BCB After Dark Special Edition: Happy New Year 2024!

Welcome to a special New Year’s edition of BCB After Dark. I’m hosting this party, but I don’t want you to forget Josh’s warm BCB After Dark traditional welcome:

It’s good to see you again. Come in and get warm. Let us take your hat and coat for you. We’ve still got a great table available near the front. No cover charge. Bring your own beverage.

BCB After Dark is the place for you to talk baseball, music, movies, or anything else you need to get off your chest, as long as it is within the rules of the site.

Since it’s New Year’s Eve, I thought I’d present a selection of music appropriate for the evening from a number of different musical genres, then pose you a Cubs/baseball question. That way you can choose your own soundtrack for the evening. First, here’s the full image from the top of this post:

Getty Images/Photo illustration by Mike Bojanowski

We’re starting this party at 11 p.m. Central time, midnight ET, so those of you in the Eastern time zone can kick off 2024 for us. For BCBers in the UK and Europe, yes, I know it’s already New Year’s Day for you, so come to the party, and everyone else can join in as you like as the clock strikes midnight in your time zone — or whenever!

Let’s kick off with a traditional NYE song from a modern artist:

A jazzier traditional NYE song:

What would 2023 be without Taylor Swift? Here’s her “New Year’s Day”:

“What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?”, asks Bette Midler, and you’re right here at BCB After Dark!

“New Year’s Day” by U2 isn’t strictly a holiday song, but it feels right to include in this medley:

This isn’t specifically a New Year’s song either but it’s fun to dance to and this mashup pairs Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars’ “Uptown Funk” with some classic movie scenes:

Another song not specifically written for this holiday, Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” ranks high on songs played on New Year’s Eve:

The song “New Year’s Day” by Pentatonix also ranks high on a number of lists of songs to play on this occasion:

Returning to the traditional, from the movie “Holiday Inn”:

Lastly, Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians were famous for playing “Auld Lang Syne” on various NYE TV specials for nearly 40 years, from the 1940s into the 1970s. Your grandparents — or maybe great-grandparents! — likely listened to this just before midnight December 31:

Some of those songs — as well as a couple dozen others — are on this list of “36 Best New Year’s Eve Songs of All Time.”

Now that we have you in the right mood for the evening, no matter what your musical tastes, here’s your New Year’s Cubs question: If the 2024 MLB season began tomorrow, with the Chicago Cubs constituted as they are right at the present moment, how many games would they win?

Happy New Year, everyone. Get home safely tonight, and Josh will be back with the next edition of BCB After Dark coming up Monday night/Tuesday morning.