By Spring Wise. Images by Helen Tate.
Delilah Bon (she/her) chats with Spring Wise (they/them) ahead of her sold out show at The Joiners, Southampton, on November 1st.
About a year ago, I complimented a friend on a t-shirt they had on which said “Dead Men Don’t Rape”. She told me it was Delilah Bon merch. “Is that a band?” I asked. “Shut up, you don’t know Delilah Bon?? You’ll love her!” was the reply. And it was true. When I was given the opportunity of a preview of her new album, and an interview, I decided to put on my big girl panties and do it: my very first artist interview.
I came clean from the start, and confessed that I didn’t really know how to use the laptop I was borrowing, and she was delightful about it. And she was gorgeous. I’ll be honest, I was a little bit starstruck. Lucky for me, she’s also very articulate and passionate about expressing her ideas!
The title for her new album, “Evil Hate Filled Female”, was a gift of sorts, from a hater on Twitter: “Delilah Bon is nothing more than an evil hate-filled female” and, having initially chosen the name “Villain Era”, decided to lean into that perception of her and her work by sad little men on the internet. And I think that’s fantastic.
“There’s just something so funny about the fact that I’m so misunderstood by that kind of person, and yet it was perfectly suited to the album,” she says.
As someone female-presenting and chronically online, I’ve often been called the same thing. We chatted about the way strangers so often confuse rage with hatred. There’s a lot to be angry about, and if you aren’t angry, then you probably aren’t paying attention.
She continued: “I met a guy after a festival who said, ‘it was really good, I really liked it… but why are you so angry?’ and it’s like… did you listen to the lyrics?! I think a lot of people do hear that anger in my voice and maybe they’re not listening to what I’m saying.”
One commenter (guess the gender… that’s right, it’s a man) on social media has recently taken to calling her “a failed Spice Girl”. We couldn’t decide whether she should take this as a compliment or an insult, but I suggest ‘Rage Spice’ as a future album title… I’m sure my royalty cheque will be in the post.
Being misunderstood is a strong theme through the record, and my autistic ass felt so seen when I listened, so I asked a bit of a personal question since she was willing to be so open and self-reflective: do you identify as being neurodivergent at all?
“I’ve never been diagnosed, but everything about ADHD speaks to me,” she says.
“It answers a lot of questions I had at school. I can never concentrate, I hyperfixate on things, I can work and work and work and not eat, and not realise I’ve been sat there for ten hours straight… but then I can also be unable to do anything knowing I’ve got something coming up at 6pm!
“My whole life I feel like I’ve been cursed with this deep feeling of compassion for everything,” she says, and I feel the weight of it in her voice. It’s audible in her songs: the raw pain of caring very deeply, and a feeling of responsibility to make the world a more just place.
It’s big, and it can be overwhelming.
“I have a lot of empathy which is good, but it also means that I am overstimulated a lot of time with the amount that I have in there, in my head”.
Delilah’s fans are very important to her and she takes her feeling of responsibility to advocate very seriously, but that pressure takes its toll.
“It’s so important to me to connect with my fans and meet everybody, but a lot of the time people want to talk to me about really really dark things… and it’s like they feel safe with me and they feel like I understand them. It’s the same with my messages: people really open up to me and they tell me about different traumas they’ve been through”.
She tells me about a Pride gig after which she talked with about 200 people, “I got back to the hotel and it were like… I just wanna cry. Like, as good as it is to have rooms full of screaming girls and screaming nonbinary and trans people, you have to remember there’s a reason we’re all so angry.”
People have a parasocial relationship to Delilah Bon, the artist, and it’s hard as a human being to try to contain so many stories and other people’s pain.
“My mum worries about me sometimes because I am taking a lot on.”
But the work is too important, and the people she advocates for matter to her very deeply.
As we talk, her room is strewn with clothing in various pieces and stages of being sewn together – she’s creating a different outfit for every gig of the tour (eighteen!) which personally I’m very excited to see, because her fashion is iconic at all times. She also enjoys creative writing outside of song lyrics, and drawing.
“I really like nature… I sometimes think if I weren’t a musician I’d probably just row off in a little boat and be like a little hippy somewhere. That’s my escape, nature and just being out in the woods, I love it.”
When she talk about the songwriting process, I’m surprised: as a complete non-musician myself, I assumed some lyrics or at least a topic would be the germination point, but actually she tells me it’s a little hum of a tune, which becomes a sketch of a song on keyboard or guitar, and lyrics last of all.
As for creating an album, the visuals come first. A concept for a music video becomes a collection of stories, but “albums are hard work, and they take a lot of promoting”.
Every single part of it – production, artwork, social media is done by her, and she does it very well.
I’m not surprised when she tells me this, I think it’s absolutely apparent that all of it, everything, is a body of passionate creative work rather than a series of tasks or obligations, and the relationship between the sound, aesthetic, personality and public interaction are entirely inseparable from each other.
She speaks about the difficulties she experienced in the past with trying to communicate her artistic vision to other musicians, producers etc, before coming to the conclusion that “I just need to learn how to produce this myself…. But I thought it would be so much harder. Like in my mind I thought ‘I’m gonna have to go to uni!” She chuckles, “I didn’t have to go to uni!”
Since we were on the topic of going for it, I asked what she would say to someone who felt they’d like to be a musician but didn’t think they’d make it.
