How Dia del Trus Turns Love Songs into Self-Love Messages on Her Debut EP, ‘Feeling’
Dia del Trus is a rising artist from Winter Park, FL whose multi-ethnic, military child background led to her moving homes at least every three years which also contributed to the artist’s diverse taste in music. Calling herself “the flower child of Winter Park's music scene,” Dia draws from her exposure to multiple cultures and music to create a world of her own through music, writing, and emotional release. Her debut EP, ‘Feeling’ proves the artist’s talent for tying poetic honesty into a free-flowing R&B sound.
Born and raised overseas and along the East Coast of the US, music allowed Dia to connect with her inner artist. Inspired by literature, poetry, and expression, Dia taps into the deeper parts of her soul, experience, and even her feminine side, to bring to the recording studio sincere stories about her life journey from love to self-love to healing.
In an exclusive interview with Amplify Her Voice, Dia del Trus opens up about the making of her debut EP, what it’s like to work with a team of on-the-rise creators, and how she manages to turn love songs written for former partners into self-love messages to herself.
How does it feel to have your EP out in the world?
It feels really good! But also, my manager and I have been listening to nothing but this EP for months! So we are happy to share it with friends who will come over and ask, “We haven’t heard it yet. Can you play it?”
Was this something that you had worked on during the pandemic that came out of needing to get creative in quarantine? Or was this EP a project you’ve been working on for a while?
I’ve been working on this project for a long time. I’ve been making music for a while and me taking it to the next level, instead of just being a hobbyist and using music as a little diary for myself became a more serious thing along the way. Me releasing music happened before Covid in 2018, but a lot of these songs came out in 2019. So songs from way back then all the way to “Someway” that came out got to be part of it. I got my manager on board with the idea of releasing a project and he said, “Well, we have so many songs to pick from,” so the five you see here are the ones that we chose.
How do you feel you’ve grown as an artist since the release of your single, “Not A Friend” in 2021?
I’ve grown a lot just as a person, but as an artist, I’ve come around to letting other people play a part in my projects. Before it was very personal and if someone said they wanted to produce it, I’d say, “No, this is my baby.” I don’t want you to change it and make it something that’s no longer just mine or 100% me. It was really hard to get past that, but I had to come out of that mindset because I wanted this EP to be the best it could possibly be, and at the end of the day, I’m not an audio engineer. I can’t mix and master yet. There are so many things within production that I can’t do yet, so I had to gradually come around to trusting people and becoming more vocal with them as well. Knowing how to tell them I didn’t like something was also something hard for me to do. So that was a pretty big obstacle that I came over.
Do you remember the first time you fell in love with music? Was there a movie or an album your parents showed you or a performer you saw growing up that made you decide to become an artist?
For me, it was a song. Becoming an artist, was something that gradually happened over time. All my life, I’ve known I could sing, I’ve been making music since middle school, but I was so against singing or becoming an artist. I figured like “Everybody can sing,” what makes me special? But for me, the first song that got me into music was “Bless The Broken Road” by Rascal Flatts. I’m not religious, and I’m not always a country music fan, but they are so good and that song! I don’t know what it was. I hadn’t met my soul mate, I was in the second grade –
No, I get it! I love Rascal Flatts and there’s such a magic in that song.
There is! I just always connected with it at any point in my life for some reason. That’s also when I discovered that I loved singing and the more I realized I was able to sing my favorite songs, the more I wanted to do it, and wanted to create my own songs to sing for myself. That’s literally what it was.
I would have never associated Rascal Flatts with your sound at all.
Yeah, I listen to a bunch of different genres of music! I’ve moved so much, by the way. I’ve moved a ton, at least every three years my whole life, and that just allowed me to be exposed to not just different genres but also different communities, and people with completely different ways of life and how they look at music or what music they like. It did me a lot of good in developing my musical taste over time.
You said, at first, you didn’t want to be a singer. What about music drew you in? Was it the poetry in the lyrics, the writing?
