NewYearsDayProject | a song a day blog

In another life, we would have a light, optimistic Anberlin . This version of the band would have followed up their bright-eyed debut Blueprints for the Black Market with an upbeat pop-rock album about the gender divide, high school crushes, and traveling the world. But the band chose to go in a hard rock sound for their sophomore album, Never Take Friendship Personal , in part because of some of the conflicts the band had with guitarist Joey Bruce , whom they kicked out before the record. The hard rock album with grittier lyrics didn’t completely kill Anberlin’s pop-punk sentiments with songs like “ A Lay Late ” and “ Time and Confusion ” becoming fan favorites.   OH, THEY LOVE THESE AMERICAN BOYS. Anberlin’s third album, Cities , took an even darker tone than their sophomore record. The intense album had the pop-rock moments of “ Adelaide ” and “ Dismantle.Repair. ” But the serious tone of the album as a whole left no room for the carefree moments on the previous albums. Lead singer

The late June humidity was just beginning to set on Bushnell, Illinois. We had spent the night in a hotel because we didn’t want to set up camp in the dark. We had missed Tooth & Nail Day, the preliminary day when the label would showcase some of their artists who wouldn’t play during the main festival, because of car troubles. But we had made it to the first official day of 2007 the 2007 Cornerstone Festival , on Wednesday, June 27. We arrived early in the morning to pitch tents before the swelter and the bugs made life miserable. After breakfast, it was time to wander over to The Gallery Stage which doubled as JEPUSA’s coffee house. For $35 you could buy the limited supply of that year’s coffee cup and get refills for 25 cents throughout the festival. Sitting down to the dark roast with our pamphlets out, my friends and I were about to start comparing which shows we were going to see later that day when a blue-eyed, shaggy-haired 20-something took the stage, introducing himself a

In 2020, The Juliana Theory signed to Equal Vision Records . After releasing the singles “ Can’t Go Home ” and “ Better Now ” and a collection of rerecorded classics from their Tooth & Nail and Epic Records discography, the band released  Still the Same Kids, Pt. 1 in May 2022. According to the band’s page on Equal Vision’s website, Still the Same Kids is a three-EP project, though we have yet to see parts 2 and 3. We’ve been waiting for a while; however, it seems that Brett Detar and crew never rush the band's music. Long-term fans of The Juliana Theory have suggested that the band's post-2005 Deadbeat Sweetheartbeat music doesn't fit with the band's direction, and while many fans like it , they suggest that The Juliana Theory isn't still the same band. But that argument could be made for any band that stuck together consistently, updating their sound into the '20s music landscape. SHIT, I GET NOSTALGIC.  I've heard that the Germans consider nost

Stand Atlantic formed in 2012 in Sydney, Australia. After gaining a following in the Australian music scene and releasing two demo EPs,  they released their first single “ Coffee at Midnight ” on international indie label Rude Records in 2017 and then signed with California-based indie label Hopeless Records in 2018. The band formed as a four-piece under the name What It’s Worth with lead vocals by Bonny Fraser , Arthur Ng on lead guitar, David Potter on bass, and Jordan Jansons on drums. Playing the local scenes, the band started touring Australia with American bands, such as State Champs , Cute Is What We Aim For , and New Found Glory.   I THINK I LIKE THAT SWEET CINNAMON . Since signing with Hopeless Records, Stand Atlantic has released four albums. The band captures an infectious sound with their brand of pop-punk.  Their second album Pink Elephant was released in 2020 and recorded with Stevie Knight . In later releases, the band experiments with hard rock, but the songs on

Both Taylor Swift and Adele love the album format. This love for the format made both artists resistant to streaming platforms in the mid-’10s. In 2014, Swift removed her music from Spotify to protest the platform’s payment of artists. She didn’t add her music to Apple Music until 2015 and resubmitted her music to Spotify in 2017. Adele fought Spotify to turn off the default setting of albums to be on “shuffle.” She wrote on Twitter (now X) “This was the only request I had in our ever[-]changing industry! We don’t create albums with so much care and thought into our track listing for no reason. Our art tells a story and our stories should be listened to as we intended.” IT'S NO SECRET THAT THE BOTH OF US ARE RUNNING OUT OF TIME.  In 2015, Adele was arguably one of the biggest artists. After struggling with writers’ block to follow up her 2011 breakthrough sophomore album 21 , the singer released 25 . The album was only released in stores and only the album’s singles were availab

It starts with a single and maybe a B-side, then an EP of 4-6 songs. This is often followed by more singles and more EPs. Finally, we get the full-length studio record which may be reworked versions of the early singles and songs from the EP. These artists often struggle to fill a full concert set because they don’t have enough material. They often resort to playing covers of songs that influenced their early career. However, somewhere along the way, an artist, should they last, becomes prolific. The frequency of singles, EPs, and full albums increases. In the past when this happened, the artist had passed their radio prime. But today, we have artists like Drake and Taylor Swift in their prolific period and in their commercial prime. Sometimes artists get big enough to release whatever they want, and that's what has seemed to happen with the latest from Taylor Swift, The Tortured Poets Department , released last month to record-breaking streaming numbers.   FUCK IT IF I CAN’T HAV