Catching the Spirit of Art

Like every year, the day comes when the holidays are officially over. By now, most of you are probably back to everyday life.

I hope everybody can have a break to wrap up 2023 and become inspired for the new year. Elke and I spent a few days in Beacon, NY, a 14,000-person community in the Hudson Valley. The town was already a day-trip destination early last century before its fortunes declined. Only since the 1990s, Beacon’s popularity has been rising again – it is now a lively, artsy place with many fancy restaurants and shops.

The main reason for Beacon’s rebirth was the opening of the contemporary art museum Dia: Beacon. We visited last Friday and were even so lucky that the sun broke through the persistent rain clouds to flood the restored Nabisco factory with golden light.

Large-scale art installations may speak to you or not. But it is impossible not to be impressed by what human imagination can produce. That does not only include the artists but also the people who are helping to create the sometimes building-sized exhibits. And all those whose efforts make a museum like the Dia: Beacon possible.

This spirit is also what keeps us going at glamglare. Every day, we are amazed by the creativity and endurance of people around the world who want to express themselves and inspire through sound and words.

In 2024, of course, we continue to deliver one song for you per day. We also want to focus more on the artists with an improved website and features like Q&As. We recently had some great ones with Bar Pandora, Enny Owl, Atka, and Dawn Cadence.

During the break, we had great fun revisiting the past year by listening to all our Song Picks. You, too, can enjoy more than 21 hours of indie music on Spotify or YouTube.

With that, we wish you once more a Happy and art-filled New Year.

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Song Pick of the Day

Listen to/watch all seven songs on YouTube. Follow our daily updated playlists on YouTube and Spotify for the 50 latest Song Picks of the Day. Thank you for following us and sharing the excitement.

Welcome to the first playlist of 2024! Naturally, all songs were recorded and released last year, but I find it exciting to roll over our playlists to the new year.

You rarely hear many good things about San Francisco anymore. Still, the Irish singer/songwriter Shane Culloty, aka Winter Aid, moved there from Dublin and felt inspired to record this beautiful song in his apartment. “Inner Sunset” refers to a neighborhood in the city: “A lot of places in the city have names that can seem quite poetic when you hear them first,” he explains.

Byland is the stage name of Seattle-based musician Alie Byland. She sings her new song, “Postcard,” with Meagan Grandall. “In the final chorus, we both sing the main melody, doubling each other, which feels almost like a sister comforting another sister in this life of too often ‘goodbyes,’” Alie shares.

Get ready for a dramatic vibe change with Pesky Kid’s new song “Unchained ID.” “It always feels like I’m dancing with myself,” Benjamin Champagne sings, inviting you to join him with groovy disco beats.

LA-based pop singer/songwriter JES is ready to go the next step. “Catch Me” is a smooth synth-pop track about the moment to take the jump and be ready for “whatever happens, happens.”

For Nashville pop musician Charlotte Sands, love comes from her “blindspot,” and all she can do is watch the other “from the sidelines and having to witness them have feelings for other people.”

LaRegina is a German singer/songwriter who loves reggae. Her new song “In Charge” is about the balance between reality and cyberspace, which she calls “one of the challenges of our time.” Still, the track also works as a ray of sunshine in the darkest time of the year.

Sarah Magill, aka Quiet Takes, dispenses wisdom in her new song “Meri Said.” Not her own, but from “three close friends and two Internet strangers.” The beautifully produced track was recorded at The Hive in Wisconsin together with the rest of the upcoming album Regrets Only.

Nine Photos from the Dia: Beacon

Opening times of the Dia: Beacon and us visiting the area haven’t aligned before, but they finally did on the second to last day of 2023! We enjoyed two and a half wonderful hours in the museum, with so much inspiring art to see and explore. Granted, we’ve seen the one or the other Andy Warhol (#9) exhibit before, and also Louise Bourgeois (#7) we came across when her spiders graced Rockefeller Center in 2001. Other artists were new to us and, of course, no less exciting. Like Michael Heizer (#2), Robert Smithson (#4),  Larry Bell (#6), and Richard Serra (#8). Here’s a small selection of our favs, and if you find yourself in the area on a Friday to Monday, go visit the museum located in a former Nabisco box-printing factory.