Cassie Dasilva is a songwriter and alt-pop artist from Orillia, Ontario, Canada (about 1.5 hrs north of Toronto). “I have always loved writing,” Cassie tells Eat This Music at the top of our interview. “I wrote poems when I was younger and those eventually turned into lyrics which eventually turned into songs. I kind of fell in love with music in a way that didn’t really feel like a choice at all. It just feels right to express myself and my feelings through my songwriting and it’s amazing when people can connect to that.”
The last time Cassie was featured on Eat This Music, was back in 2021 when the Canadian artist released her “debut EP“; so it feels great to have a chat with her about her latest project and where she is currently at in her career.
“I’m so glad to be back releasing music after a couple of years since my debut EP came out,” Cassie continues. “It [part of the club] was the first song I wrote specifically for this new project and it kind of steered me in a fresher direction that I’m really excited about diving into.”
“It’s a bit different from my past singles because it’s a love song (which I don’t tend to write), but it has a spin on it that still pokes fun at traditional relationships in a way that feels authentic to me and my cynicism.” — Cassie on her latest single.
This project took a lot longer than planned for Cassie, as she went through a lot in her personal life since her last release, and some things just weren’t clicking in the production process for a while. “I had to let go of the timelines and pressures and eventually accept that it would come together when it was meant to,” Cassie says. “Patience was the lesson. Once we got there I was really able to enjoy the process of creating the visuals with my director Kate Harrison. I had so much fun making the props and planning the choreo out with my talented choreographer sister Shelby and that was such a nice reward at the end of everything. I really love expressing myself through the videos and visuals!”
Cassie’s life has changed a lot over these last couple of years. She experienced many life events during the in-between from releasing her last EP to releasing ‘part of the club’.
Cassie continues, “The highs and lows were aplenty — my father passed away, I bought and started fully renovating my first house, I wrote beautiful songs for so many other artists that were released and I even started working on writing songs for some TV shows… all while working on this new project. It was a lot to digest and I don’t know how my head is still on, but here we are! I think my growth as a person and an artist is going to really come through with this new music, and I have such a different appreciation for life and art.”
In ‘Part of the Club,’ Cassie explore a reluctant love story where her cynical perspective on love and traditional marriage is transformed when she meet the right person and fell in love. It’s that moment when you realise, ‘OH… I kinda get it now.’ Cassie introduced live drums and incorporated more guitars than she has ever used before in this track. The juxtaposition of her sweet vocals with the song’s sentiment mirrors the internal struggle between her cynicism and vulnerability in romantic relationships.
“I wrote part of the club with Olivia Rudeen on our first co-write over FaceTime from different countries,” Cassie continues about the creative process. “I had just finished releasing a breakup EP and told her that I wanted to switch things up and write a love song (after which I immediately shuddered).”
“It felt like everyone around me was either getting married or engaged, and that just hasn’t been the focus in my life, so I wanted to probe into my aversion to relationship norms with the lyrics. Why do we follow these traditions? Why must falling in love be such a big production? It turns out that meeting the right person kind of makes it all make sense and the song really dives into that.” — Cassie Dasilva
The creative process for this song flowed effortlessly. Initially, it started as a sweet acoustic track, but Cassie quickly envisioned it with prominent guitars and drums. Cassie recorded a voice memo of the idea with her boyfriend (who inspired it), and together, she and her team transformed it into a punk-inspired rendition. Taking the demo to her producer, Hill Kourkoutis, allowed Cassie to further refine the production, such as the Bridge, which Cassie struggled a bit with.
“I usually like the song to go somewhere new in a bridge and to add a lot more lyrical content, but at the end of the day the simplicity of this bridge felt right, Cassie adds. “Sometimes you just have to let the song tell you what it needs and I felt like lyrically we didn’t need to go anywhere else, so a simple bridge was all it wanted.”
With this song, Cassie wants people to resonate with both cynics and anti-romantics like herself, who often struggle with the impulse to bail when things get serious. “Remember, it’s perfectly fine to embrace a bit of cheesy sentiment from time to time,” Cassie emphasises.
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