It was the writing for sure. Since third grade, I’ve been super into reading. There was like a little library in the corner, and I was always there. Any time I got grounded, I would be reading, and I think over time, that blossomed me into writing actual stories, and then it gradually evolved because I started getting into piano and guitar and then I was like, “Oh wow, I can make poetry,” and if I was doing that, then I could make music, so it just grew and grew into what it is today.
‘Feeling’ has such an introspective, R&B sound. Who are some artists that inspire that?
This won’t draw so much from how I wanna sound, but more how I want to be portrayed as an artist, and as a woman especially - artists like Ella Mai, H.E.R., Mahalia - There’s definitely the R&B influence in there, but it’s more that I adore how these women embrace femininity and the femme parts that maybe I’m not comfortable admitting that I have. I’ve always been more or less of a tomboy growing up, but on the other side of that, they’re tough, and H.E.R. especially, has songs where she comes out and raps. I really admire them, the way they carry themselves, and the way they’re so unafraid and honest in their music.
What do you think Is the biggest lesson you learned while making the EP?
I learned I shouldn’t wait so much for the last-minute things. I knew what a project entailed. You have to go through the process of marketing and creating content for the marketing, then the mixing, mastering, and production. There’s the music side and then the business side, I knew all that, but this was the first time I put my knowledge to practice, and I realized that I should have given myself more time and then taken action when it was appropriate.
Recording on its own was a whole thing. For me to record, I have to be in the right state of mind, I have to feel like I’m able to sing, so if I’m sick, it’s not the optimal time to record. I couldn’t help this happening but in the beginning stages of me putting this EP together, I found out that the partner I was with was actually abusive - I learned that the hard way, and that threw my whole world into something it had never been before. So I had to get into that headspace to record despite all the other issues. Imagine having to sing and record a love song when you’re heartbroken. So it was realizing that in the future of my career, there will be times when I’m heartbroken and I’ll have to put that to the side for a show or for recording. I learned life happens and you have to figure out how to work around it.
Have you ever come across any roadblocks being a woman in music, and if so, what do you do to overcome them?
I haven’t had a lot of discrimination in the way that people don’t want to work with me, but I will say there are people who say “You can’t rap, you can’t do this.” Hearing that there are certain things that women can’t do as artists because it doesn’t hit the same. My ex was always saying, “Women can’t rap.” He’d look at Nikki Minaj and Cardi B, and he didn’t like any of them, and when it’s guys saying things like that - it’s not about a woman’s talent, it’s about how a man thinks a woman needs to be portrayed, and unfortunately that’s not rapping or being vocal about their sexual experiences, etc. At this point, if any man tried to tell me I couldn’t do something, I wouldn’t want to work with them anyway. There are so many people who want to work with me because I’m a woman. As a starting artist, there are people who want to work with me who are just starting too, but at least now, there are people telling me there aren’t a lot of female artists who aren’t doing what you do.
Any advice for aspiring artists?
Be honest with yourself and with others. I think my biggest thing personally was acknowledging I have these “girly feelings” because love is so not macho, right? Giving the world these feelings and being unabashed about it. Be real and try and separate the hate criticism from the actual critiques because that’s a huge skill to learn too.
What song off ‘Feeling’ means the most to you?
“When The Sun Goes Down” and it’s because it was originally written as a song to my then significant other, stating “I see all these amazing things for my future, and you’re not seeing those things and it sucks,” because how were we supposed to grow together if you’re not trying? But I also do this thing where I can twist meanings so it went from talking to my significant other to me talking to myself. There are love songs out there you can twist meanings around to make it so that it’s like, “I’m talking to myself. I deserve that love.” So I think that’s definitely one song I can do that with. There’s a lyric where I talk about how every year, we’ll buy all this material stuff. That’s turned around now to me saying, “One day, you’ll afford that for yourself.” So that’s how I see the song now. Either way, I think it’s such a beautiful song. I feel like a say a lot in there too so that one is special to me.