't have fond memories of this reco

In 2016 ,  Yellowcard  called  it quits, echoing many other bands in a changing music industry. Best known for their fourth album,  Ocean Avenue , Yellowcard headlined Warped Tour and were at the top of the genre thanks to  MTV 's  Total Request Live  and placements in video games. But the band that had once been played on pop and rock radio, soon saw waning promotion, particularly in their later years. With albums underperforming and internal conflict in the band, they released their self-titled final album in 2016. They have only reunited in a  controversial lawsuit  against rapper  Juice WRLD , which the band later dropped after the rapper died in 2020. YOU TOOK MY EDGE, SHARPENED IT IN CASE.  My experience with Yellowcard was much like most of their fair-weather fans.  Ocean Avenue  was novel and fun. It was a time when bands could experiment with the format of a rock band to include something like, say, an electric violin on every track substituting for guitar leads. Their sec

  Fireflight became a massive Christian Rock band in 2006 when their video for the single “ You Decide ,” which featured Josh Brown of the band Day of Fire , became the most-requested video on TVU that year. The band debuted on Flicker Records after touring for years after being founded by husband and wife Glenn and Wendy Drennen in 1999. Glenn was the guitarist and Wendy the bassist of the band, and she would become the backing vocalist when the band added Dawn Michele as the group’s lead singer. The band followed up the runaway success of their debut album The Healing of Harms with Unbreakable . While Unbreakable was a success for the band, the members talked about the difficulty of making their follow-up album. Dawn Michele told Stars & Stripes making the record was “one of the most difficult times in our lives.” IT STARTS TONIGHT. Just as ForeFront Records was in search of the “more Christian” alternative to successful Christian-adjacent acts, Flicker Records signed a

Michelle Chongmi Zauner was busy in 2021 promoting her band Japanese Breakfast ’s third album, Jubilee , and her memoir Crying in H Mart , a heartbreaking work chronicling the illness and death of her mother . The book is far more than a music memoir--readers need not be familiar with Zauner’s band to appreciate the writing or the story--the singer does talk about her musical background and how she happened upon a music career after her mother’s death when she had mostly given up on the prospect of being known for her music. Before Zauner formed Japanese Breakfast, she had been the lead singer of the Emo rock band Little Big League . The band formed in 2011, recorded two studio albums, and dissolved in 2014 following Michelle’s mother’s cancer diagnosis as Zauner left the band’s home base of Philadelphia to be with her family in Eugene, Oregon. PACIFY HER RAGE. Japanese Breakfast was Michelle Zauner’s side project that she started in 2013 when still in Little Big League. She says that

Jason Emmanuel Petty , known as Propaganda, is a poet, pastor, and spoken-word rapper whose 2017 album Crooked made a definitive turn into the discussion of where politics and Christianity intersect.  In the constant Fox News cycle of 2024, it’s hard to remember everything that was happening in 2017, although the politicians and the American people have only become more shameless. Much of the lyrics on Crooked come from a personal and political disappointment, particularly in how Christianity is used to oppress people of color in America. The album's third single, " Cynical " encapsulates this disappointment succinctly. WHY DO YOU LOVE YOUR GUNS MORE THAN OUR SONS? “Cynical” starts with a morose electric guitar which plays the same chords throughout the song. Several of the tracks on Crooked use electric guitar, but the melodies are kept to a minimum, keeping the focus on Propagada’s words. “Cynical,” though has a chorus--albeit a simple one--sung by Copeland ’s Aaron

I've written a bit about how I'm a   Coldplay  apologist. I believe that the London-based band is very good at what they do. Though so many artists accomplish their sound, both musically and lyrically, better, there's something uplifting about a new Coldplay album. Two years ago, I talked about the band's first single from their ninth studio record,   Music of the Spheres , " Higher Power ." The album was released on October 15, 2021. Before the release of the record and after releasing "Higher Power," the band released the promotional single, the 10:17 track " Coloratura ," which was praised by critics for its composition and production. Then they released the second radio single " My Universe ," featuring the South Korean boy band,  BTS . The song shot straight to number 1 on the  Billboard Hot 100 , becoming the second Coldplay single to top the Hot 100, the first being " Viva la Vida ." I JUST WANT TO PUT YOU FIRST .

A big part of my blog is discovering music. Sometimes that’s new indie artists with very little written except for press releases. But what I’ve found more often is that I’ve been unearthing the long-lost civilization of the 2010s, a decade I scoffed at as the nadir of music. During the pandemic, though, I started listening to new music, finding the newer songs resonating with me in ways that the 2010s didn’t. But then I started going back, re-evaluating pop, rock, and alternative in the 2010s, listening with an open mind. I realized that music was changing and that loyalty to any genre was an illusion. Alternative playlists reminded me of what would pass for pop music in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s. Bedroom pop, dream pop, hip-hop, and neo-soul flooded the playlists. Now I see that as a strength rather than a weakness. SAY YOU WANT ME OUTTA YOUR LIFE. One of the tracks that showed up on an Apple Music Alternative Hits playlist was “ Youngblood ” by 5 Seconds of Summer , called 5SOS b