Daphne Jane Q&A
By: Tosin Faseemo
Daphne Jane is a University of Minnesota student and bedroom pop artist. Keep reading to find out about her creative process, inspirations, and more.
What's it like being like a student who also makes music? Is it hard to balance things?
I would say that it does get hard, specifically around times where I am releasing music. It's a lot of meetings and balancing time. Sometimes it's frustrating that I can't put all of my time into one thing or the other, and that I do have to split that time up. So yeah, I would say that it can get hard, but it's definitely doable. I love making music so it's kind of like a little break from school.
What would you say your genre of music is?
I would say bedroom pop.
How did you get started making music?
When I was around 11, I got a nylon string guitar and started teaching myself chords. I would play until like 3 a.m., and my fingers would bleed from the nylon strings. After, I got better at guitar. I got a real guitar for Christmas, and that was a big turning point. I started writing songs around like 11 or 12 on guitar, and I've just always really loved it. It's always been a very big coping mechanism for me. But then when I started to really get into music outside of my own. I really, really love Lorde. And whenever Pure Heroine came out, I was really inspired by that sort of sound and started writing more songs that I felt fit my sound around 15 or 16. That is when I started recording my first album. So that's how I got to where I am now with my music.
Is there anything outside of music that also inspires you to make it?
I identify within the LGBT community, and when I was coming to terms with my sexuality, it was really helpful for me to write songs about my own romantic experiences and sort of self-validate by writing these songs. I've always really wanted to contribute to LGBTQ media because there has been and still is a lack of queer media. So to be a queer artist and write songs from a WLW perspective has always been something that has really pushed me with my own music.
Who would be your dream collaborator?
Probably Lorde, just because I've listened to her music for as long as I can remember. She's always been my biggest inspiration, specifically lyrically. I think that Lorde has some really amazing lyrics.
Can you walk me through your creative process?
It honestly differs from song to song, but usually I randomly, at some point in a day or in the night, I have a lyric in my head or two words that rhyme, that I really like how they sound. Or a story that happened that I want to write a song about. And so I'll start sort of brainstorming lyrics and write poems of what I want to write the song about. Then when I have the time, I'll pull out my one of my guitars, and then come up with a chord progression and a melody that I like and then sort of attach those lyric fragments that I've written and then sort of fill them in with the melody and the guitar parts, because it's kind of hard to write an entire song lyrically without knowing your melody or your guitar parts. So yeah, usually I start with the lyrics, and then I'll fill in whatever I haven't written when I create some sort of melody and guitar part.
Daphne’s latest EP, “Dreamland,” is out now.