Sometimes an artist walks into a songwriting session open to ideas. But sometimes she walks in ready to write a song about the man who did her wrong. That's what happened to Dasha the day she wrote her debut single, "Austin."
"I was in a session in LA and we were writing this completely different song," Dasha tells ABC Audio. "I was already writing this album, What Happens Now?, and I knew I wanted this upbeat, scorned woman song. I was going through this kind of gnarly breakup at the time, and I was pretty upset with this guy. There'd been a lot of excuses and I'd been [very] mistreated."
But Dasha notes that she didn't want a sad, woe-is-me ballad.
"I was like, 'You guys, no. This is too slow. I want my scorned woman song. I'm pissed right now,'" Dasha recalls. "I had so much fury inside of me about this guy. And so we restarted and then we started playing the chords for 'Austin.' And literally, the first thing that came out of my mouth was like, freestyle, 'Did your boots stop working? Did your truck break down?'"
"Everyone's like, 'What'd you say?' And I was like, 'Did your boots stop working?' And they're like, 'That's it.' And so we wrote the song in less than an hour, and it was just like pure magic in the room," she shares.
"After I wrote the song, everyone on my team was like, 'Yeah, girl. This is gonna be the one that puts you on the map,'" recounts Dasha. And it did, thanks to her TikTok line dancing trend.
"The whole rollout to the album was around pushing 'Austin,'" she says. "And it worked."
(Video contains uncensored profanity.)