I first became obsessed with the music of quadragenarian pop-punk princess deegie in June, when a savvy Instagram ad introduced me to her song “Old Spice” with its instantly memorable refrain, “The smell of Old Spice still gets me wet.” I had to dig through her entire oeuvre, creating something of a primer that hopefully brought her tens of more streams.
But I knew it was inevitable that my linking and building with deegie was only just beginning, and sure enough she found the newsletter, fell in love with our lovingly “trollish” ways, and agreed to hop on a call. We ended up chatting for 40 minutes, finding plenty of common ground about life as middle-aged pop-punk artists.
The interview is so long (and compelling) that I’ve decided to break it up into two weeks worth of content. So check back next week when you’ll be able to read the conclusion and stream deegie’s new EXES EP in full.
Jos: I'm so excited to talk to you. I mean, I'm having a deegie summer over here in Canada. And I assume you're having deegie life all year round, I guess.
deegie: Yeah! deegie life baby. Yeah, but especially it's a deegie summer. It feels good.
I don't even know where to begin. But I think what I'll begin with is, I recently just started actually listening to every song I get advertised to me on Instagram. And there's a lot of them because I used to be a professional music writer, and I think something's going on with the algorithm. I was so excited when I watched yours. I mean, who are you? What's your deal? What's going on?
Oh, my God, who am I? I'm a singer songwriter in LA. I used to be a lawyer, for 12 years. I am working under the name deegie currently and singing pop, pop-punk music and having a lot of fun. I don't know.
I read a few interviews with you. And I mean, I'm just trying to understand — did you literally quit being a lawyer for 12 years to become a pop punk artists? Are you oversimplifying it? Do you have a day job? Or are you just fully going for it?
I'm living the dream. Yeah, I mean, I was a lawyer. And I thought that's just what I was going to do with my life. And all the music stuff I had done up to that point was like, a nice hobby. I would, you know, sing kind of casually like in clubs… but that it wasn't going to be a main focus for me. And I was going to actually get married and have kids and be a lawyer for my whole life. And yeah, my trajectory changed. I got, I joined this cover band with a co-worker who is now my husband. And we played in New York City in a bunch of shitty bars. And he got me to start writing songs. And from there, that kind of transitioned into Only Bricks, which is our old artist project. And we were doing that for like, five plus years, all while still keeping our legal day jobs. And it just became clear to me that I didn't want to spend the rest of my life doing that. So we started making plans to, you know, make the side hustle kind of more of the main hustle. And just like give ourselves the runway as if it's a small business, take our savings and invest it in this, and off we've been.
So we kept Only Bricks after we quit our jobs. We both were lawyers and both quit two years ago, and we kept Only Bricks for a little while, released a few more songs. And then we were realizing like, okay, we're not getting traction with doing this pop thing that's kind of all over the place. So let's start over. Let's choose a different name. Let's choose a different project and focus on one thing.
That one thing was pop-punk, because we both love it. And I was you know the person to be the the front woman of this artist.
Your husband is I assume, who I know reverently as Moodtown. Do you call each other by your your stage names around the house? You're like, “Hey, Moodtown, close the fridge!”
No, only as a joke. Maybe? He is. He's frickin moody. That's how he got his name so far.
Really?
Oh my God. I see it every day. But yeah, no, we're Annie and Jay.
Okay, Annie and Jay. I'm sorry, but I have more questions about your time as a lawyer. Like, I mean, I've looked you both up on LinkedIn. I dunno if that's creepy or not, but… you're allowed!
I respect it. It’s public information.
You used to be a lawyer for Hulu, right?
Yeah, that's where I was for six years.
That’s really interesting. What kind of stuff did you do for them?
It was really fun as lawyer jobs go I did all the contracts for the marketing team and reviewed all the ads for both the brand side — so like all the ‘subscribe now to Hulu’ and ‘we have all this content’ — and then also the trailers for the original shows. They were getting into like content production. The marketing team was actually making shows. So it was helping them set up like production studio entities and all that stuff. But yeah, it was just like a different thing every hour and chaos and a lot of fun as their jobs go.
