Delacey's 'The Girl Has A Dream' highlights emotive sadness' modern pop moment

Thirty-year-old singer-songwriter Delacey has put the metaphorical cart before the horse in every aspect of her rise.

Fooling the sophomore jinx with "The Girl Has A Dream," her second studio album, out June 30, 2023, from Universal-distributed Photo Finish Records, makes clear that she's one of modern pop's most self-aware stars. She's still suffering from self-admitted imposter syndrome, but unassumingly forging ahead into the music industry's rapidly evolving landscape.

At the outset of her 30s, Delacey's angst -- apparent on "Black Coffee," her March 2020-released debut album -- has subsided. Her music is sad, but resolute.

As a songwriting artist, she is adept behind the boards, her compulsion with loops, tracks and the computerized ephemera of pop production ("shoes -- like accentuating accessories -- on the song," she says) -- has not deterred the clarity of her creative vision. Neither has her efforts as a songwriter, with a No. 1 single (Halsey's 2019 "Without Me") and Grammy nomination (2022, for Justin Bieber's "JUSTICE" album).

"I don't have a lot of balance in my life," Delacey told The Tennessean while seated in the Marsh House Restaurant at the Thompson Nashville hotel in the Gulch neighborhood. She was twice kicked out of high school and has lived in both Los Angeles and New York in the decade she's been working in the music industry.

Currently, she's discovered that her best solution is to eschew thoughts of balancing herself and instead pushing hard as both a singer and songwriter.

"Man On The Moon," lead single on "The Girl Has A Dream," is her favorite. She described it as an "emotionally isolated" song described about "struggling with the vast distance we can feel in relationships that should be our most intimate."

Intimacy, in general, is a rare notion for Delacey.

"I think I've written only one love song for myself that I've released," she confided.

"For many years, I was never in love. I was in lots of relationships that fed my ego that I didn't need to be in -- that left me angry in the end. I'm finally in a place where I have found an amazing person, but even then, I struggle with describing those feelings."

The album track "Cue" -- written, as is most of the album, with her frequent production and writing collaborator Ido Zmishlany (Justin Bieber, Khalid, Shawn Mendes, The Chainsmokers, among many) -- is a bittersweet guitar ballad ode to toxic attraction.

"So tell me what is wrong with me / That that feels like my cue to leave / I know I ruin everything / But I need you to know something / I will never find love like this / Never find love like this again / If this ain’t love nothing is / Love just doesn’t exist baby," she sings.

"I can't write diluted, vanilla songs," Delacey said frankly.

She's a jazz fanatic, so the idea of stripping down and recontextualizing emotions is central to how she enjoys music as an experience.

Stripping down language has also allowed her the ability to master the art of songwriting using in her music four-letter words unprintable in newspapers. The genre's recent growth via streaming -- as opposed to network-broadcasted music videos or terrestrial radio -- has benefitted Delacey greatly.

"I don't know anyone who doesn't occasionally have a potty mouth, so censoring how I speak and think in a song meant to be heard by everyone, is weird," she added. Working in the vastness of pop's post-modern creative void fascinates her because, on one level, as a regular working songwriter, there are still labels actively attempting to define the scope of her work narrowly.

However, as an artist herself, she's -- via her forthcoming album -- pushing for creative freedom.

For "The Girl Has A Dream," she spent time with her acoustic guitar in a cabin in New York's Catskill Mountains. Her reasoning expands the album's -- and her career's -- stylistic influences.

"I wanted my darker, Americana influences to shine."

To that end, she also paired with country singer-songwriter Lori McKenna for the album track "Playing House."

Delacey's stated previously that via her new deal with Universal-distributed Photo Finish Records, she's excited -- after achieving success for others -- to have discovered "home and kinship for [her] next era of music."

"I'm not in love with music anymore," she said. "Though I'm jaded, I've survived because (of) music ... striking a chord that allows me to express my truth honestly."