INTERVIEW: Dayla on her latest single 'Lighthouse': "This is the moment to keep on fighting, to raise our voice and fight against all the abuses that have been normalised for so long."
Dayla is a French singer-songwriter who is currently based in the UK. She released her debut single ‘Closer’ last year and in late May this year released her second single ‘Lighthouse’. A mellow, emotive, lushly produced ballad with electronic beats it is a deeply personal track that Dayla wrote when struggling to get along with a loved one. “The idea was to bring love, ‘the light’ of the lighthouse, to people who aren’t ok, who might be negative and hard to deal with,” she says.
It is a beautiful, calming listen and while the subject matter may be one of tension, Dayla’s smooth, gorgeous vocals wrap themselves around and leave you believing everything will be just fine. It is a tempting preview of what we can expect from her debut EP which is due later this year. We recently caught up with Dayla to find out more about her music and career.
Hi Dayla! Thanks for chatting to us. How have you been surviving life in isolation?!
Hey thanks a lot for taking the time to get to know me better! Well, I’ve been having a love-hate relationship towards the lockdown. As a musician I spend a lot of time at home writing and recording. I like doing writing sessions but for my own music I tend to write my own songs by myself. So at first it felt like not much had changed but then the lack of social interaction began to creep up on me! It’s been a weird time but I’ve been trying not to burn out being super over-productive to fill the gap left by social stuff, instead just taking each day as it comes.
Congratulations on the release of your latest single ‘Lighthouse’ a couple of weeks ago, it is a beautiful track. I understand the track has quite a personal story behind it, what was the inspiration behind the song?
Thank you! Well at the time I began to write it, I was struggling to get along with a loved one who was a bit depressed and just really negative all the time. That’s what inspired it, really: trying to work out how to relate to that person, for my head as well as theirs. A few months after recording the song my mum became super ill and I ended up taking care of her 24/7 until she passed away. It was a really difficult time and the song took on a whole new meaning for me, giving me the extra hope and strength to go through that.
Can you talk me a little through the creative process behind the song?
One day about three years ago I was in the studio in Paris with my friend and producer NBO TOWN working on some other stuff. We started chatting about the difficulties I was having with the person close to me who was depressed and he said something like “you need to bring the light to this person.” I came back the next day and we recorded the first verse and chorus of what would become “Lighthouse.” After that the song had a bit of a makeover because I’ve evolved since it was first written and recorded, my vibe has changed. The original version was a bit more vocal and the end was slightly different. We had wanted to make the vibe smoother and when I was ad-libbing on the chorus I kept coming back to singing this same melody. That became the outro in the final version: “Give yourself time, it’s a lifetime journey. Feeling the warmth right inside your body. Tears rolling down, tears rolling down.” This last sentence is about being kind to yourself no matter what you’re going through. My therapist once said that to me when we cry to express pain, we sometimes feel a warmth in the chest at the same time; apparently this comes from self-love. I thought that was beautiful. I think we’re talking more and more in society about expressing our emotions and that it’s ok to cry. But it’s not just ‘ok’: it’s super important to cry, to sit with that pain, in order to be able to move forward later and not be stuck with stagnant emotions inside you.
I’m intrigued by the spoken word beginning of the track, where does it come from and why did you choose to include it?
Ha! NBO TOWN who found it. It actually comes from NASA! They made a bunch of audio samples from various space missions public and this one stuck with us. There’s something quite cosmic and hopeful about it that we liked so we decided to make it the intro of the song.
The music video for the song is really captivating, can you talk us through what it was like to make? Was it made in isolation?
So this video was made with my friends at CY Collaboration. It was actually shot last year in a flat in Paris, so not in isolation but we did it with very little. We shot the video in one day with no budget and we only had a mini DV camera, a green screen and natural light. We wanted to capture something raw and spontaneous and see where this would take us. It was a very freeing experience for me to only focus on creating and not be worrying about money or technical issues and planning.
What role did music play in your life when you were a child?
Music has always been part of my life, my family is quite artistic, my parents met on a TV set when they were both actors. I grew up doing ballet as my mum was an ex-ballet dancer so music, theatre and dance were important to me and still are. I remember being fascinated by my dad’s vinyl collection. I loved staring at the Rolling Stones holographic vinyl Their Satanic Majesties Request. I also remember when Françoise Hardy’s vinyl was being played at home and I would be dancing around the flat singing her song ‘Tous les garçons et les filles’.
Who were the pop stars or musical artists you looked up to growing up?