So you weren't like in court or something.
I was doing contracts and advising.
Basically your thing is like, ‘you're not allowed to say that this is free, because it’s not.’ I’m a copywriter so I'm always I'm always dealing with stuff like that as well. From knowing what I know, from the music industry, I can't imagine that you're making a lot of money right now
No, we're at the early growth stage. We're making like, you know, the sad, sad streaming checks once in a while and, you know, under $100, we just got our first song placement from a song that Only Bricks put out called “Contact High.” That was like, placed with an influencer on TikTok for nail press on nails. So very cool. And the $83 that we earned from that.
Oh, wow. That's wild. It's rough out here. Growing up, what was your introduction to music?
The first real introduction was probably in church and I was always singing in church, I grew up Catholic. And then my parents always had music on. And my dad played a lot of oldies radio, when I was a kid, as a teenager, I would say I was like, you know, hooked on top 40 radio, I really got into Billy Joel hardcore in high school. randomly, and, and I always loved musical theater. And that was kind of came from my mom and loved seeing shows and singing show tunes. And I did the musicals in high school. So that was just like a big part of it, too. But yeah, top 40 radio — Ace of Bass was like the first CD that I probably owned.
So it's not like you are from a background where you're like, ‘Oh, we're gonna sleep in the van and go on tour around the country’ or something. You’re just coming into it ready for the big time. So I guess, now that you've decided to go full time, who are you modelling your career after?
Yeah, who am I modelling my career after? It's ridiculous because I'm 40. And like, the people that are like the North Star for my brand, kind of like that sound like me, and that I hope fans of theirs will resonate with my music are like, you know, half my age. It's cool. It's cool. LØLØ and Charlotte Sands are big inspirations. I mean, you can't not mention Avril Lavigne, just because the sound is there. But I was not particularly into Avril Lavigne growing up. College was when I got into like pop punk music.
Who did you get into then?
Something Corporate was a big band for me. And then it was just like, all the singles like I was more into what was what was crossing over to pop than a devotee of any particular band, but I liked the Ataris, Sum 41, Bowling for Soup.
We’re around the same age. I mean, you're actually a little bit older than me, which is great. But I remember when Avril Lavigne first came out, I thought that she was so cringe and so try-hard.
That was what like the cool skater kids thought of her, it was like, yeah, that's like a sad pop attempt at this thing.
Yeah, but I don’t know what happened that now she just seems to me really cool.
Yeah, I mean, I think like, nostalgia is everything. And that's part of my brand, I guess, because a lot of people feel the nostalgia when they hear the music. So I don't know. I'll take it. Whatever. Right?
Yeah. So your name deegie, I am using context clues here from my extensive research is it’s part of your last name, right? Had you always had that nickname? Or were you just sitting around with Moodtown and you're like, ‘What should my name be Mood?’
Um, yeah, it came from DiGiovanni my last name and I was more Deej in college. That was a nickname and we looked at that name for this project, but it was really like, there were too many DJs out there with different spellings and we wanted to kind of like cut through a search a little bit more. It's tricky because like as it is, “deegie” is hard for people to hear and then spell the way I spell it. And then there's one other like, I think “Insane Deegie” or something that’s already out on the services and stuff. So I'm trying to like, you know, outperform him on all the SEO.
Wow there’s already another deegie that you're battling with. But you've got two lawyers in your camp, so you can just take them down. You're talking about you've started this SEO thing, you had Only Bricks and you're like, ‘we need to pivot.’ What is that? You're doing this so like, mapped out. It’s almost so… I won’t say adult because we are both adults here. You know, it's very, like, you're not like a child who just stumbling through life. You're like, I'm taking my Hulu advertising knowledge, and I'm watching my pop career. You sit down with your husband, fellow lawyer, and producer. Like, what what do you map out? And also what have you mapped out so far that you even haven't done yet? Or what was not mapped out that?
