A New Song for your New Year
Whatever Comes Next:
Releasing December 31st
click to pre-save
photo by Joseph Bradshaw
I’ve always been a sucker for New Year’s songs. They occupy the same maybe-cliché-but-also-poignant space in my imagination as World War II musicals, orphaned protagonists, and small town kids who choose love over money. Have you seen and heard these tropes before? Yes. But are they also reponsible for bringing us The Sound of Music, Harry Potter, and It’s A Wonderful Life? Yes. So can you really be mad about it?
The occasion of the New Year provides a shortcut to emotional potency. By evoking the sting of the past and the ache of the future, New Year’s songs expedite their listeners to the immanence of the present. And so we sing “Auld Lang Syne,” and when we “take a cup o’ kindness yet,” it’s not without a healthy dose of tears.
I’ve fallen in love with many New Year’s songs in my time. When I was but fourteen, “The New Year” by Death Cab for Cutie offered me that irresistable combination of cynical critique (“So this is the new year / And I have no resolutions / For self-assigned penance / For problems with easy solutions”) and a childlike desire for magic (“I wish the world was flat like the old days / Then I could travel just by folding a map”). A couple years later, as I was starting to get serious about songwriting, “The Blues” by Switchfoot made a lasting impression on me. Legend has it that Jon Foreman performed the vocal track in a state of bleary-eyed urgency late at night on December 31st. He pleads: “Does justice never find you? Do the wicked never lose? Is there any honest song to sing besides these blues? And nothing is okay until the world caves in.” Most recently, I’ve bonded deeply with Regina Spektor’s “New Year,” whose subtext silently screams loneliness and loss despite the song’s pretenses of cheerfulness and celebration (“Thanking the old year for all it has brought her / No mention of the things it took away”).
I didn’t write “Whatever Comes Next” intending for it to be a New Year’s song. But the timing worked out and New Year’s Eve seemed the best day to release a song that begins with its own “cup o’ kindness,” raised in defiant hope that what comes next might surprise us.
On every level, not just lyrically, “Whatever Comes Next” is about suspense. For you music theory nerds out there, I invite you to notice how the entire song revolves around the IV chord, which never quite finds its resolution. Kyra Hinton’s painting for this song makes brilliant use of colors which, when put next to one another, convey an eerie sense of foreboding, landing us squarely on the threshold between dark and light. And finally, bear in mind that this is the opening track of There Will Be Surprises, a prime spot to sneak in some thematic foreshadowing. What ideas and motifs do you hear that may give you a clue into the rest of the album?
What do you think will come next?
Pre-save “Whatever Comes Next” at the button below and we’ll pick up the conversation in the new year.
click to pre-save
art by Kyra Hinton
P.S. You may have heard this spiel from a beloved indie artist before, but pre-saving music on Spotify and Apple Music is more than just a convenience for you. It’s actually super helpful for me! Whether you love or hate the algorithms (or love-hate them), pre-saves help my song get placed on algorithmic playlists to reach more ears. And while you’re at it, go ahead and follow my artist profile. That helps me in similar ways, plus it guarantees that you’ll never miss out on my new tunes as I share them in 2022.
Thanks for listening, friends!
-Drew