NewYearsDayProject | a song a day blog

When I sat down to write, I was going to pick Katy Perry's "Hot 'N' Cold," which is kind of become a mantra at school along with the old song "Fever," as it's hot in the classrooms until the central office turns of the heat, then it's freezing. I'm sweating and then freezing. That being said, I watched the "Hot 'N' Cold" music video and was starting my research, when the "Last Friday Night" video autoplayed. This was another song that was one of my college jams, but this one was more of a guilty pleasure for two reasons: one, I was an anti-pop hipster who only liked cool bands, and two, Katy Perry, and this song in particular, stood against everything I believed in. THINK WE KISSED, BUT I FORGOT. Growing up Seventh-day Adventist, my mom taught my sisters and I to keep the Sabbath. Seventh-day Adventists worship on Saturday rather than Sunday, like most Christians. The church teaches the Old Testament practices of n...

For a short time in the early '00s indie rock was king. I loved turning on MuchMusic (later Fuse) and seeing the latest cheaply made videos. Some of these groups pierced the Top 40 radio stations, like The Strokes, Modest Mouse, and this band, Franz Ferdinand. The song "Take Me Out" was the only song I knew of this band. This album came out in 2004, but it wasn't until junior year of college in 2008 that I listened to it fully. From start to finish, the band's self-title debut was energetic and puts you in the mood for college parties. The only problem was, I was kind of a loner and sober back then.  SHE'S NOT SO SPECIAL. In 2003 a Scottish rock band that took on the name of the assigned heir to the throne of the Austria-Hungarian Empire recorded their debut album in Sweden. The track I chose to write about,  Auf Achse,  is a German saying that literal means "on the axle," but idiomatically, it means "on the road." The song is a reference t...

In Season One of The Big Bang Theory,  Leonard is moping after his love interest, Penny, starts seeing another man. He comes into the apartment singing this song , quite horribly. "Boston" is Augustana's biggest hit. It placed on the Billboard Hot 100, it was a Top 40 hit, and a top 10 Adult (light rock) hit. The band formed at Greenville University, a conservative Christian college where Jars of Clay formed before them and Paper Route after them. While the two other bands were comfortable with the Christian circuit, Augustana's lead singer, Dan Layus, talks about breaking free from the strict rules of Christian college and choosing not to be a Christian band.  BOSTON, WHERE NO ONE KNOWS MY NAME . This piano ballad is not only a breakup with a lover, but a place too. If you've never moved to a city where no one knows you, it's freeing. You possess the ability to rebuild your reputation and become whomever you want to be. I've done this several times in my ...

I didn't listen to much music today. Work is really busy on Tuesdays because I have a lot of classes on Wednesdays. My students will read two poems by Lewis Carrol from Through the Looking Glass . The second on is " The Walrus and the Carpenter, " so of course, my favorite Beatles' song got stuck in my head. It's a daunting task to write about the Beatles. Every song they have released has its own field of research. The Beatles discography is like the bible of rock music, from which every sub-genre can be traced. And in the the Beatles discography, The Magical Mystery Tour album falls just after the beginning of what I would call their New Testament--the music after  Sergeant Pepper Lonely Heart's Band , after which The Beatles showed both a maturity in songwriting and a fetish of experimentation in the studio. GOO GOO G'JOOB. I may have first heard Bono's cover of this song in Across the Universe . The scene in the movie calls back to what Tom Wolf...

Pop quiz: How many Asian American pop singers do you know? Bonus if you can name one with a Billboard Hot 100 hit. BTS does not count because they are Korean, not American. Give up? I can think of two. First a hip-hop group called Far East Movement garnered a lot of love in LA's Koreatown and eventually topped the charts with the song "Like a G6." And you could have also said Linkin Park 's Mike Shinoda. Otherwise, pre-BTS, the American music industry was quite underrepresented by Asian musicians. With that in mind, the Atlanta, Georgia-born Eric Nam returned to the country of his parents to pursue a career he felt wasn't likely in America.  In Korea, Nam has become not only a popular musician, but also a go-to interviewer whenever movie or pop stars visit Korea. His K-pop is more influenced by singer-songwriters and U.S. pop singers than the girl and boy groups of his high school years. His unique take on K-pop has made him multi-nationally famous. Honestly, Ame...

It was a rainy summer break during Freshman year of college. I was still driving my '91 Toyota Corolla, and that was the summer that I binged the first three Copeland albums. It started with 2003's Beneath Medicine Tree, the indie/rock concept album about love and loss. About a month later I bought, 2005's In Motion , which was a little more musically diverse. The next year's Eat, Sleep, Repeat , was closer to musical theater than rock. Each Copeland album had its own unique mood. Today's song, " Coffee ," comes from BMT, which is the most immature of the Copeland albums. Lyricist and singer Aaron Marsh was fine-tuning his craft at writing sappy love songs, and this album's lyrics tended to be a little too over the top. The song " Coffee " appears as track 9, with a story as cliche as they get--two small town kids falling in love while talking all night at the diner. The brief brush drum solo toward the end sounds just like coffee shop musi...

  Chasing Happiness   is a documentary telling the story of the ups and downs of the Jonas Brothers ' career. Even though I was not a fan of the Disney Channel stars, CH was a telling human story about faith, family, and fame. Debuting in 2006, Kevin, Joe , and Nick took tween girl's hearts by storm. I was, however, within almost the right demographic to completely ignore the band's existence. While I was off at college listening to MGMT and Fleet Foxes , the Jonas Brothers meant a whole lot to the younger millennials. I say almost the perfect demographic because the band gave a lot of press to their Christian upbringing. Some of the Christian publications I read praised the young men as they wore their purity rings and kept a squeaky clean image. But there was a lot more to that story. IF YOU TOLD ME THAT MY FATE WAS ON YOUR FINGERTIPS, THEN, I WOULDN'T BELIEVE YOU.  Last week Nick Jonas hosted and performed two songs on Saturday Night Live . After being introduced b...