BCB After Dark Special Edition: Happy New Year 2024!

Join the virtual New Year's Eve party at BCB After Dark with a selection of music and a Cubs baseball question.

Welcome to the New Year's edition of BCB After Dark! I'm your host for the evening, and I want to extend Josh's warm BCB After Dark traditional welcome to all of you:

It's great to have you back. Come on in and get comfortable. Let us take your hat and coat. We still have a fantastic table available near the front. No cover charge. Bring your own drink.

BCB After Dark is the perfect place for you to discuss baseball, music, movies, or anything else you want to talk about, as long as it follows the site's rules.

Since it's New Year's Eve, I thought it would be fitting to share a selection of music suitable for the evening from various musical genres, and then pose a Cubs/baseball question for you to ponder. That way, you can choose your own soundtrack for the night. First, here's the full image from the top of this post:

We're starting this party at 11 p.m. Central time, midnight ET, so those of you in the Eastern time zone can ring in 2024 for us. For our BCBers in the UK and Europe, I know it's already New Year's Day for you, so feel free to join the party. Everyone else can jump in as the clock strikes midnight in your time zone -- or whenever you're ready!

Let's begin with a modern artist's take on a traditional NYE song:

Now, here's a jazzier version of a traditional NYE song:

No New Year's Eve would be complete without Taylor Swift, so here's her "New Year's Day":

"What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?" asks Bette Midler, and the answer is joining us at BCB After Dark!

"New Year's Day" by U2 may not be a holiday song, but it feels right to include in this medley:

This next song isn't specifically for New Year's, but it's a fun dance tune. This mashup pairs Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars' "Uptown Funk" with classic movie scenes:

Another song not specifically written for the holiday, Whitney Houston's "I Wanna Dance With Somebody," is a popular choice for New Year's Eve:

The song "New Year's Day" by Pentatonix also ranks high on lists of songs to play on this occasion:

Returning to the traditional, here's a song from the movie "Holiday Inn":

And 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've set the mood for the evening, no matter your musical tastes, here's your New Year's Cubs question: If the 2024 MLB season began tomorrow, with the Chicago Cubs as they are right now, how many games would they win?

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

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