DELILAH BON - "What I get that’s better than all of that, are the messages I receive." | Interview

The landscape of today’s culture when compared side by side to the culture of yesteryears, looks nothing alike. Growth, change, progression, and development are all on the forefronts of the minds of the 2000s kids, sick to their stomachs of the oppressive and counter progressive regime their parents’ helped to feed. Under the surface it’s a different story however, as the melting pot is bubbling over and more still needs to be done before those of the minorities may lay their weary heads to rest at night.

Music will always be a healthy outlet for any emotion imaginable, be it love or hate, rage or joy, and it doesn’t even have to mean anything at all, or it can mean absolutely everything. Brat Punk princess Delilah Bon, the hip-hop alter ego of Hands Off Gretel front-woman Lauren Tate, is seething venom and spitting beats over the top of nü metal musicality and industrialised instrumentals on her debut self-titled album, and she’s “feeling so ready for it now. I’ve spent so much time dancing to it and enjoying it myself, that I’m ready to share it with everyone else.” She’s created a sharp and sassy trinity of genres by blending her childhood’s 2000s pop-star influences with the angsty teen years of screamy nü metal, with her newfound appreciation of women in the modern rap world.

With a hefty array of overlapping and conflicting genres, it’s a wonder the record flows so well. “When I was writing it, I didn’t at any point worry that the songs might not match each other. I’ve got songs like ‘Devil’ which is really intense with the screaming, but then there’s a track like ‘Chop Dicks’ which is more old school hiphop. Those two songs are so different, but I knew there’d be a much bigger theme to it all and that it would somehow work and luckily it does.”

“When I wrote ‘Bad Attitude,’ I was driving home from an Air BnB and it was raining, and I’m not a confident driver. But when I blasted ‘Bad Attitude’ on the motorway I felt so in control. With the sampling on ‘Chiquitita,’ I love ABBA and I wanted to turn it into a boss bitch anthem. I saw the lyrics and wanted to do something to challenge myself.”

What shouldn’t come as a surprise to those in the industry or those listening though, is that the entire record was written, produced, and mixed by Delilah with every instrument being played and programmed by her too, including the whole marketing and promotional strategy behind the campaign that was entirely homegrown. It’s a feat most people can only dream of, let alone be proud of; “When I’m mixing it, I listen to it and analyse every little part of it and criticise myself, making sure the mix is right. Once the mix is done though, I can just enjoy it for what it is and not pull it apart. I’m at that point now where I can just put it on, relax, and love what I’ve created.”

Perfectionists will relate to never being happy with their own work, and some of music’s most successful artists are still not happy with the records the world considers masterpieces. It’s a rare and special feeling to be proud of yourself for your accomplishments, an attitude perhaps more people need to adopt. But it didn’t come easy for Delilah, who’d battled her fair share of self-proclaimed Princes’ attempts to rescue her before deciding to just do it herself; “I’ve had good experiences in the studio, but not all the time. Sometimes I’ve come away from a session and thought, ‘I wish I’d been more vocal about what I wanted,’ because I’ve listened back and thought, ‘I don’t like this’ or ‘there’s this that I want to change.’ But by the end of the session it’s exhausting sometimes and you just end up agreeing with people just for the sake of finishing a project. Delilah Bon is the first time I’ve been credited and seen for what I’ve done. I’ve always coproduced everything, but when it’s come to the credits, my name’s never there. I hope it gives me credibility now and if they say, ‘you don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I can just be like, ‘would you like to hear my album?’ That’s my evidence. They can’t just judge me or dismiss anything I say anymore like they used to do. I used to be so shy when asking for something; ‘maybe you could could turn the guitars down,’ or ‘maybe you could do this,’ and I’d always be trying to word it in a way that wouldn’t annoy or anger them. Now, I’ve learnt so much about what I want that I can be more technical about it.”

Those with a predisposed mind though may struggle to digest the much needed education that Delilah’s album unveils, as she feels “unapologetic as a writer and that I can say more as my alter ego; she’s my superhero. Delilah Bon is a brattier character and she’s more honest than anything else I’ve done before and I’ve loved creating that and seeing how far I can take my lyrics.” Delilah Bon’s journey started on Tik Tok amidst the BLM movement and the #MeToo stories, expressing the rage and anger of a generation towards the internalised misogyny, sexism, rape culture, systematic racism, and homophobia and transphobia that seeps through our day-to-day lives. With such raw and personal subject matters, Delilah “found them all quite easy to write because I’ve experienced most of everything I write about. If I’ve not experienced it, then I’ve at least researched it and I know enough about it to be able to sing about it without worrying I’m saying the wrong thing. The only thing that was new to me was ‘War on Women’ where I wanted to sing about a gay boy and a trans girl and their parents. I’m not a trans girl and I’ve not experienced that, but I have friends that have been through those experiences and I’ve not seen them represented in music ever. It was emotional doing it because I was thinking about how their stories aren’t being told in music, and I’m excited for people to hear that one as it’s the first time I’ve written a song for someone else.”