I’m a 90’s kid so I grew up listening to girl bands and pop stars that were French and British and American. I would watch music channels like mcm and MTV for hours. But my true music inspirations came from Black music. Pop music has been defined by Black music; even rock comes from the blues. When I was 15 years old, I really wanted to improve my singing, I was eager to learn how to belt which wasn’t really a thing in France. Then I got into gospel music - thanks to my vocal coach Angie - and learned how to lead a group of singers, how to improvise and how to harmonise. It wasn’t easy haha! I would also listen to shit loads of Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, Mary G Blige, Alicia Keys and India Arie, to name a few. Trying to copy them and practice my runs and dynamics. Then I got into jazz, learning loads of jazz classics. That trained my ear in a different way, learning new scales and learning how to improvise over 12 bar blues. I truly fell in love with Ella Fitzgerald’s singing, so smooth, her ad libs are so addictive. I obviously listened to a lot of soul like Stevie Wonder and Motown. Michael Jackson’s music had a big influence on me too. Seriously, the list could go on and on. I loved listening to the Beatles and got inspired by their songwriting which can be very visual and dreamy like in ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’. Then my friend NBO TOWN led me to discover Radiohead, Björk, loads of landscape/experimental music, more electronic music. That’s when I discovered people like James Blake, FKA Twigs or Frank Ocean who are truly the artists who reinvented pop music for me. I learnt how to chill behind a mic and deliver my message without shouting ha! Add to that shit loads of psychedelic rock, Brit rock, some Kurt Cobain cause I’m still a fan girl, and we’re there.
You come from France but are currently living in the UK, how does being away from home, or being in the UK, inform or change your creative process, if at all?
Well each country has a very different music scene, different influences and a different mentality. For the kind of music I make, it made sense for me to move to London. I needed to get out of my comfort zone, to meet new people. Here I learnt about music arrangement and music theory. That’s how I started getting into music production. I got inspired by the crowd I surrounded myself with, I improved my song writing skills, found my style. I started doing writing sessions and learnt how the music industry works in the UK. I felt like I needed to come here to truly become an artist.
There has been so much talk and debate around gender equality in the wake of #metoo. What are your thoughts on sexism and gender equality in the music industry?
First, I salute the #metoo movement, all of the women who came forward are super brave. I always struggle how we can easily doubt someone who comes forward to share their traumas. I’m also a victim of sexual abuse. It took me years to realise that’s what it was and the last thing you want is to be challenged and not believed. There’s already so much inner shame and struggle. It’s so easy to say ‘oh you shouldn’t be ashamed, it’s not your fault’ but when someone has abused your vulnerability and you are a victim of grooming and abuse it’s a very long process to be freed from those thoughts. Since the #metoo movement started a lot has changed and the way we treat women in society came back into mainstream discussion. So much sexist bullshit has been banned on TV and other media but there’s still so much to do. The priority is to make sure everybody is included in the conversation. For example, as a white cis woman, I’m not a victim of racism or gender mis-representation. I started becoming interested in black feminism a few years ago thanks to my sister who really opened my eyes to white privilege. In all of the socio-political chaos we’re facing at the moment, and the tragedies that are its effect, I’m glad we’re challenging the institutions that have been in power for so many centuries to only serve white people in the western world. This is the moment to keep on fighting, to keep the momentum with what is happening right now with #blacklivesmatter to raise our voice and fight against all the abuses that have been normalised for so long. The music industry is slowly shifting towards something more diverse but the people who are in the really key roles are mostly white males who have been around for decades. I find that there’s an obsession with women’s age, a glorification of youth in the pop industry. I’m still in my 20s and I’ve been asked a few times how old I am before being told not to reply to that question; like saying my age could be damaging my chances at succeeding in what I do. I find it maddening how you can go from child ‘prodigy’ to pop star material to out of date very quickly. On a more positive note, I know so many inspiring women in the music industry trying to change the way things are. I’m part of a female and non-binary music project called NYX – electronic drone choir. The project started just as a group of 6 women who didn’t know each other that well making drone/ambient music focusing on mixing electronic elements using voices and pedals. The aim was always to create a space, a community to support women in the industry. There are now more structures and groups put in place to promote female and non-binary music professionals and raise awareness about gender inequality in the music industry. There are also new initiatives like #Iamproducer that challenge the gender distinction made with terms such as a ‘female’ producer which only emphasises the idea that being a producer and being female or non-binary at the same time is an exception. This “effectively separates our efforts from the mainstream” in the words of my friend producer Marta Salogni who’s also part of #Iamproducer and a very inspiring human being.
What else is on the agenda for Dayla in 2020?
Well this summer you’ll be hearing more music from me with the release of my debut EP. I want to keep on releasing new music this year and keep pushing myself. 2020 is definitely the year of challenges and it’s important to know how to embrace change in one way or another. Let’s be loud!
