We were lucky to catch up with Leila Dandan recently and have shared our conversation below.

Leila, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

My album, Insult to Injury, has been such a meaningful project to work on. It created an outlet for healing and growth in ways I never imagined needing. On the surface, it can be interpreted as a teenage girl’s collection of breakup songs, but it became so much more than that for me as the album came together.

I started writing this album in July of 2020. I was 16 at the time, fresh out of my first breakup, and because so many of my friends were people I’d met through him, I lost most of them in the process as well. Figuring out who I had with me and who was never there from the beginning was not easy, especially in the throes of isolation that the world faced together at that time.

I turned to songwriting to express my feelings when I felt like I couldn’t express them to anyone else. I wrote 6 of the album’s songs that July, with the rest pouring out over the next year and a half. As I continued to write, I realized that most of these songs were not specifically about breaking up. Instead, I found myself writing most about the friendships I lost as a result— the friendships that were never as real as I thought they were. As difficult as the breakup was, the lost friendships only added insult to injury.

I’m 18 now, and the album was finished and released in January 2022. By the grace of God, I can say that I don’t feel the same way I did when I first wrote these songs. Releasing these songs felt like a release of all the feelings I felt in the process.

Not only did the songs themselves bring me comfort, but I have been so blessed by the responses I’ve received after the release of the project. So many people have shared their stories with me over these past few months, and I can’t tell you how much those messages mean to me. They tell me how they’ve been feeling, and they thank me for putting their feelings into words. I never thought this album would impact anyone other than me, but hearing that my songs have brought comfort to others makes this album feel so much more worth it.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers?

I’m an 18-year-old singer-songwriter, and I’ve been in love with making music for as long as I can remember!

My dad is a musician, so we’ve had instruments lying around my house since before I was born. He taught me my first few chords on guitar when I was 4, and I haven’t put my guitar down since! As my interest grew, I taught myself how to play every instrument I could get my hands on.

I started writing songs in middle school after moving to Dallas from Huntington Beach, California. Songwriting quickly became my favorite way to create. Not only can I process/express my thoughts through lyrics, but I love that I can color my emotions in through the music as well. My songs are a lot like diary entries for me- it’s very therapeutic.

My love for songwriting quickly turned into a love for producing. I started out on a 4-track cassette recorder that my dad had in his closet, and I used that thing forever. I’ve been collecting instruments and equipment since then, and now 6 years later, I’ve turned my room into a mini recording studio.

I have fallen in love with the entire creative process, and I can’t imagine doing anything other than music for the rest of my life! I am currently studying to earn my associate’s in commercial music, and I plan to develop myself however I can to do this full time.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

I have two answers to this. First, as songwriting is my #1 outlet for expression, successfully portraying my feelings in a song is a feeling I’ll never get tired of. But honestly, nothing gets me more than when other people can relate to my music too. I know how much I love the feeling of listening to a song that seems to describe my life, so hearing that others feel that way about the songs I write is surreal to me.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

If I’m being honest, I think people tend to forget how much work goes into releasing music! It’s easy to hear a finished album and overlook how much time and energy went into it.

For example, I only started telling people about my album after everything was already recorded and I had a release plan. To the public eye, the project timeline only spanned a couple of months, but my album took me nearly two years to complete! And I don’t mean two years of working in tiny increments every week or so. I mean two years of waking up, doing school, and then working on the album ’til I fell asleep.

It was my first time tackling a project this big, so researching and learning how to do things correctly ended up being the time-consuming part. I needed new gear, and I needed to learn how to use it well. I had to learn how to record, mix, and promote the release. I had to figure out who I needed to hire for the things I couldn’t learn in time, and how to raise the money to make it happen. I learned how to design t-shirts, stickers, websites, mailing lists, and promotions. I learned how to set up and direct photo/video shoots, how to create a cohesive brand, and how to edit everything to look the way I pictured in my head. And of course, I needed to write and record the thing.

Was it worth it? Absolutely. I’m proud of the work I’ve accomplished, and I’m incredibly grateful for the time I got to spend developing myself as a musician as I worked. I love looking back at where I started and seeing how far I’ve come since then. But it took me two years for a reason!

Contact Info:

• Email: leiladandanmusic@gmail.com
• Website: leiladandan.com
• Instagram: @leila.dandan
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/leiladandan
• Other: Tiktok: @leila.dandan

Image Credits
Angelina Walla, Kensey Kennedy