NewYearsDayProject | a song a day blog

In every small town to major city in South Korea there are private karaoke rooms called noraebang  (노래방). These are used by everyone from middle school students escaping the stress of studying for exams to middle-aged office workers, pressured into going out and drinking with the boss. Since I've been in Korea, I've heard them mentioned in American TV shows or movies in major cities; however, noraebang culture is much more permeated in Korean culture than karaoke is in America. So what is sung in these karaoke rooms? You can spend hours browsing the song selection from old Korean throat music (트롯), a kind of old-timey, often disco sounding music that Korean ajoshis or ajumas (아주씨, 아줌마), or middle aged people, love. There are K-pop songs through out the ages and international songs like Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Spanish, and of course English pop, rock, and traditional songs. When you go to a noraebang, you select the song you want to sing and the lyrics appear on the scree...

  In March of 2015, Sufjan Stevens  released Carrie & Lowell ,  and the album was praised by indie music journals and NPR. In May of that year, a study concluded that most of the number one hits from 2005-2014 were written on the reading level of a fifth grader.   Maybe that's the reason I don't spend too much time wrestling with finding the meaning of the text in most song lyrics. However, whenever I choose a Sufjan Stevens song, I spend quite a bit of time reading the Genius annotations, discovering hidden metaphors and symbolism that don't appear until quite a few listens. " Should Have Known Better " is the second track on the album, following his invocation of the muse in " Death with Dignity. " Stevens recalls more specific, particularly the jarring details about whe n his mother "left [him and his brother] at that video store" when he was three or four.  THE PAST IS STILL THE PAST, THE BRIDGE TO NOWHERE. As Stevens gets more speci...

When Jonezetta released their 2006 debut record, Popularity , they dedicated the album to their recently deceased fifth member. Keyboardist Timothy Jordan II took his life in 2015. Jordan had been a promising young musician from Arkansas, which had a small but notable musical scene since acts like Living Sacrifice , The Juliana Theory, Evanescence, As Cities Burn, and others got their starts in the area. Jordan became a touring member of The All-American Rejects just as their career started blowing up with TV performances and bigger tours. However, just before releasing TAR released  Move Along , Jordan announced his departure and joined an up-and-coming band on Tooth & Nail Records--Jonezetta. Popularity is a very dancy, upbeat album and featuring Jordan on the keys. Jonezetta never memorialized Jordan in their two albums. However, The All-American Rejects wrote the song "Believe" about him, and fans also say that " Move Along " pays tribute to Jordan, as the...

  Sam Smith's music is a musical cry for love. Influenced by Amy Winehouse and Adelle, Smith made a gut-wrenchingly melancholy pop-R&B debut album in 2014's In the Lonely Hour , and followed it up with an even sadder, gospel-inspired sophomore record in 2017's The Thrill of It All . However, in a turn of events, during the album cycle, the British singer began dating 13 Reasons Why actor Brandon Flynn and the two seemed happy in interviews and in social media posts. The two dated for nine months, during which, Smith came out as genderqueer, stating that they identified as equally male and female. In "Too Good At Goodbyes," Smith tackles their psychological and emotional barrier they bring to a relationship. But as Smith points out these barriers, anyone with emotional baggage (or everyone) can probably relate to the song on some level. It's damn hard to know when to open up to someone or when to conceal in fear that that person will use it against you in t...

  Back in 2010 we learned that yes, a pickle can get more likes than Nickelback , a band that had become the most hated "butt rock" band in the mid-'00s. In fact, the conclusions of the social media study found that a pickle had more likes than Oprah Winfrey or other beloved figures. It turns out that internet users' hate outweighs Internet love, or the terrible outweighs the good. In 2014, the most hated rock band would become U2 after their release of Songs of Innocence was forced into every iTunes users' library. People tried everything to scrub the songs from their shuffle. Today, people have mostly forgotten about Nickelback, and Apple Music no longer comes standard with that U2 album, so people have other musical axes to grind. Justin Bieber has grown up and is no longer blaring in our cultural continuousness. So who is the most hated band these days? After the 2019 Super Bowl it was Maroon 5 , for taking to the stage when the NFL was in the middle of rac...

Austra-South African YouTuber-turned pop star and actor Troye Sivan creates a kind of infectious electro-pop that brilliantly celebrates love, acceptance, and sexuality. From my vantage point in South Korea, I saw the rise of Sivan's career. With his debut album, Blue Neighbourhoods , Sivan could be heard everywhere in 2016 and not only was his music making an impact, him and fellow LGBT+ singer Sam Smith were starting conversations around sexual orientation that would have been considered taboo even five years before. My middle school students, in their free time at school, would often play Sivan's music videos. " Wild ," "Fools," and "Youth" depict a teenage secret relationship between two boys. Being a teacher at a Christian school and working in a conservative country where it was illegal for teachers to talk about LGBT+ issues at the time,    undoubtedly these middle school students were trying to press some buttons. Still, with some of Kore...

Yesterday was Children's Day in South Korea, so I had a nice day off of work. Today, it was back to work, but a song I listened to this morning took me back to a few earlier points in my life--not quite back to childhood. I wrote about "All These Things I've Done," back in February, talking about the conflict in Brandon Flowers' lyrics--the desire to keep the straight and narrow path of his faith and the temptations of the real world. And unlike the bands on Tooth & Nail who seem to have everything sorted out (granted, there is a spectrum of Christianity rather than one rather rigid denomination--Mormonism), The Killers' music is never resolved. "When You Were Young" examines the contrast between what you fantasize love would be when you were young with the reality of it. The person you fall in love with may not be the man who looks "like Jesus." He may not share the faith and ritual you grew up with. "But he talks like a gentlema...