NewYearsDayProject | a song a day blog

Stephen Christian talked about each Anchor & Braille record on the Taco Boys podcast  when he was promoting his most recent project, Tension . He said that each record was made with different musicians, and his debut side project record Felt was made with local musicians in mind from around his hometown in Central Florida. Christian looked to friend and Copeland frontman Aaron Marsh to record the record, Copeland's drummer at the time  Johnathan Bucklew and Gasoline Heart 's Louis DiFabrizio on bass. When Christian debuted his LP, it seemed he had every intention of maintaining this small town sound. But then he moved to Nashville and started associating with other musicians. TEAR OFF YOUR SKIN. The   bonus DVD  release with the   Cities special edition shows the portrait of Stephen Christian as a lyricist, jotting down lines in notebooks as he sips coffee in Seattle. Then, in the studio, he'd drink herbal tea and at night inhale vapor for his falset...

Opening OneRepublic 's second record, Waking Up ,  is the experimental track " Made for You ." Release two years after their debut record Dreaming Out Loud , OneRepublic was busy releasing singles even between records. During these two years, lead singer and chief songwriter for the band, Ryan Tedder , started writing for some of the biggest pop stars, including Beyoncé 's " Halo " and Kelly Clarkson 's " Already Gone ," which controversially sounded like OneRepublic's " Secrets " later released on Waking Up. The second album from OneRepublic would answer whether the band was just a passing fad, a liner note in chart history, or mega stars.  PUT PEN TO PAPER, EVERYTHING WAS SINKING. "Made for You" opens the record. It's a lyrically sparse track full of mood and ambiance. OneRepublic quickly steps up their sound, a band of some classically-trained musicians and a penchant for hip-hop beats. Whereas, Dreaming Out Loud...

Today we enjoy another track from Shura 's debut record, Nothing's Real . While Shura is an out and proud lesbian, she decided to release her first record mostly with ambiguous second person pronouns which can be interpreted by listeners however they wanted to interpret the song. Several songs on Nothing's Real refer to the same break up, and today's song " What Happened  to Us? " refers to the drifting apart in that break up. I WAS NEVER READY FOR YOUR LOVE. The Madonna for millennials as one magazine article called her, Shura's vibey first record captures the wonderment of growing up, even if there's a little pain involved. I've talked quite a bit about Nothing's Real and even did a track-by-track analysis in April. Today, I'm going to look at this one track and how it captures an unhealthy nostalgia about our past. At the core of the song, Shura talks about falling in love with someone who is a "fiction / someone [she] made up....

Anberlin 's Blueprints for the Black Market was a strong debut for the band. The circumstances, the tours and the connections from those tours, though transcended the first record's success. First Anberlin headlined the Tooth & Nail Tour when Further Seems Forever  dropped off due to lead singer Jason Gleason leaving the band; this was Anberlin’s first major tour and they were upgraded to headliner. The band toured a lot on their first record and gained a considerable fan base. But touring came with the price of not being there for the band’s families. Touring paid off,  despite the hiccup of one band member getting too involved with the drugs and partying to fulfill his duties in the band.  WHEN YOUR ONLY FRIENDS ARE HOTEL ROOMS.  Never Take Friendship Personal turned Anberlin from a ‘90s-rock leaning band to an Emo band. The title of the opening track and the record come from the band’s decision to kick out guitarist Joey Bruce . Besides the opening track,...

Teenage Dream was Katy Perry 's marriage album. Perry, along with her songwriting team of Max Martin , Dr. Luke , Et. al. wrote the songs as the singer was dating British comedian Russell Brand . Perry and Brand were married less than two months after the release of Teenage Dream in a Hindu wedding ceremony in India . But Perry's teenage dream soon became a nightmare, with the couple separating 14 months after the marriage, Brand calling off the marriage via text message.  I USED TO BITE MY TONGUE AND HOLD MY BREATH. The documentary film Part of Me shows a heartbreaking scene in which Perry has just found out that her marriage is over. Not even one album cycle had passed, and Perry's marriage had dissolved. The single " Part of Me " was released on Teenage Dream: The Complete Confection expanding  the album cycle until she released Prism in October of 2013. But Prism isn't a morose break up album. Starting with the anthemic " Roar ," an arguably ...

Today we're going to talk about some repressed memories and the cringy music of my preteen years. Out of teenage rebellion, I started listening to a Contemporary Christian Radio station out of Greenville South Carolina around 1999 called HIS Radio  and around this time my family also got the SKY Angel satellite system which gave us Praise TV, showing all the CCM music videos from the late '80s to the day as long as they weren't too hard.   YET WE BUILD WALLS BETWEEN OUR BROTHERS AND OURSELVES. The timeline is a little fuzzy, and rather than doing a well-researched post, I thought I'd examine an artifact from my past. Kind of like how K-pop today separates the boys from the girls, so did the '90s with boybands and girl groups. So did CCM. If you liked Spice Girls , why not try Point of Grace ? If you liked The Backstreet Boys , obviously you would love 4Him . But then there was Avalon , a revolutionary co-ed group--and the alternative version of Avalon, Raze , a sto...

The first single from Ariana Grande 's second record, My Everything ,  in 2014, " Problem " established Grande as a pop power force. Grande certainly has talent. While appearing in the Nickelodeon teen show Victorious , Grande uploaded covers to her YouTube channel , which landed her a deal with Republic Records in 2011. Her debut record, Yours Truly , was released in 2013 and featured a few modest-charting hits. Listeners could feel a similarity with Mariah Carey from Yours Truly, and for some reason, Republic Records went bigger with Grande's follow up, My Everything, the next year. EVEN THOUGH I HATE YA, I WANNA LOVE YA. Rock bands typically have one producer for an entire record. The goal is to produce a cohesive record that is to be enjoyed in one play. Pop records used to be produced like this, and sometimes indie and major pop albums still are. But in order to get a hit, record labels often turn to multiple hitmakers to diversify a pop record. Ariana Grande...