Yeah, I mean, we, we are students of music marketing. So we're trying to consume everything possible about it. And, you know, figure out how to break through. Ultimately, maybe this is a stepping stone to a career in songwriting, but I think like, I'm getting more into it. I'm like, Yeah, fuck yeah, I want to tour like I want to, I want to do this, I want to play to like audiences that want this music. But anyway, we have perceived that you have to be releasing every, let's say, four to eight weeks, in order to get the algorithm to fire and actually deliver you to in the right lanes, right to the right people. So we've chosen every six weeks, because four seems just absolutely insane. And so that was kind of the blueprint for the artist project was like, Okay, we're gonna start releasing, and then we got this idea for the first EP, which is exes, a song about each of my ex boyfriends with their names in the title. And so it was like, Okay, we have kind of a content game plan with that. Laddering out from there, we we were like, Okay, let's do a video for each single. So that we have like more content coming in the in between phase between music releases, and let's run ads, let's do social on a more serious level than we've ever done it, you know, kind of more daily, more consistently.
Let's see, what else are we doing? Yeah, I mean, we're trying for sync, always trying to get to sync reps that will represent our music. And we have like songs signed now you know, like I said that one placement for Only Bricks. But we're, we're working on deegie and I don't know, that's kind of like the overview of what the plan has been. It's not as much a traditional model of let me try to get signed to a label. Like, I think the music industry focuses so much more on young talent. And that's fine. There's more potential in those assets, right, like, right row, and so to be exploited for a longer period of time. And it really is exploitation. So like, if you can avoid getting in that situation, where it's really just a venture capital investment that you have to pay back out of your earnings. Like if you can own your own stuff, and just do it yourself. That's ideal. So we're trying that route.
We're trying we're gonna go into merch coming up for the EXES launch. And yeah, we're trying to like, just create a more dedicated fan base that wants to be here for this very specific thing that I'm doing, which is like a very in your face, you know, like, no apologies. female empowerment. Combined with the y2k nostalgia.
Interesting. I mean, I have to be honest with you, my background is like, DIY, just release things. My main kick that I'm on lately is like, if I released a video or a song or something, and it got zero views, would I be happy? Would I still be happy that I did it, etc. So this is just like the opposite world of what I came up in, but it's amazing. I guess with that in mind, does this sort of release plan influenced the way that you write songs? Are you thinking like, oh, we need a ballad, we need something that's going to resonate with these people. Or how does it affect the music?
It does affect the music because like I said, with our old artists project, we were just kind of writing where we felt things are where you know, the best idea and the best song of this month is the one we're going to take to production and release. And we ended up with such an eclectic variety. And instead here, we're like, we want our Spotify or you know, wherever you're gonna listen to me to sound all the same, really, like we want there to be like, Oh, that song sounds a lot like that song. Because like, if “Old Spice” catches your ear, and you go to my Spotify page, and then you have a bunch of other stuff that doesn't make sense with “Old Spice,” like, why would you stick around?
I want there to be a deep catalogue of like, that one thing. Right? So that impacts the sonic element. And then content wise, I think like I said, there's a brand perspective that we're trying to fulfill on because it's a combination of like, me being my authentic self, and also what my audience wants, or what my the audience that I hope appears, you know, materializes to consume this, what they want. So I think we're like, definitely speaking more to females. And to, yeah, like I said, like empowered women who don't want to take shit for men.
It's almost like a content strategy thing. You've worked at an agency and you've done content strategy for a campaign or something. So you already have an idea of a demographic that you're trying to reach, but they might not have necessarily appeared yet, or they have I'm not sure. But what if suddenly a bunch of, I don't know, 50 year old men love it. Would you be like, oh, shit, I did this wrong?
