Singers with Unique Voices: DellaXOZ (The Unique Voices Club #14)

Every Friday, I write a post about singers with unique voices not commonly heard in mainstream music in an effort to educate emerging artists and music lovers and inspire them to embrace their own quirks. This week I'm writing on DellaXOZ.

Taken for Dork Magazine

Daniella Landy Lubasu, known by her stage name as DellaXOZ, just happened to pop up in my Instagram feed one afternoon. I can't really remember the name of the song that made me stop scrolling and pay attention (it was a math rock cover of something), and it was enough for me to go on a Spotify binge of her catalog.

Like me, a young story writer, she started writing songs as a teenager as an outlet for her emotions and experimented with GarageBand to produce her songs. She was also surrounded by African world music like me (Congolese in articular, as opposed to my South African), pop artists like ABBA, Rihanna and Beyonce and top 40 radio stations. And she was a product of the One Direction boyband fandom (in my case my classmates were; I was more partial to Coldplay).

Where we differ though is while I was comfortable singing my songs to my classmates, she invented her stage name to publish her stuff to Instagram so that her classmates wouldn't find out. She also grew up in Manchester, known for its indie rock scene that produced The Verve and Oasis. Where I grew up, the only band I can think of that fit that genre is probably the Parlotones. And if you listen to them and then go back in time and listen to No Doubt or something like that before listening to DellaXOZ, you'll clearly hear the influence.

Paired with an electric guitar that reminds me of a dobro, Della provides a low-range vocal (paired with a pretty clean falsetto) that reminds me of Tegan Quin, the one half of the duo Tegan and Sara. Or of Gwen Stefani, with some reverb and without any excessive vibrato. It's a nasal and soft sound, tender and conversational. Similar to the math rock genre (one of the genres she experiments in), her voice in "BORING" specifically sounds like the tones the keys of an old telephone make. I immediately thought of a calculator for some reason.

While DellaXOZ refuses to be boxed into just one genre given her eclectic background of influences ("My music is not about genre, just a feeling of what sounds good," she told Dork magazine), she's definitely inspired by the songwriting of Taylor Swift and Lorde. Her song "Unhinged," written about the complexities of dating and why she's decided to give up on it altogether, sounds like it could be in an episode of My Mad Fat Diary. And being currently and chronically single, it's the song I keep coming back to.

There are a lot of articles on forums like Quora comparing British music to American music. I can't say one is better than the other, but I will say that there are British singers with unique voices like DellaXOZ who have broken the mould both musically and vocally (like Kate Bush and Ellie Goulding), just like there are American ones that have (you can read on many of the ones I've covered on The Unique Voices Club in earlier posts here). But since the arts are lot better funded and celebrated in the UK, that means creatives have more of the room to experiment and break out of the mainstream box instead of relying on commerical success. Which is why you, dear reader, should show your support to these unique voices. Yes, they're fun to write about and listen to, but what if you or someone you know is a fellow creative who needs a little nudge of confidence to explore the wacky and weird ideas that make your art interesting, from the ones that have already done it?

So I implore you to share this post, and the others to your inner circle, and follow these artists and their music (DellaXOZ is opening for Sabrina Carpenter soon!). But more importantly, subscribe my Patreon or buy me a coffee to help keep the revolution going. There's strength in numbers.

That's all for this week, firebird readers! Stay tuned for another unique voice next week!

Stay educated,

Alexia