GRAMMY Award winning and multi-platinum artist Daya continues to usher in new music with the release of her new single “Bad Girl” – available everywhere now on AWAL/Sandlot & Kasher Records. Co-written by Daya alongside JKash, Michael Pollack, Madison Love and Andrew Goldstein. “Bad Girl” was produced by Goldstein and Charlie Puth. The song will impact Top 40 radio on February 16 and appear on a forthcoming EP from Daya this year.
After her career skyrocketed in 2016 with her Gold-certified debut album Sit Still, Look Pretty and going on to win her first GRAMMY for the 8x multi-platinum smash “Don’t Let Me Down” with The Chainsmokers, the singer/songwriter took a critical step back to focus on her own personal growth and channel that into the art she wanted created, on her terms and in her words. The result – including “Bad Girl” – is some of the most confident music of her career, filled to the brim with her trademark independent spirit.
Across its lyrics, sonic structure, and visuals, “Bad Girl” finds Daya confronting her sexuality & identity as a bisexual woman, the desires that have propelled and shaped her, and the common implications of the term “Bad Girl” itself.
“To me, the lyric of ‘bad girl’ can be used in an almost ironic way to play out the ‘problem child’ or archetypal rebel, flipping the script so that a ‘bad girl’ can be anyone who is confident and asserts themselves boldly in the world and doesn’t necessarily have to adhere to the stereotypical bad girl ‘look,’” the 22-year-old says. “But rather can appear anywhere on the binary from leather jackets & boots to red lips and dresses and pearls.”
The song’s music video, directed by Clyde Monroe, drapes itself in an Old Hollywood aesthetic as an exaggerated way of Daya wholly taking back claim to her femininity, set against the backdrop of a club that serves as a symbolic utopian haven where pressures of conformity simply do not exist and anyone can be free to explore and push the boundaries of gender, sexuality and expression
“I’ve grappled with my femininity for a long time. I didn’t like being called ‘pretty’ when I was younger and wouldn’t generally subscribe to conventional beauty standards,” Daya explains. “But as I’ve grown into my sexuality and throughout my relationship, I’ve felt more at home in my femininity, physically and emotionally, mainly because my femininity is no longer ‘required’ or defined by being with a man.”
“Bad Girl” follows the release of “First Time” which has already surpassed 6.6 million global streams and appeared on more than 40 global playlists since its October 2020 release. The song was co-written by Daya, SHY Martin and multi-platinum selling Swedish producer-songwriting duo Jack & Coke, who also produced the track.
ADVT.