NewYearsDayProject | a song a day blog

Bright, happy music is what you could describe  Taeyeon 's 2015 debut EP,  I .  The label also fits for her debut studio album, 2017's  My Voice .  However, amid the happy, soaring melodies, there is a twinge of wistful nostalgia in the lyrics. Songs like the lead single " Fine " and the standout track " Time Lapse ," give the Girls' Generation singer a mature sound. Taeyeon's solo career is more about ballads, but the occasional electro-pop song sounds more grown up than her bubblegum pop days in the once biggest K-pop girl group. BIRTHDAYS HAVE PASSED SEVERAL TIMES .  The title of Taeyeon's debut album, My Voice,  alludes to her relationship with her standout feature. In middle school, Taeyeon's principal encouraged the young singer to pursue her talents and convinced her parents to invest in their daughter's talents. This investment came to mean a Sunday drive from Jeonju to Seoul, a 2-and-a-half-hour drive each direction, for Taeyeo

The best music doesn't happen in isolation, but rather comes out of a community movement. I would define community, when it comes to music, as a mixing of artist who bring different ideas together ideas from various genres. The result of musical community is stronger musicianship by all those involved. Collaboration, the meeting of minds, happens naturally. Throughout the course of my blog, I've talked about various communities. Tooth & Nail , Christian Rock, exvangelical communities are definitely the biggest themes. Tegan and Sara grew out of the Northwestern Canadian/American Indie Rock community in the late '90s, and by 2013 became pop stars.   HERE COMES THE RUSH BEFORE WE TOUCH.  Many fans may have been introduced to  Tegan and Sara  when Meredith Grey and Christina Yang danced to their early acoustic,  angry girl music on  Grey's Anatomy ' s earlier seasons.  The musical duo of Calgary-born identical  twins  Tegan  and  Sara Quin  started on the acoustic

  Olly Alexander grew up next to a church, and as a boy he was fascinated by the what he heard and saw from his home. His parents were not religious, but his impressions of the rituals that took place, during particular liturgical holidays sparked his interest in organized religion. However, as Alexander grew up in his sexuality, he came to realize that the church next door was not a place for him. He was still captivated by the symbolism of ritual. He sought community in gay clubs, which became like a church to him. If you listen to Years & Years  albums, the themes of religion may almost trick you that you are listing to a Christian album. I DON'T REALLY WANT TO BE FINE. The opening track to their debut album,  Communion ,  Years & Years start their brand of Pet-Shop-Shop-Boys inspired electronica with an atmospheric, lyrically minimal track. However, it doesn't take a lot of words to convey the complex emotions in this song. And if you take the track with the highl

  The Fray ’s eponymous second record was propelled by the success of their first record How to Save a Life . While it’s true that television dramas can still make the careers of bands, in some ways it seems like the storytelling lyrics of bands like The Fray were going out of fashion with each subsequent release from the Boulder, Colorado-based band. But with still eight million monthly listeners on Spotify despite not releasing anything new since 2014, and even lead singer Isaac Slade leaving the band last year, there still is a market for coffee-shop lyricism, even if you don’t hear it on Top 40 stations anymore. HE’S NO LONGER WITH US, BUT HE LEFT THIS DUSTY ROOM. Like many of the songs on The Fray’s second LP, “ Enough for Now ” deals with an emotional subject related to family.  The seventh track on the record deals with the death of lead singer Isaac Slade ’s maternal grandfather. The lyrics of the song paint a bleak picture about a bitter man who longed to pass on his name wi

  Starting out as a three-piece band, expanding to four members, and five members, and finally reducing to back to core members Matt Thiessen and Matt Hoopes , Relient K has been through many changes both sonically and thematically in their discography from their All Work & No Play EP in 1998 to their latest record, 2016's Air for Free . The band's maturity on their later releases certainly goes unappreciated by the majority of youth group kids whose parents just wanted their kids to listen to the Christian version of Green Day and Blink-182. Air for Free is mature in that it is nostalgic for childhood and not obsessed with adolescence like the band's earlier catalogue.   GRAB ANOTHER DIRTY TAMBOURINE AND SHAKE IT . The spiritual sequel to 2009's  Forget and Not Slow Down , Relient K's eighth studio record Air for Free has a similar approach to production. After Relient K had released tons of EPs, K ... Is for Karaoke , and a panned attempt at a pop career on

  The Goo Goo Dolls ’ 1998 album  Dizzy Up the Girl  encapsulates the acoustic alt-rock sound that listeners can instantly identify late '90s rock. The follow up to their massive 4x platinum record released four years later,  Gutterflower ,  charted higher than their previous records, but ultimately sold much less than  Dizzy . The band continues to release music from time to time, including this year's Chaos in Bloom , but their heyday remains in 1998. Gutterflower  is a fine record and “ Here Is Gone ” is a fine song. But the acoustic rock band from Buffalo, NY had been there and done that, and the 2002 music scene was moving past pop rock aimed at adult contemporary radio. I WAS NOT THE ANSWER SO FORGET IT WAS EVER ME.   Johnny Rzeznik  has said that the music video for "Here Is Gone," which features some  of the time  film tricks, sped up footage of several scenes, cost more to produce than the entire album. The video at youth counterculture in what looks like urb

The 2014 film  Boyhood   was a highly acclaimed film that has an incredible  Rotten Tomatoes  score, yet nobody talks about it anymore. The film was shot over the course of 12 years from 2001 to 2013 using the same actors and feels like a piece of turn-of-the-century Americana, a kind of early 2000s rendering of a Norman Rockwell painting of the imperfect white, working- class American family. The film not only explores boyhood and coming of age, but also parenthood and the complications of raising a family while trying to better oneself as well as the struggles of co-parenting through a divorce. Woven into the human themes are the events and pop culture throughout the years. The soundtrack for the film is a combination of famed indie artists of the early '00s and popular music of the time. Seamlessly joining the soundtrack was virtually unknown folk-rock band  Family of the Year , with their song " Hero ." I DON'T WANT TO BE YOUR HERO . "Hero" appears in th