I’m sure that I don’t only speak for myself when I say that Delilah’s music is certainly something we could’ve all done with growing up as young women. With her major Tik Tok presence it comes as no surprise that many people and her young female audience feel safe and comfortable reaching out and expressing their gratitude for the music Delilah makes, and it’s “one thing I wish I could show more of because I get so many personal messages that I can’t really share. Whenever my dad tries to get an idea of how well I’m doing with my music, it’s always counted as views; how many views do you have? How many comments do you have? But I get people who are being bullied at school and going through the experiences I’m writing about. They’re experiencing it and listening to me at the same time, and it’s surreal to think that I can have that much of an impact on people.”

Whilst Lauren Tate was at school, before Delilah Bon was even a seedling of an idea, the feeling of isolation and outcast rejection flourished. “I always used to escape with music. I just didn’t fit in with the girls and that always upset me because I didn’t particularly like the boys either. The boys would be really mean with the things they’d say, and I used to look around thinking to myself, ‘does anyone hear how awful the boys are being?’ So I’d always try really hard to fit in with the girls but they never accepted me into their gang, so I ended up not fitting anywhere at all. I remember being 15 and coming home from school after a horrible day, and saying to my mum, ‘mum, I need to get my Bratz dollz out of the loft. I need to bring them down, and just play with them.’ I wanted to go back to being a kid because I’d initially thought growing up was going to be amazing and I thought I’d have all these friends, and instead life just got harder.”

Good, genuinely decent advice on how to deal with life’s extremities are hard to come by. We all know someone who knows someone that struggles with a magnitude of delicate mental health issues, harassment experiences, and deep-set trauma and insecurities as a result. “In an ideal world you could go to the police and get justice. But realistically, because of the amount of cases that are just dropped, I don’t think that’s the best advice to give someone. It’s more about how they can move on and love themselves, and not blame themselves. I just hope that through people like me speaking about my experiences and my friends’ experiences, that we can have all of this music for people who are surviving, and can listen to this music and feel empowered. Knowing how to help is really hard, I don’t think people know what’s best to say or how to approach it. It’s difficult, but sharing your experiences and talking to your friends is what is going to make sure that this behaviour isn’t normalised.”

In a world of cancel-culture and keyboard warriors, it can be hard to know how to make a difference and be a better ally, even if it’s the smallest shred of progress. With the subject matters Delilah Bon explores, Lauren’s partner couldn’t be more supportive in her endeavours, and we all know someone who could learn a thing or two from people that try their best; “He educates himself a lot, so when something has happened he’ll read articles he’ll learn and listen mostly. I tell him everything that I’ve been through and what my friends have been through, and he just listens. I think sometimes men are really quick to try and advise you instead of just listening. My advice to men would be to listen to your friends and don’t just assume that all these bad guys are just creepy men in dark alleyways. Be wary, check your friends behaviour, and make sure your friends aren’t saying things that might be signs of someone who could be a predator.”

“The sign of a good relationship is that being with that person makes you love yourself. Previous relationships I’ve had, I’ve been with that person and I’ve loved them but I’ve hated myself because they made me feel like less. I still loved the men that treated me like shit, and you do, you still love people who treat you horribly, but when you love someone who treats you good you also end up loving yourself too. That’s the difference.”

The future is changing drastically day by day and when the time eventually comes, the completed puzzle we’ll end up with will look nothing like the original image we set out to recreate on the box, and sometimes that’s for the better. With Delilah Bon’s music, she’s torn up the box completely and is manipulating the puzzle pieces together to create an image that no only personally benefits herself, but also mirrors the lives and experiences shared by so many others too. With an influx of solo gig and festival requests that she could never have anticipated, Lauren’s plan to take Delilah Bon out to the masses will come in 2022, once a full band is in place to do so. The self-titled debut album, Delilah Bon, is available across all streaming platforms now. For more touring information and merchandise sales, head to the official website here or follow her social media’s linked below.