Fire up this Spotify New Years playlist from our team and Happy 2018 everyone!
Category: New Years Playlist
New Year’s Playlist 2015 – The Walkmen, Tom Waits, Beach House, The Kinks, John Lennon, Foo Fighters, Death Cab for Cutie
A good rock mix featuring standout songs with a ‘new year’ theme is more than fitting as the world says goodbye to 2014 and welcomes 2015. The following is a collection of carefully selected tracks from the archives of indie, alt and classic rock genres about new beginnings and leaving the past where it belongs. Just about everyone looks forward to a better new year, a fresh start and the path to something positive, or even just a continuation of good fortunes and health.
We think 2015 is going to be another great year for independent music, and under-the-radar DIY and small label artists and bands. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and Like us on Facebook to make sure you don’t miss anything. Listen to U2‘s “New Year’s Day,” as well as tracks like Beach House‘s dreamy “New Year” track; the classic Tom Waits‘ “New Year’s Eve,” Death Cab For Cutie‘s fragmented, reverb-heavy, “The New Year.”
“New Year’s Day” – U2
“New Year” – Beach House
“New Year’s Eve” – Tom Waits
“The New Year” – Death Cab For Cutie
The mix features Camera Obscura‘s upbeat, indie pop anthem, “Happy New Year”; the mysteriously intoxicating, carnival-spirited track like none other, “In The New Year,” from the wonderfully fabulous band, The Walkmen (and a bonus of their “New Year’s Eve” track); an 80’s pop gem from The Kinks all about looking forward to “Better Things” (a track that even Bruce Springsteen liked so much he recorded it); and the tragically ironic last hit – “Starting Over” – from John Lennon before he was murdered in NYC in 1980 – a last gift to the world.
The whimsical “5 Year’s Time” from the indie band Noah and The Whale seems appropriate as a measuring of time song. Certain yeras that pass or come rushing in trigger us to compare our lives in blocks of time – that’s when you know you’re really acting getting older and that youth will pass sooner than you want it to. Deep inside we are all still savages competing for survival. Right?
“Happy New Year” – Camera Obscura
“In The New Year” – The Walkmen
Bonus: “New Year’s Eve” – The Walkmen
“Better Things” – The Kinks
“Starting Over” – John Lennon and Yoko Ono
“5 Year’s Time” – Noah and The Whale
“Next Year” – Foo Fighters
“Happy New Year, Dear” – The Hush Now
![]Trembling Bells With Bonnie Prince Billy ó New](https://indierockcafe.comwp-content/uploads/2015/01/newyearseve.jpg "]Trembling Bells With Bonnie Prince Billy ó New")
The next block of New Year-themed songs – and new beginnings, endings, fresh starts, cleaning the slate, and resolutions; yes, all those resolutions – include tracks from Bonnie Prince Billy with the Trembling Bells on “New Year’s Eve, The Loneliest Night of The Year”; the glamorous, piano-bar-style playing and singing of Regina Spektor, followed by The Head and The Heart‘s “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?” And “New Resolution” is the spooky, synth and bass-blazed track from the band Azure Ray, plus Scattered Trees, FM Belfast and
“New Year’s Eve, The Loneliest Night of The Year” – Bonnie Prince Billy with Trembling Bells
“My Dear Acquaintance (A Happy New Year)” – Regina Spektor
“What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?” – The Head and The Heart
“New Resolution” – Azure Ray
“A Conversation About Death on New Years Eve” – Scattered Trees
“New Year” – FM Belfast
“New Year” – Asobi Seksu (Live on KEXP)
Song of the Day: U2’s “New Year’s Day”
New Year’s songs. This time of year always gets people talking about ‘New Year’s songs,’ and other songs with titles or stories that are about starting fresh, new beginnings, making changes, setting resolutions, and hopes, plans, wishes and dreams of better things to come in the new year.
Yesterday we posted a playlist featuring a selection of excellent New Year’s Day songs from The Walkmen, The Stills, The Kinks, The Hush Now, Regina Spektor, Trembling Bells and Bonnie Prince Billy, Death Cab For Cutie and many others.
Today, the focus turns to easily one of the best – if not, the best – alternative rock New Year’s songs ever recorded. That is, “New Year’s Day” from U2‘s 1983 album, War, the band’s third album, and the one that catapulted U2’s breakthrough success in the United States and around the world, and set the stage for the band to go on to become of the biggest bands of the 1980’s and one of the most popular in the history of rock.
The hit single, “New Year’s Day,” is also included on many Best Songs of All Time lists, and among U2’s most politically charged songs of their entire discography. For thirty years, it’s been an alternative song played on rock radio stations to honor the beginning of a new year.
“New Year’s Day” – U2 from War (1983)
But it’s mainly a song about the Polish union workers movement, while “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” the biggest hit from War, is a protest song against the British massacre (known as ‘Bloody Sunday’) of Irish civilians in U2’s home country of Ireland. The album also contains another rather significant single, “Two Hearts Beat As One.”
The video above, shot in 1983, was not widely seen by most U2 fans until it appeared online some 12 or so years ago. The other video version of the song is the one most people are familiar with and which played on MTV regularly for months on end, at a time when the new music channel was just starting out, and coincidentally which bands like U2 helped popularize, and vice versa.
The famous album cover for War, featuring the anguished face of a boy with big, intense blue eyes, is one of the most recognized album covers of the post classic rock (1980 and on) era. The album cover for the “New Year’s Day” single release (back when vinyl 45″ singles were still mass produced) also featured the same kid.
Don’t miss our Best Indie Rock Songs playlist from yesterday, with songs from The Walkmen, Beach House, Camera Obscura, Death Cab For Cutie, The Stills, Trembling Bells with Bonnie Prince Billy, The Kinks, Regina Spektor, First Aid Kit and Stars in both MP3 and Spotify playlists.