No, I mean, that would be awesome. If those people are resonating with what I'm saying. I think like, yes, there's a strategy, but I'm gonna write what is real to me and what my experience has been, and you know, like things that I feel strongly about, because you're going to see in my social content and my promotion of everything of the music. You'll be able to sense it if I'm not fully behind it, or I don't, you know, have a lot to say about it. And we did that with the old project. I think there were just songs where it was like, All right, yeah, I went through that, but it's not really powerful. It's not like hot to the touch for me now. And so I don't really care about pushing it. But like, I don't know, like, with “Old Spice,” I’m fucking excited to, like, get that song as many people as possible because that was such a vital experience in my coming of age.
So yeah, let's talk about the EXES EP. And the song “Old Spice.”I mean, I guess I want to start with not even really a question more of a comment is that, I don't know if it's because you are actually 40 and have already lived life. And you're not just a naive teenager who's being preyed upon. But I feel like this genre of music, music usually has more like nuance to it, or subtlety. They would maybe be like, ‘the smell of Old Spice makes me excited’ or something. But just to say the phrase, ‘the smell of Old Spice still makes me wet’ is… I mean, I don't even know if I've ever heard that in a pop song. It’s such a natural thing, and there's certain lyrics that you do that are so direct, and in a way that confidence you're talking about. To have the line in your other song about how “only doggy style is brutal.” If a teenager was singing the songs, I don't think they would be saying that stuff. But it feels new in a way.
Thank you. Thanks for noticing that. I don't know. Like, it's a stretch for me to be honest. Because I was the Catholic girl who was very repressed for a long time and, and still, like, you know, dated a bunch of people. Obviously, I'm writing about that. But still, to this day, I'm not super comfortable talking about my sexuality. And I'm getting backlash on social media. You know, you are we're seeing that message that's like, no one wants you to talk about this.
I hope you are not getting backlash from from me and my friends.
I feel like you guys are slightly trolly in the most like loving and fanning out way. And I love that.
That’s about right. I love Old Spice, and I recently just kind of resigned myself to I'm just gonna wear Old Spice forever because I was trying out like bougie deodorant, but I'm too sweaty. It's too expensive to upgrade. But there's so many different flavours like. Are you talking about classic Old Spice?
Yeah. Okay, from what I've discerned from smelling other variations since writing the song, I don't like the other products that they've come out with.
Really? Wow.
They're offensive. They're too strong. It's like, I don't know.
That's a thing. I have noticed when you post about the song, you tag Old Spice and I was wondering if that's part of your content strategy, because I'm gonna be honest with you, I don't think they're gonna go for it. I think that's one bridge too far.
[Laughs] Look, they would go for it. If it had 20 million streams on Spotify, they would certainly go for it if it was going viral on TikTok and got, you know, whatever. 10 million video views, so I'm tagging them to see what happens. And, you know, you never know.
But it's not like you changed the brand from something other than Old Spice. It was for sure Old Spice that made you feel that way. But what about all these exes? Like, have you changed any of their names?
No, these are the real names.
Oh, my God. And you’re a lawyer. It’s not like how at the end of a movie, it says names have been changed.
Now we thought about it. We thought about that. Somebody suggested this idea to me that I put the names in the titles. And we thought that that was shocking and potentially attention grabbing. And then we thought, oh, maybe we should change the names so it's not so harsh. And like, these are real people, which, for the most part is easy to forget. But yeah, we ended up going for real names. And the key to the legal piece of it is just telling the truth. There's nothing that they could complain about. There's nothing false being said.
That hits hard. I thought you're gonna say, you know, we're not sharing last names or anything, but you're like, ‘No but I have the receipts. I'll see you in court.’
No last names, and it's also all truthful. So hey, if they see themselves in song, it's like, yeah, that's you get what you pay for.
Are you in touch with any of these exes? Do you know if they've heard the songs?
So Dan reached out. I was in touch with Dan. He heard the song. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Yeah.
What did he say?
Read part 2 of the deegie interview next week.