Ten Years

This Saturday, we celebrate ten years of glamglare. That means ten years of Song Pick of the Day features or roughly 3,650 individual songs.

The dates and numbers are not exact because what is glamglare today has evolved since 2001 when we started a weekly blog called NY Discovery, designed to keep our friends and family updated about our new life in New York City. The word “blog” had not been coined yet, and we used basic tools like an HTML editor, Server Side Includes, and FTP to create and upload new pages to our web hoster.

Music has always played a role on our site, but it became front and center after we attended SXSW for the first time in 2014. Later that year, Elke came up with the name “glamglare.” Then, in early 2015, she had the idea of the “Song Pick of the Day“ series, which we have continued until the present day.

Initially, this was meant for social media engagement on Facebook, which, back then, was the primary platform for music promotion. On April 12, 2015, we published the first weekly Song Pick summary. The first featured song was “Keepsake” by Hannah Cohen, who coincidentally released her new album Earthstar Mountain on Friday just a week ago. Full Circle!

By the way, we are not the only ones who have lost the exact origin of their web presence: even the renowned blogger Seth Godin is no longer sure of the precise count of his posts.

When I wrote last week about the Greenwich Village appearing in the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown, little did I know we would be invited to a show at Café Wha? a few days later. That venue – or its stand-in Hoboken, to be precise – makes multiple appearances in the movie, even though it does not play a particular role in the story.

Like the Bitter End, Café Wha? has a long history as a music venue, so both bands we saw there, Chris Berardo and Janiva Magness, were quite thrilled to play. While the music – organ and guitar-heavy classic rock with big vocals – is not the focus on glamglare, we enjoyed its comforting effect of the sound that transported us into a time when – by virtue of a nostalgic haze – life seemed easier and friendlier.

Lastly, here is a fun and sweet DIY video we enjoyed because London is much on our minds these days as we prepare to visit England for The Great Escape. Watch “London Girls,” a video that Londoner Garlen Lo filmed on location at Trafalgar Square.

glamglare favorites

Listen to glamglare favorites on Spotify, Apple Music, or below on YouTube.

This week’s five songs are our first five Song Pick of the Day features. Except that, we had to replace Emika’s “Take Me For a Ride” – a bonus track from her third album Drei – with “When My Heart Bleeds Melody.” Enjoy a ride back to 2015!

Song Pick of the Day

Listen to/watch all seven songs on YouTube. Follow our daily updated playlists on YouTube, Apple Music, or Spotify for the 50 latest Song Pick of the Day features, or subscribe here to receive them in your mailbox in real-time. Thank you for following us and sharing the excitement.

In her new song “Moved Around You,” JESSIA is “celebrating the fact that we were brave enough to put our hearts on the line.” That’s the way to go! The Austin/Berlin singer/songwriter/producer Nora Lilith’s new EP Stories in Flesh reflects "a journey of returning home to the body and a sense of wholeness." Expect subtle, sophisticated productions, like the one in "Mistake It.” "A Place on Earth" is a sweeping, classic synth-pop song by the London band Magnetic Skies. "We wanted to create something sharp, urgent, and full of energy" - mission accomplished! Soda Blonde singer Faye O'Rourke joins producer Elaine Mai to sing the new song "Aim,” which combines danceable beats with lyrics about generational trauma. “Co-Star” by Danish trio When Saints Go Machine tells a story of heartbreak and loneliness while traveling. Toronto musician Lights released a double single from her May 2 album A6. We love the darker “SURFACE TENSION,” not only for the German verse. The electronic duo Planet Opal makes hard-hitting synth-pop in Milan, Italy. The new single "Indigo Skies" comes with an equally delightful Italian-language b-side.

Nine Photos of Experiencing Caspar David Friedrich: The Soul of Nature at THE MET

I can hardly remember a time when I was not enamored with the paintings by one of Germany’s most famous landscape painters and the defining figure of Romanticism.

One of Caspar David Friedrich’s (1774–1840) paintings was decorating a wall in a Protestant church’s communal room that I used to visit now and then. Ever drawn to paintings, their affordable versions, aka postcards, I started to collect the ones that depicted paintings by this famous artist. Over the years, I visited many museums that exhibited his works, and to my great delight, New York’s Metropolitan Museum embarked on an impressive retrospective Caspar David Friedrich: The Soul of Nature

As I once knew but have forgotten since, many of Caspar David Friedrich’s works are surprisingly small in size yet breathtaking in their emotional impact. The loneliness of human beings and the magnitude of nature are depicted beautifully. While I no longer looked at these paintings with the romance-longing heart of a teenager or young adult, I still felt the pull of what had fascinated me the first (and second, and third...) times around. Seeing his masterpiece Wanderer above the Sea of Fog up close (photos 1, 2, and 8) alone is worth the visit!

If you’re in New York and visual artists of the 19th century are your thing, definitely check out this fine exhibit. On display until May 11, 2025.