Talented singer-songwriter, artist, and activist DALBY’s song “PROM” is an upbeat song with a cliché storyline about a stolen prom date. Anyone who has ever been overlooked for “the more popular and socially preferred option” will enjoy screaming along to this song. We had the pleasure of interviewing Dalby, and here’s what she had to say:
Q: Did you always know you would become a musician? At what point did you reach this realization/conclusion?
DALBY: I always loved music and I have been singing ever since I’ve been able to talk, so I think in the back of my mind music had always been my first choice as a kid. I went through a few different career ideas like an architect or something like that but music has always drawn me in. When I was 11, I realized the thing that I loved about doing musical theatre was singing and the musical part of the shows. I ended up pursuing that desire to sing and play music professionally at that age and have spent the past 6 years developing my craft and learning every day.
Q: What inspired “PROM”?
DALBY: Prom! actually started off as a complete joke, to be honest. My management team and a lot of surrounding industry experts gave me some advice to write some songs that sounded more like my age since I typically write more mature lyrics, so they recommended that I write a song about prom or something. I told my producer and one of my best friends, Dylan Rouda, about this and we just thought of some ideas and came up with this whole story about a girl who took my prom date and it’s kind of funny now since it’s a completely made up story.
Q: Can you walk us through the creative and production process for “PROM”?
DALBY: Dylan and I kind of started throwing around some silly ideas about prom when everyone requested that being a song topic and I ended up writing a cool pre-chorus part that you’ll hear in the song. I wrote it around Dylan’s production and then we really liked the sound of it, which resulted in us building the song around it. He and I spent three hours writing and recording a rough version during a studio session in September and then we finalized it with some tweaks and a final vocal a few months later. It was super fun and I love working with Dylan because he just gets exactly what I want to do and we have a lot of fun making music with each other.
Q: I read that you’re an activist. What’s one cause you’re committed to?
DALBY: There are so many things that I’m passionate about, which I feel like particularly root from my aunt Amy, who was killed in South Africa in 1993. I am a big advocate for women’s reproductive rights and I believe that the attack on women’s healthcare in the United States is something that is incredibly dangerous.
Q: What impact would you like to create with your music?
DALBY: I think we live in a world where music is needed now more than ever. There are so many people that need to feel something and art is the best way to express emotions for me and many others. I want my audience to be able to feel something with my music, whether that be emotions or just nodding their heads along with the beat.
Q: What’s one song you’re currently obsessed with?
DALBY: I have SO many songs and artists that I am obsessed with, like Lizzy McAlpine, Frank Ocean, Zach Bryan, and Taylor Swift (I’m always obsessed with Taylor Swift to be fair). I think my current song that I have on repeat is Feather by Sabrina Carpenter which just came out on the deluxe edition of her album, “emails i can’t send”.
Interviewed by Zoey King
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