NewYearsDayProject | a song a day blog

  In 2018, South Korean indie rock band The Koxx ’s keyboardist, Shaun , debuted with a solo single that immediately went to number 1 on the K-pop charts.  Obsessed with chart numbers, K-pop fans cried foul. But were the charts manipulated? How could a relatively unknown singer-songwriter blow up the charts? The world of K-pop is rather cutthroat when it comes to fans and from my research it seems that the matter hasn't been settled to anyone's liking. Still, how can an artist or record company manipulate the charts? The Korea Herald explains . Once the song had topped the charts, it was everywhere in Korea and even made waves in other countries. Shaun worked with English singer-songwriter Connor Maynard to produce an English version. This version has been misappropriated by Justin Bieber online. MY LONG, LONG JOURNEY ENDS NOW. The Mandela Effect is a situation that people (often large groups of people) misremember the facts of something that happened in the past. The si...

Country music is the sound of the South, talking about God, girls, and guns. Drunken Saturday nights and church on Sunday morning. Go up North and it ain't all rock 'n' roll, though. I discovered Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers on a Valentine's NoiseTrade sampler. Some indie mix tapes might make the coldest heart sceptic believe in love. The song Kellogg contributed to the mix was "Song for Lovers," which is as much about existential dread as it is a love song. Years later, I discovered the rest of the album Gift Horse, which is Northeastern folk-rock, which is pretty darn close to country music. Kellogg sings about watching his family grow up, relationships that didn't quite work out, the doubt in the existence of God, and life in the country. I GOTTA GET BACK TO THE COUNTRY. This song struck me today on my walk. I was born in a small town in Upstate New York. And calling it a town is a compliment. We lived off the beaten path down a dirt road that will te...

  For today’s blog post, I am going to assign a lot of homework. By the end of the lesson, you will know all about purity culture and how it affected a generation or two of evangelicals. The Cliff’s Notes version: purity culture is the belief that teenagers should wait until they are married in a heterosexual marriage. That is the only way to be blessed by God. Purity culture was steeped in evangelical and even crossed over to pop culture until the late 2000s. There were rallies called True Love Waits, and there were songs like Rebecca St. James' " Wait for Me ." Some may even recall The Jonas Brothers wore purity rings, which were quite common among evangelical teenagers, and parishioners of the 20th-century doctrine. The idea was you wore the purity ring until you replaced it with a wedding ring. The Jonas Brothers have since taken them off. YOU THINK I'M PRETTY WITHOUT ANY MAKEUP ON . One of my favorite podcasts, Good Christian Fun , talks about Christian pop cul...

This album, though... I can listen to it from start to finish without skipping a track. This feels like a confession. At some point I'll probably make a case for " Call Me Maybe ," which I still haven't gotten sick of, but for today, let's enjoy this banger, the first track on Carly Rae Jepsen's finest album. Starting with an almost kazoo-sounding saxophone riff--though not strange at all--which plays under the vocals when Carly cuts to the chorus. Somehow I happened to find this album while riding on a bus one weekend exploring something new. This was in 2016 when I lived on campus of my school, so every weekend for my sanity I had to go on an adventure. This meant lots of time on the rural-to-city bus. I listened to a lot of music while on the bus and waiting to transfer. At this point I spent quite a few weekends looking for something new whether it was coffee houses, interesting restaurants, different areas of town, new places to watch the flowers bloom o...

  Before " Shape of You ," Ed Sheeran  was known primarily as a singer-songwriter. His albums + and X took clear influence from The Beatles, Carol King, Elton John, James Taylor, and the ballad writers of yesteryear. But he had a knack for throwing in a few rap bars along the way. With every record, Sheeran gained more acclaim. His sophomore record produced the mega Billboard #2 hit, "Thinking Out Loud," which won two Grammys including Song of the Year. The final single from the album, " Photograph " was written in collaboration with Snow Patrol 's Johnny McDaid . Sheeran drew inspiration from his long distance relationship with singer/songwriter Nina Nesbitt (the featured musician on Kodaline’s acoustic version of “Brand New Day” ). The two spent five months apart. They would eventually break up, but the song remains a gem on Sheeran's second best-selling record.  LOVING CAN HURT. "Photograph" was the song that introduced me to the tale...

Love them or hate them, it's still incredible how long of a career Maroon 5 has had. Today we're moving out of '80s and '90s vibes and replacing synthesizers with keys. We're traveling back 2004 to the first song I remember from Maroon 5, their second single "This Love." Is this song a love song or a breakup song? The verse says that Jane, the titular character in the album's title and mentioned in this song "got on a plane/ Never to return again," but in the chorus singer Adam Levine says that although "this love has taken a tole on [him, he] won't say goodbye anymore." Much of the focus of the song is on the relationship, so I'll justify it as a love song. MEMORIES. In 2004 I was in high school. Maroon 5 debuted as a pop-rock band, which had only been a thing since the late '90s. Of course there had been rock bands that went pop, but they usually consider themselves rock bands. You could argue that the Beatles was a po...

  Love songs don't necessarily have to be about a person. They can also be about places and things too.  Today's song is my first joke song of the year. The instant likability of this song is a combination of comedian Cara Hartmann doing a bit about "Debbie," a doe-eyed, soft spoken, emotional girl in her early to mid-20s talking creating a dating profile video for E-harmony and the Gregory Brothers taking the already-viral video and turning it into a bubblegum pop track, adding video clips of cat videos for good measure. The result is a feel good track that gives you the warm fuzzies for man's second-best fuzzy friend. I THINK ABOUT HOW MANY DON'T HAVE A HOME. My family had a few cats when I was growing up. I remember my mom giving up our cat when she found out she was pregnant because she read that kitty litter could be harmful to prenatal development. However, after my youngest sibling was born my sister found a cat in my grandfather's barn who was quit...