MIA: so I first came across your audio on tiktok which lead me to your music on spotify. Have you seen many people using your music now? What’s that recognition like for you as a budding artist?
DELLA: I posted a snippet of my song on my tiktok back in January 2020. My account was kinda small back then, so I didn’t really expect the audio to go anywhere. Since then, the audio has been used 600+ times. For me, that was so crazy. I’ve always wanted to be a singer and get recognition for it, but I never really thought that someone from a kinda small unknown town in England could achieve an impressive milestone like that. As an artist, It’s given me lots of hope and encouragement for the future, because I now know that there’s lots of people out there who actually really like my music!
M: by checking your IG, I was able to see you have over two thousand followers which is incredible. Did you gain most of that from tiktok and your music? What has it been like, if so?
D: So I made my Instagram account @dellaxoz around mid 2018 because I wanted to sing and post my music related content without people from school finding it. It stayed a small account for a while, until I made my new tiktok late 2019 and started posting singing covers. Since then, my Instagram page has racked up 2,000+ more followers which is pretty cool. I’ve gained 300+ more followers from Spotify.
M: so you only started releasing music last year, with your single Scary, and more recently, sad times, grow up. What has the difference been with releasing them both?
D: Well, these are both very different songs, and I wrote them in very different moods. Scary has more of an eerie hiphop trap type sound, and has been described as “the Glitchcore Melanie Martinez song” by tiktok. Sad Times Grow up has more of a cute upbeat indie sound to it. Weirdly, these songs are so different but have both been compared with artists like Billie Eilish, Audrey Mika, Melanie Martinez and more.
M: You’re quite young I believe and I feel like success at a young age could be scary in some ways. Has the journey so far onwards and upwards been a rollercoaster journey?
D: I’m not necessarily scared of the success because music is all I’ve ever wanted to do so I’m more excited for it. However, the attention and comments I get are kind of hard to deal with sometimes. When you’re a small artist, you get nice comments because the people who are listening to your music are people you know. But recently I’ve been getting more and more attention for my music, and with the loving comments comes the hateful ones. At first, it was kinda demoralising to see that i was putting all of my creativity and hardwork into my music just for people to say they hate it. But one thing that I’ve realised, especially in the music industry, is that you can’t please everyone. No matter how hard you try, some people will like it and some people won’t. I’ve always said that art is subjective, so not everyone will like the same thing. I’m just focusing on the positives and I’m making music for my fans who love my music and for myself.
M: with quite an indie alt sound, do you believe it will be harder to get where you’d like to achieve compared to if you had a more pop sound?
D: If you asked me this question a few years ago, when TikTok was Musically and not as evolved as it is now - I would say yes. Musically was great for popular musicians or popular creators as they were all already well known and mainstreams so it was just a way for Pop artists to increase their streams.
However today, alt tiktok has been introduced, and alternative music of all kinds have been gaining a crazy amount of streams and attention. Good music is good music to TikTok, no matter the genre . So I think that thanks TikTok, upcoming artists like me all have a great chance to success. I’ve gained 10k+ streams on my music and 1k+ followers on Spotify due to TikTok. In 2019, I barely had any statistics to show for myself and now a year on, the progress I’ve made is crazy.
Even without TikTok though, I still think I would eventually be successful because all my music is slightly genre defying, however some of them are more conforming to the modern pop standards so you would be likely to hear them on the radio.
M: id be really interested in knowing if you have any old inspirations because despite the alternativeness to your music, it’s quite modern, so I’d love to see if there’s any old or even odd genre/musicians that inspire you!
D: Well, I am a hardcore music lover. If you named me a genre, chances are that I know it and love it. Pretty much all genres inspire me in some way shape or form, and you will hear that from me more and more in my upcoming music because I love mixing them together. One genre that I’ve recently been listening to is 70/80s funk music. I want to make a song like Play That Funky Music by Wild Cherry. That song is my source of serotonin; it makes you want to get up and really dance so it’s really exciting, but at the same time , it has a really cool badass energy to it and you feel really cool listening to it. I also really like Jazz music, I think it’s from the 40s to the 60s. It’s very calm to listen to, you can sit there and drink a cup of tea and relax to it, but at the same time there is an air of attitude and badassness to it and I love it. Also, the scatting in Jazz music sounds so good and it inspires me to be more creative in my music & try things that people would normally see as eccentric. Personally, that’s how I feel anyway.
M: do you feel a pressure, having some kind of audience, to make your social media’s presentable and pleasing for others and not yourself?
D: I definitely feel pressure, yes. Not just about having a bit of an audience, but the fact that I am a teenager. You feel like everyone’s watching you and making comments about the selfies you post. At my age, not everyone is attempting to start their career by making music - so some people are always saying sly things and making jokes when I post and promote my music.
However, from the perspective of a musician, your page needs to be filled with music related content, and it needs to interest your target audience. There needs to be quick easy links to your music, and previews of music because this is quick easy promotion.
There’s definitely a bit of conflict there between the expectations I have to meet as a teenager compared to the expectations I have to meet as an artist.
However, I’m learning to compromise though. I always say that if I’m not 100% satisfied with my work, how can I expect my fans to be? So, I am posting & promoting my music in cool ways that I like because if my fans also like it too then everyone is happy.
M: I actually find sad times, grow up such a catchy sounding song. Where did the inspiration for it come from?
D: So, one night I was bored so I just opened Garage Band. I already had an idea in my head that I wanted a cute little indie guitar intro so I started with that. Then I thought, well instead of doing what everyone else would expect by turning it into a full on indie rock song - add those HiHats instead so it’s rnb X hiphop as well indie. The whole instrumental was just an improvisation and me messing around, I just kept chucking in instruments left right and centre. Then I was listening back to it for the first time, and I thought “This beat is too good to not use it”. So then I began to write lyrics. I think when you listen to a beat, you can immediately get a certain vibe from it. I got cute indie teen coming of age vibes from it, so I wrote it about the life of a teenager. I wanted the lyrics to be kind of rebellious but sarcastic and irreverent because summarized in three words - that’s how us teenagers are. So that’s what I did. And that’s the making of sad times, grow up.
M: To me it sounds like it could be in a coming of age film. Was that part of the inspiration behind it? If so, what movies inspired you or what movies would you dream to see it in?
D: Yeah, so as I said - the initial beat gave me an indie coming of age vibe when I made it so that’s what I was going off. I also write a lot of stories on Wattpad (@dellaxoz, if you don’t know this app, you seriously NEED it in your life) and I’m currently writing one called the Dilemmas of a Disappointment Gen Z Child which is basically about the pressures of growing up in this day and age, caused by parents and other social issues like drinking, anxiety etc which is kind of related to the song. I’m hoping that it can one day be turned into a Netflix Original Series or Film, I could star in it and also have Sad Times Grow Up as the theme song or at least featured in the soundtrack!
M: Finally, I like to end on a fun one! If anyone on tiktok could use your song as an audio, who would you like it to be?
D: Well, there are so many TikTokers to choose from loool. I think every upcoming musician’s dream is for Charli Damelio to use their audio because that’s like a doorway to viral town. But if not Charli, then I would pick any POV star (like @nikolasnadiro @iivveeyy @isiahxavier @chxllxn ) to do an acting video to my song because as an actress myself, I really understand a love that creativity that goes into coming up with different scenarios. There’s so many different scenarios that you can make up to the lyrics of one song so I’d personally really love to see what they come up with!
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