New Year's Eve (The Song)

by The Nadas

It’s New Year’s Eve. I have had a gig on New Year’s Eve at least 25 of the last 35 years of my adult life. I didn’t feel like playing a NYE show this year. Tonight, I am sitting by the fire with my wife and dogs, eating good food and watching movies. I occasionally check in with Andy Cohen and Anderson Cooper to see what kind of shenanigans they pull off on CNN. It feels weird. I am used to playing and start to question everything when I don’t have a gig, but tonight I am reminding myself how lucky I am and how good life is. On this New Year’s Eve, I am grateful. Here’s to a wonderful 2024 and optimism for an incredible 2025.

We wrote our song “New Year’s Eve” as the 12th of 12 songs on our record called “Almanac”. For the “Almanac” record we wrote, recorded, and released one song per month, every month for the year of 2008. After writing a year/album’s worth of songs we decided we would try to write an anthem-type song to ring in the new year.

The song starts with the countdown. Counting down from 10 now here we go.

Photos from NYE 2022 at the Rewind Hotel in West Des Moines, IA.

“The snow is falling, moved around by wind, erasing all the tracks from where you’ve been”. Symbolizing the fresh start of a new year.

“Open up your eyes, on a brand new scene, everybody tries a little more on New Year’s Eve”. This is the idea that we can go into the new year with optimism and putting everything else behind us. In this line, the chorus also references the fact that some people who don’t go out at all during the year make it out for a NYE party, so they have to pack a whole year’s worth of fun and partying into one night.

“Everyone can wake up, to a brand new day. The sky will come alive turning blue from gray. Put the wheels in motion. Move beyond your fears. Firmly close the door on a very hard year” It’s time to move on, push forward, don’t worry about the past, and think about now. Maybe you didn’t have “a very hard year” but the odds are high that enough people listening to the song will identify with that sentiment that it will ring true.

“Everybody’s waiting, the lights are turned down low, counting down from 10 now here we go.” (If you watch this part of the video you can see my little boys when they were 7 and 3. They are practically adults now.)

One more chorus and then the rest of the song is “La la la la la la la, la la la la. La la la la la la la, la la la la.” Over and over again. You may think that these are throwaway lyrics, but I challenge you to watch this part of the video. When you are in a group of people and everyone is singing along you almost can’t help but smile. And when you smile it makes the person next to you smile and when there are 1000 people in a venue smiling and singing along it brings more good into the world. That’s what it is all about.

Sing it with me… La la la la la la la, la la la la. La la la la la la la, la la la la.

Are you smiling?

Happy New Year!

I’m a proud member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative, a group of over 60 journalists and authors writing from and about the great state of Iowa, among them Marianne Fons, Julie Gammack, Dave Busiek, Art Cullen, Robert Leonard, and Kyle Munson.

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Access the entire IOWA WRITERS COLLECTIVE roster here.

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