Casting an aural spotlight on the poignant and personal themes of anxiety and mental health, UK indie singer-songwriter Darla Jade charmingly serenades the captive listener through her candid thoughts in her new single "Overcrowded": "Even when I'm alone I still feel overcrowded." Immersed in a minimal and graceful production of piano and delicately placed string arrangements, Darla's ethereal vocals beautifully lead the listener through the honesty of this touching indie ballad.
It was just last year that Darla released her impressive debut single, "This Time," toured with The Dark Tenor in Germany, and wrote an album's worth of material in Thailand at Karma Sound Studios with award winning songwriters, Mark Smith and Bill Padley.
SoundThread caught up with Darla to pose a few questions about the new single, her creative process, inspirations, and how her musical career started.
[STMB]: How did you get started as a singer-songwriter? Are there any particular inspirations or influences that motivated you along the path to where you are now?
[DJ]: I started gigging at the age of 15 all over the UK and it came to a point where I just really wanted to start writing my own songs so that I could perform them!- My very early inspirations when I started songwriting were Kodaline and Melanie Martinez! But I always had a passion for singing, when I was younger I did a lot of musical theatre and studied that at college also at the Jill Clewe’s Academy for Performing Arts.
[STMB]: Your new single ("Overcrowded") is a beautiful, moving song with poignant subject matter - can you tell us about its underlying theme or inspiration?
[DJ]: Overcrowded is about mental health - I and many people I am close to have experienced it in some form and this song talks about how I felt personally when I was going through it.
[STMB]: Can you tell us about the creative process around the single? Is the final form of the song true to its original musical seeds?
[DJ]: So this song came about a little differently to how I usually song write - This song was written in Thailand at Karma Sound Studios and me and my producer had just finished a different song and we thought to do a slower version of it too to see if it would work better. So we did it, but then we felt the original worked best, but the production Mark Smith (Co-writer and Producer) made was too good not to use for anything, so that’s when we decided we would write something new to it! I already had the topic idea it was just a case of piecing it all together really which was a lot of fun!
Thanks to Darla for providing the insightful responses!
Beyond "Overcrowded", Darla is planning on additional single releases in the near future, and will be touring this April to support The Dark Tenor in Germany, with the following dates confirmed
14.04.20 Leipzig | Peterskirche
15.04.20 Magdeburg | Johanniskirche
16.04.20 Erfurt | Thomaskirche
17.04.20 Berlin | Apostel-Paulus-Kirche
18.04.20 Hamburg | Kulturkirche Altona
23.04.20 Dresden | Martin Luther Kirche
24.04.20 Hannover | Markuskirche
25.04.20 Bochum | Christuskirche
26.04.20 Krefeld | Friedenskirche
For more information about Darla Jade, visit her official website, follow on social media (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube) and find her music on Spotify, SoundCloud and Apple Music.