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

deegie, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

My EXES EP has been the most meaningful project I’ve worked on to date. It’s a collection of songs that I’m releasing through next summer about my exes, and each song has the muse’s name in the title. The first one, called Scraps (Cleland), came out at the end of October and I just released a music video for it, and the next one drops on December 1, called Never Look Back (PJ). I was inspired to write a concept EP about former romances when I discovered my old online journal that has almost ten years worth of entries of me complaining about – and sometimes gushing over – guys. There was too much drama just sitting there waiting to be mined for song lyrics. I thought it would be interesting to look back and try to encapsulate my experience with each one of these men who shaped my coming of age in its own song. It’s been therapeutic in a way, and also weird. Rereading my feelings around each failed relationship or entanglement and having to relive the emotional unavailability of my exes and my own lack of self-love really drags me back into a mini-depression immediately after. Sort of like drinking again after you’ve spent a day hungover, and then feeling that second day hangover and asking yourself, why do I keep doing this? But I think it’s part of processing any old and somewhat traumatic experience you’ve had. Eventually talking and writing about it helps you start to heal and emerge stronger and you’re less affected by it moving forward. Someone pointed out that this is really an EP about me, and I am having some revelations about how I have used relationships to get validation that I should have been giving myself all along, and how I have my own patterns of negativity and selfishness with partners. But I do feel love for each of the EXES muses. Even the ones who I wasn’t serious with, I fell in love with anyway, and there have been a lot of warm fuzzy memories and nostalgia that I hope come through in the songs.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’m a pop punk artist and songwriter based in Los Angeles. I’m writing songs about love and power whether that’s romantic love, self-love, power dynamics in gender roles, or self-empowerment.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I don’t know if it was a “lesson” I learned and had to unlearn, but when I started writing songs I struggled a lot with revising them. If it didn’t come out in the emotional outpouring of me writing it, why would it be any good? And why do I have to slog through trying to change my melodies or lyrics when I could just write a new song? I’ve had to make an effort to become a better re-writer. As I grow as a songwriter, I am coming to realize that it’s a really valuable skill to be able to detach from this work you created, and not have your ego and your self-worth be wrapped up in it. And then reworking the parts of it that aren’t great, and coming up with even better ideas is so rewarding. It feels so good to polish a song and take it to the next level.

Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

I wish I had been aware of Song Club earlier in my journey. It’s a weekly song share that meets over Zoom every Thursday at 7 pm PT and connects songwriters within a safe space to grow creatively among a really incredible, supportive community. Any writer (all levels welcome, from any location) can bring a song in progress to receive feedback on, or just show up to give feedback on others’ work. You always end up getting insights into your songs and your general writing style that are useful, and I’ve met some of my close collaborators and friends there. We celebrate each other’s new releases at the end of the night, since it usually falls close to East coast midnight heading into new music Fridays. I didn’t feel like I was part of a community in the music industry until I started going to Song Club, but it’s my family now. We’re transitioning our social media, so follow both @lasongwriters and @songclubbers on Instagram to get the Zoom link and stay current.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/deegiemusic/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@deegiemusic
• Other: TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@deegiemusic

Image Credits
Chris Ram