Vocalist and guitarist Jenna Moynihan was at a DIY show in her hometown of Nashville when she saw the phrase “daddy issues” scrawled on the bathroom wall. Intrigued by the mere scribble, Moynihan was sure that “daddy issues” had to be the band name of a female punk supergroup, but she was mistaken. And so, she felt she needed to make this a reality and Daddy Issues was born.
Originally, Moynihan, alongside friends Jenna Mitchell and Emily Maxwell, created Daddy Issues, the band, as a parody Twitter account, but quickly decided to take on the task of becoming self-taught musicians and turning tweets into song lyrics. The trio first gained attention when Nashville’s Infinity Cat Recordings shared their song “Ugly When I Cry” on Soundcloud. The grungy track quickly got 200K hits as many women can easily relate to the track’s opening line: “I hate girls on TV, they’re much prettier than me.” Listen to this little web sensation below.
After the success of this track, Infinity Cat Recordings included Daddy Issues’ Can We Still Hang on an annual cassette series in 2015 and signed the ferocious, all-female group to their label. Can We Still Hang is a collection of sad girl rock songs bluntly calling out the patriarchy with stark, powerful lines like “I am full of sh*t not unicorns and rainbows.” Listen to Can We Still Hang in full here.
Now, Daddy Issues has announced that they will be releasing their first full-length debut LP since signing with Infinity Cat. And, they have shared two singles off the record, Deep Dream, which will officially be out May 19. Listen to “In Your Head” and “I’m Not” below.
Both tracks are a continuation of Daddy Issues’ signature ’90s grunge appeal and witchy glam, but they also show an already elevated mastery of the elements of a pop song, a huge feat for a group who only taught themselves how to play instruments a few years ago. These girls are a force to be reckoned with and their upcoming album is surely going to be a breakout moment for them.
Not only are these women writing incredible pop songs, but they are also addressing very real and contentious issues in their lyrics. The track “I’m Not,” off the upcoming record Deep Dream, is a denouncement of society’s all-too-often callous responses to victims of sexual assault. In a statement about the song, drummer Emily Maxwell said:
“Sexual assault and abuse are extremely difficult and complex things to process, and in trying to process them — especially if you’ve been silenced by your family, friends or community in favor of protecting your abuser, which is an indescribably painful thing to experience — you sometimes end up making excuses for your abuser like your loved ones do and start inventing a lot of alternate reasons for why you ended up in the situation you did. That can take the form of blaming your own sexuality (i.e. ‘maybe because I kissed this person I gave them the wrong idea,’ which is completely untrue) or blaming the media for teaching you falsehoods about how women are supposed to cave to a man’s will, among a million other things. As a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, I spent a long time going through every reason why it had to have been my fault until I finally started to come to grips with the fact that it wasn’t, which wasn’t until very recently. This song is about that confusion and how much it can be spurned on by the people around you telling you that your trauma doesn’t matter because outside of the fact that your abuser nearly destroyed your life, they’re a good and kind person and should be allowed to continue on with their pleasant and perfect world.”
Daddy Issues has already caught the attention of pop punk duo, Diet Cig, who just released their insanely good new record Swear I’m Good At This last week. The two female-fronted pop punk bands are currently on tour together in support of Diet Cig’s new album. See a full list of dates below.
Deep Dream is out May 19 via Infinity Cat Recordings. Pre-order it here.