NewYearsDayProject | a song a day blog

  The second single from the 2006 album  Eyes Open  after the album opener and rocker, " You're All I Have ," "Chasing Cars" is the most recognized song by  Snow Patrol . The band's frontman and songwriter  Gary Lightbody  said that he wrote the song after sobering up after a white wine binge in the garden of producer  Jacknife Lee 's cottage. Lightbody told  Rolling Stone  that "Chasing Cars" is "the purest love song I've ever written. There's no knife-in-the-back twist." He stated that "all the other songs I've written have a dark edge." While the song and video for "Chasing Cars" don't have a dark side, the connotation the song has with dramas like  Grey's Anatomy   and  One Tree Hill  certainly wields the knife so carefully left out by the songwriter.  LET'S WASTE TIME CHASING CARS.  Here's an updated Romantic Mix from last year. I'll add to it from time to time so that it's

  Happy Valentine’s Day everyone! Let’s celebrate with a depressing song about separation and/or death. While Linkin Park released Minutes to Midnight after I graduated high school, the sentiment of the pains of being pathologically single burns in the song. The sounds bleak imagery of the gray skies, naturally occurring during this time of year in the northeastern United States and similar climates, paired with the feelings of deep loss and loneliness, the ninth track on Linkin Park’s third record, “Valentine’s Day,” is a perfect anti-Valentine’s Day track. And being without the one who I love today, I decided to make a playlist of anti-love tracks. These aren’t break up tracks, persey. But rather they’re about missing a loved one, titled Missing You. Enjoy!

  In 2006, Skillet created the album they used as a template for the albums that they would release for the next sixteen years and counting. At the time when Skillet released Comatose , it was their most mature and refined record following ten years of member line up and style changes. Starting as a post-grunge band then transitioning into industrial around the turn of the  millennium, Skillet began to switch out synthesizers for strings on their 2003 record, Collide . The lead single, “ Rebirthing ,” highlighted the new Skillet sound, symphonic hard rock. But what was once novel turned banal after all of the following records sounded the same. I BREATHE YOU IN. While   not a maître of metal or hard music but rather a commercial success story and a brand, Skillet’s rebirth brought them to rock radio and landed them on some of the major tours in the active rock genre.  As Skillet became more about refining the brand, they leaned into their role as a band in ministry. They became one of

" Melted " was the second single from AKMU 's debut record, Play . The duo's 2014 record was released in the spring, and many of the songs thematically matched with spring. These songs talked about growing up, falling in love, and childhood. Paired with upbeat, bright melodies, Play was one of the best K-pop records to hear in coffee shops around Korea in 2014. "Melted," however, is a colder song. With the lyrical imagery of snow melting, grey skies, and rain, in the context of the album, "Melted" kicks off spring. Although the weather outside may be nasty and while people can be cold, there is an optimism that winter is almost over and that love may win in the end, even if we're in the midst of five more weeks of winter. WHY ARE THEY SO COLD?  The weather during my time in North Carolina has been pretty mild, but last night the National Weather Service sent people into panic with a potential snow storm. Rain might turn to ice and then to snow.

Pinkerton is a foundational album in the emo genre. Weeze r’s second record was a commercial failure at the time of its release, especially following their massive debut record. Many successful bands look back at the album almost as a kind of bible of guitar tones and lyrical content. Pinkerton produced three singles, including “ Pink Triangle ,” a song in which the speaker, a boy in college, falls for a lesbian who doesn’t return his affection. The song explores the complexities surrounding sexual identity, which seems progressive for the time but a little cringy today. And it’s that cringe that seeps into Watashi Wa ’s 2022 People Like People , an album I’ve talked about before, but today I wanted to look into why a self-identifying “ministry band” quoted Weezer to “say it ‘ Like You Mean It .’” SO HERE COMES THE SON TO REMIND YOU OF YOUR OWN BELIEFS.   Watashi Wa started as a punk band when Seth Roberts and the original band were in middle school. Inspired heavily by early Tooth

  The synth intro to  A-ha ’s “Take on Me” is probably more encompassing of a decade than the intro of today’s song, but  The Verve ’s “ Bittersweet Sympathy ” also has one of the most iconic intros of the ‘90s. But it’s that symphonic riff on the band’s signature song arguably created more trouble than it was worth for the band. The band formed in 1990, experimented with drugs and musical styles before their breakthrough 1997 release of  Urban Hymns . I’VE NEVER PRAYED, BUT TONIGHT I’M ON MY KNEES.  The YouTube channel  Middle 8  (see below) tells the story about the musical plagiarism scandal behind The Verve’s “Bittersweet Symphony.” The highlights of the scandal include sampling a few bars from an orchestral arrangement of The Rolling Stones’ “The Last Time”(see below), The Stones’ litigious manager Allen Klein suing for him to get the entirety of the royalties from “Bittersweet,” despite the fact that The Stone had no part in the composition of the orchestral cover, and finally  M

  Kicking off Matt Thiessen ’s break up record, the title track of Forget and Not Slow Down introduces listeners to the themes of the record. I’ve talked about how Forget and Not Slow Down has a shadow story , one in which the Relient K frontman ends his engagement with radio DJ Shannon Murphy . While I have not seen any statements from Thiessen about the meanings behind the tracks on the album, I’ve referenced Murphy’s story that seemed pretty damning toward Thiessen, and it doesn’t seem that there were any libel lawsuits. Forget and Not Slow Down was a record that helped me through a difficult time in life, so I will be forever grateful to Relient K, but I’ve also had to think critically as to whether or not the album is too problematic to enjoy. So today I’d like to talk through my judgement of the band’s 2009 record. HOW MANY TIMES CAN I PUSH IT ASIDE? “Forget and Not Slow Down” shows a youthful resilience toward the ending of a relationship. The songs on the album deal with a r