Dasha‘s breakthrough hit “Austin” is currently sitting at #18 on the Billboard Hot 100. While the song was inspired by a real guy, that’s about the only thing that’s factual in the lyrics.
Dasha told ABC News, “I was in this situationship that was just so disgusting … ‘Austin’ was the breaking point where I was like, ‘Wow, I’m treating myself poorly by letting him still be in my life.'”
However, she reveals, “The details of ‘Austin,’ like leaving him in a bar and moving to LA, all the drama of it is totally made up. That was just the lore of the song.”
As she explains, “I’d written so many songs about the factual information of the situation, I was just, like, ‘You guys, I’m angry and I need to write something that’s just different.’ And then we wrote ‘Austin’ … and I was like, ‘Oh, we got something here, I think.'”
But Dasha wasn’t the only one who thought “Austin” might be a hit.
“I was showing my friend last year … the demo of ‘Austin,’ and I was like, ‘I think this is gonna be the song that puts me on the map,'” she recalled. “And she’s like, ‘Oh my God, I think so, too.'”
Still, Dasha said it wasn’t until the line dancing TikTok that she’d made to promote the song went viral that she realized “Austin” was about to help her hit the big time.
“Overnight it had like a half million views,” she recalled. “And the next one had like a million views. … It almost created this kind of culture around line dancing again. And it was just wild to see how many people were excited to join in on that.”
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