NewYearsDayProject | a song a day blog

  In 2003, Switchfoot reached their career high when they released their fourth album, The Beautiful Letdown . The band had been gaining popularity from their third album Learning to Breathe .  Three songs from the album were featured in the movie A Walk to Remember . What happened next was the massive rock radio/Top 40/Christian Rock hit, " Meant to Live ." The Christian surf rock band never quite reached the same level of success on their subsequent releases, but they consistently had tracks show up on Mainstream Rock and Alternative charts for years to come. And the Christian market? They devoured Switchfoot albums. SCREAMING WITHOUT LUNGS. Lead vocalist Jon Foreman set a distinct tone in Christian Rock. Arriving on the scene in 1997, Christian Rock was in the middle of a culture war. There were three big bands at the time: the Newsboys , dc talk , and Audio Adrenaline , and their message was "stand up for Christ no matter what you look like." The lyrics of the...

Though he only has 45 monthly listeners on Spotify, I can see Ian Mahan joining the ranks of folk artists like Denison Witmer , William Fitzsimmons , Matthew Perryman Jones , and all the other NoiseTrade artists I've been listening to. I added this song a few months ago when I was looking for Aaron Marsh collaborations.  After taking a minor dive into his other works, I feel like this is one of the reasons I write about music: to discover something new, something obscure. From his mellow interpretation of " Eye of the Tiger " to his piano/guitar melodies intertwined with the small-town-America feel of a boy raised in a small Illinois town, but who has moved to Colorado out of a dream or out of necessity, I hope to get better acquainted with Mahan in the weeks to come. THIS TOWN IS CLEARING OUT. "Art & Vida" tells the story about an older couple who have witnessed the decay of the small town after NAFTA took the jobs overseas. It's implied that Art los...

Lancaster, Pennsylvania native Denison Witmer has an over 25 year career working as a singer-songwriter. Raised in the Mennonite church, Witmer recalls the rich sound of hymns sung in 4-part harmonies in the farming community church. Witmer's early career was Christian music adjacent: signed to labels like the Christian-owned The Militia Group , Tooth & Nail Records , and Mono v. Stereo , an imprint of Toby Mac's Gotee Records, before his current label, Sufjan Stevens' and Lowell Brams' Asthmatic Kitty Records, the former being a longtime collaborator with Witmer. Witmer has been included on several television soundtracks, has been acclaimed by publications like Pitchfork , and performed at festivals like SXSW, Wild Goose Festival, and Cornerstone. But unless you're looking for slow, fingerpicking music in the vein of Cat Stevens, you've probably never heard of him. He's both prolific and kind of obscure. BY THE MIDDLE OF THE WEEK... HOW MUCH CAN I TAKE?...

The falsetto sounds of vocalist Josh Ballard 's voice may not be to everyone's liking. But back in 2007 when Until June released their debut album, singing high was the way to make it in the indie scene. Until June's self-titled debut is full of soaring melodies both on the guitar and in Ballard's vocals. The band's name makes me listen to them mostly in late spring to early fall. Though hailing from Arizona, this album makes me think of two early summer trips I took up to Michigan. One trip was before I had listened to this album, back in 2008 and the other was after I had listened to this album in 2010. The cool and breezy guitars remind me of the cool nights when walking around the lates and ponds in a northern early summer. I KNOW IT FEELS LIKE SUMMER. I ended up driving over night from North Carolina to Michigan after my friend's graduation to crash another friend's graduation party. After getting practically drunk on espresso (5 shots, I think), I wa...

The whirlwind career of Wonder Girls is an interesting read. They were the first South Korean pop group to chart on Billboard 's Hot 100  and toured with the Jonas Brothers ; their career looked like it would be quite promising. But the members wouldn't stick around. The band originally had 4Minute member Hyuna, but her solo career would pull the singer in another direction. Then there was Sunmi, the singer who turned to K-pop to make support her family after her father died of complications of tuberculosis. But just when the group was blowing up in 2009, she left to focus on her academics. The group went on hiatus after Sunye got married and moved with her husband to Haiti to be missionaries and Sohee left to focus on acting. That was 2013. WHEN I'M ALONE, I FEEL YOUR TOUCH. Korean summer is much like summer in North Carolina and Tennessee with a few key differences. The temperature climbs steadily throughout the spring. April can be pleasant, but my first year in Chunche...

Speaking of ear worms , I'm on the second day of humming perhaps the most well known sax notes in the history of music. In terms of meme music, it's probably second to Rick Astley 's " Never Going to Give You Up ," Wham! 's " Careless Whisper " is so awful, it's epic. If you just take the song at it's value as a sexy (or saxy) evening in the city, private planes, yachts, and beautiful women sleeping with a multi-millionaire playboy, the song would have just remained deep in the '80s vault. But the extra layers the song takes on when you see it on TikTok videos, South Korean entertainment shows, or what sparked this latest outbreak, an inclusion in a school play my my first grade high schoolers, the song takes on new life. None of that can hold a candle, though, to my coworker's experience with this song. I'M NEVER GONNA DANCE AGAIN. "Careless Whisper" was a song that started the breakup of the pop duo, Wham! George Mich...

There was a sandwich shop across the eight-way intersection in Chuncheon where I would often take lunch break. After class, I'd get a Chicken Carbonara or a Soy-sauce chicken sandwich and a cup of coffee. I might spend a little extra time there reading or looking over lesson plans before going back in to work. The cafe was run by a man around my age and his mother, and it was a nice place to eat something familiar and spend some time. The musical choice was quite eclectic: '90s pop-rock and current K-pop/Hip-Hop. It was in that cafe that I grew an affection for K-pop. I started to understand what the hype was all about. SO YOU HAVE A DREAM THAT IS BIGGER THAN A LITTLE BOY'S . In February of 2014, Girls' Generation released their electro-pop album and titular hit " Mr. Mr ." The girls had been famous for a conservative, bubble gum pop, but "Mr. Mr." takes the singers in another direction. The ear worm begins with a dirty bass synth. The music video d...