“I feel like it will eat you alive if you don’t do it, because there’s so many times when times get a bit difficult, and I think ‘I think I’ll just quit’, I never really mean it, I know I never mean it because I know it would just feel like my skin was on fire if I weren’t making music, it would just feel wrong in my soul. I think it’s a gift that we’re given and it’s this feeling inside yourself that you KNOW you should be making music, and that everything else is getting in the way of you making music. I think you’ve just got to, even if it’s just for yourself, even if you’re not putting out there… it’s like having that gift that you have inside yourself, you need to use it and express yourself, or your body is gonna make you feel like shit.”
I asked when was the moment in her life when she began to really take herself seriously as a musician and believe in her songwriting. In her early teens she was working with a producer writing songs for her, but the style wasn’t right for her and she felt restricted and unable to write authentically in the style she was given. She was given country music, if you can imagine! As an angsty teenager, it simply wasn’t the vibe.
“I think I took a while with my songwriting, because I only knew like two chords on guitar, and I was working with a producer who was writing me songs and asking me to sing on them. I knew that I didn’t like the style, and I felt like I wasn’t good enough, and I didn’t feel good enough because I couldn’t write in the genre of songs that he was giving me.
“But then I got my own guitar, when I was probably 14, and I learned two chords, which were the saddest chords I could find, and it was this freedom that the music didn’t matter: it wasn’t about the backing track any more, it was about the feeling… “That’s when I truly understood what songwriting meant. It’s not all the bells and whistles, it’s the core of the song, and what that song truly means to you.”
Discovering Nirvana and grunge, she knew that what she wanted to create was something aggressive and a few shades darker than she’d been given to play with, and she’s been on a cross-genre journey ever since. But rage and a passion for justice is an unmistakable base note throughout her body of work.
“I am constantly gonna be doing different styles because it’s the only way to keep it exciting for myself… I like having that blend of ‘this is an angry song’, and then ‘this song is a fun song and you can dance to this song!’’’
Rap was a surprise turn even to herself though.
She says “I feel like I got stuck in a genre when I was in my band Hands Off Gretel. The music I was making was grunge-heavy and I didn’t want to sway away from that sound, I didn’t want to make it any more commercial, I didn’t want to make it any less commercial! I kind of got stuck… but then when lockdown happened, it was like ‘Right, I’m gonna experiment now!’ and pushed myself in a completely different direction.”
Sketches of rants became spoken word poetry, merged with rageful screams, beats for the background… and the potion became rap! The ultimate vehicle for lyrics when you have this much to say.
“I was so nervous to call it rap, because it’s like… I’m a white girl from Barnsley… I’m not in that scene at all, I don’t really know any rappers… I was really shy about it at first, then as I’ve kind of done it more and more, I can say ‘Yeah, I do rap. I rap, I sing, I scream!”
I’d read in one of her previous interviews that men don’t like to come to see her rap, and she’s delighted that her audience has changed.
“Loads of older guys who used to follow me loved it when I sang… as I got punkier they didn’t like it as much. There’s like these guys who have followed me probably since I was about sixteen [gross!] who always had an opinion, and when it came to this genre they’ve all gone and I’m so glad!”
“My music was always kind of landing in the wrong place. I’d look out in the crowd like, ‘where’s all the girls? Where are all the gays? What’s going on!’ and with the change of genre lots of the men who were an issue for me don’t like it, and they don’t like the lyrics, so that’s really helped me!” she declares with a marvellous grin.
I talk a little bit about being the parent to teenagers (Delilah is very easy to talk to) and how empowering I find her passion and encouragement to be authentic and creative, which is heavily woven through the album. I want to play it to every kid I know, and let Delilah tell them: this is possible, and you can do it by and for yourself. What you have to say matters and you can be successful without trading in your authenticity.
“I think a lot of people get knocked back, especially in music where people tell them they’re not good enough or tell them ‘you’re never gonna make it’, or ‘you do realise how hard it’s gonna be?’, ‘you haven’t got it in you’… I’ve had all this stuff from people, but it just makes it even better when you carry on, because you think about those times when people did doubt you and it’s like… ‘Well, watch me now!’”
I close the interview by asking the question I was excited to put to her since we discussed neurodivergence earlier, because I knew there would be something unexpected and brilliant to report. ‘So, Deliah Bon: what’s your most recent random hyperfixation?’
“I got really into making miniature furniture for my dolls house!,” she exclaims.
“Like, days and days making so many so many little things… I think I was supposed to be making my album around this time but I kept going downstairs like ‘I know I’m meant to be finishing my album, but I made a settee! I made a tiny little bookshelf and I was printing out little books, and I just love it… It’s very easy for my brain to wander off and fixate on new hobbies out of nowhere.”
Me too, Delilah, me too.
At the moment, though, no random flights of fancy are allowed: the EU and UK tour will be keeping her very busy indeed, and she’s got her very supportive manager mum to keep her focused, of course! It’s been a very hectic year, but of course there are new ideas in the pipeline. She hopes to conquer America next year, and some themed EPs.
“I’ve got so many songs I didn’t release on this album that I’m excited to re-sing and give a new lust for life after the tour”.
I’m excited!
All shows for the UK leg of the tour are sold out except Cardiff (on Hallowe’en, no less! Go if you can, dress up! She’ll love it), so I’m very glad I got my tickets for her Southampton show at the Joiners on the 1st of November locked in, watch this space for my review! Can’t wait to see her what outfit she serves us.
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