Five Questions With Cassie Dasilva

24-year-old pop singer-songwriter, Cassie Dasilva has released her debut single, “Welcome To My Castle” via Universal Music Canada. This is the first of three singles to come this year, and what a debut it is. “Welcome To My Castle” was written on the last day of a SOCAN writing camp, and the lyrics serve as an authentic introduction to who Cassie is as an artist.

Cassie shared thoughts on the single,

“This song is about embracing yourself, flaws and all, and being comfortable with everyone seeing that, too. It’s a proclamation of sorts, to say ‘This is me, I’m not perfect, and I’m not trying to be.’”

The single was produced by Mike Wise, and the video directed by Emma Higgins. Cassie took a few moments to explain the video,

“We went with two different ‘worlds’ for the video,” Cassie recalls. “The light theme – where everything was kind of prim and proper and ‘perfect’, and a darker theme that was more candid and free. My main request (for the seven-year-old inside of me) was to have a giant princess bouncy castle which was MAGICAL. But I speak for both myself and the DOP when I say that jumping around in a bouncy castle non-stop is a lot more exhausting than I remember it being as a kid.”

First off, care to introduce yourself to our readers?

Hey! I’m Cassie Dasilva, a pop singer/songwriter from small-town Ontario.

You have just released your debut single “Welcome To My Castle”, what can you tell us about the writing process behind this song?

I wrote “Welcome to My Castle” on the last day of a SOCAN writing camp with Ian Smith and Fintan O’Brien. We were exhausted from the week of writing and recording, so going into the session, we took the pressure off ourselves and decided just to write something fun. (Every great songwriting story starts like that, doesn’t it?).

While I was singing some melodies, Ian thought I’d said the words “welcome to my castle”… which I hadn’t, but we ran with it.  We wrote about this twisted, run-down, mess of a castle, and the imagery behind that came together really easily.  Somewhere along the way, I decided that this castle was more a metaphor for myself than anything else.  I’m messy and quirky, and I don’t have everything together, but that’s OK.

There’s a lot of intention behind every single word in the song, so the lyric process was really intense. We had to dig deep, but we knew we were onto something special so it was worth the dozens of scrapped pieces of paper to get there.

You worked with Juno-nominated Emma Higgins on the music video, what was that experience like?

Working with Emma was so much fun, and was a really valuable experience for me.  First and foremost, she took the time to find out who I am on a personal level, and to really understand what the song means to me.  This industry is fairly male-dominated, so I tend to work with a lot of men (who are all incredibly respectful, talented, and kind), but there’s something to be said about having your creative partners be able to fully understand your point of view.  Working with a bunch of women on this video was really empowering because of that.  Emma is an absolute BOSS and it was so cool to see her calling the shots, and bringing my vision to life.

What was the highlight of the video shoot?

Since I am seven years old internally, shooting in the bouncy castle was probably the highlight of my year, let alone the video shoot.  It was the first time I didn’t have to wait in line or take off my shoes to be in one of those things, and I bounced my little heart out.  Apologies to Ian, the DOP, who had to avoid many uncontrollably flailing limbs flying in his direction.

Canadian Beats is all about Canadian music, who are your current favourite Canadian bands/ artists?

So many!  The Arkells, Ralph, Tobias Jesso Jr, Alessia Cara, Allie X, Bahamas, and Fintan O’Brien are all current favourites of mine. There’s so much amazing music coming out of Canada right now and it’s so inspiring to see it resonating with people all around the world.

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