A Chat with D’Lourdes (08.07.25)
Filipino-American artist D’Lourdes unleashes their highly anticipated debut album, You Get It or You Don’t. Blending alternative pop with the raw intimacy of a singer-songwriter, the non-binary artist is quickly emerging as a defining voice for a new generation of genre-blending, identity-forward music. We chat with D’Lourdes to discuss their bold debut, a powerful statement of identity, liberation, and sonic defiance from one of alternative pop’s most captivating new voices.
OSR: What’s the story behind your stage name?
D’Lourdes: Danielle is my first name, and Lourdes is my middle name, from my Lola (Grandma) in the Philippines. Smash the two together, and you get D’Lourdes. I wanted something personal but with a presence.
OSR: What was the first spark or moment that led to You Get It or You Don’t?
D’Lourdes: It was less of a spark and more of the slowest burn you could possibly imagine. I had been itching to complete a full album since my first EP in 2022, but had zero idea of what it would even be. I went through the odd experience of having a song from that debut EP go viral (‘How Did You Get So Good?’) and it was admittedly a weird, semi-under-produced song; literally the first Logic session my friend and I had ever opened so for it to get so much attention was just terrifying. The structure is odd and long, it’s theatrical and at times silly. It was equally loved as it was hated, which stunted me creatively, as I was an underdeveloped artist at the time. I just didn’t know how to recover or follow it up at all. I ended up moving to NYC in late 2022 and was hugely inspired by the live music scene. Then it was a couple of years of fumbling and running around, joining every bill I could, trying to workshop the sound I wanted for my career in live settings. I was reminded how much I love performing and realized I wanted an album that gave me the same joy and reflected the type of performer I am — brash, fun, unapologetic, honest, and versatile.
The BIG spark that catapulted me into actually getting this album done? Getting hit by a car (yes, literally) and breaking my left calf. Nothing quite inspires finishing something like mortality staring you right in the face.
OSR: How did you decide on the album’s title, and what does it mean to you personally?
D’Lourdes: There was a phase where I felt totally misunderstood by the people around me. I had just come to terms with my gender identity, but I didn’t have enough of a community around me to feel seen. I was also surrounded by other artists who didn’t seem to be into what I was doing at all, and I just got tired of feeling like I had to explain myself to everyone to be respected. Then one day I was just like wait….. I literally don’t have to explain anything to anyone. Why should I try to explain myself to people who seem hellbent on misunderstanding me? These people are damn near strangers and shouldn’t matter to me, and they’re not the people I do this for. The title was me giving myself an out, away from their judgment, and giving everyone else an out, away from my work. If you’re not into it, you’re not into it, and that’s alright. The aspect of it that’s specific to the queer experience is the unspoken “I see you” vibe I get from other queer people in a room that I think is extremely special. I think back to all the kids I connected with growing up, and see that most of them have grown into queer adults. Something unspoken connects all of us, and that’s also what the title alludes to.
OSR: How did your experience in theatre and acting shape the emotional arc of the album?
D’Lourdes: The thing that ties me the most to my experience in theatre and acting is storytelling. I love being taken on a journey by a song or project, and the way someone can change, whether that’s the artist or the listener. I say with full confidence that every sound in every song has a narrative purpose, which sounds so crazy pretentious but it’s true lol. The tracklist is basically like a plot diagram in my mind, with the start, middle, and end all being “heart” songs (an extremely theatre thing for me to say by the way). The emotional arc was more important to me than the sonic arc because I wanted the listener to experience a journey or a story, as opposed to just a passive listen, which is largely how musical theatre albums function.
OSR: Were there any surprising influences, musical or otherwise, that shaped the sound?
D’Lourdes: A huge unexpected inspiration was the movie I Saw The TV Glow – I don’t really watch or keep up with movies, so I don’t tend to take their content into music, but that movie shook me to my core and made me flip the heart of the project. ‘HEY!’ was actually slated to start the album, but after watching I Saw The TV Glow, I dusted off ‘One of the Boys’, which hadn’t been touched in like 8 months. We reworked it to be the opener. It used to be bluesy with just an acoustic guitar and a drum kit, but that movie really inspired me to push it into a new production space with synths and strings and distortion that I had never really tried before. Adding those riskier elements to the first track opened the door to add them to other tracks. Musically, I’m inspired by almost anything I listen to. I’m a firm believer in “good artists borrow, great artists steal”, so there’s a lot of stealing going on. That’s for listeners to figure out.
OSR: What did vulnerability look like for you while writing this record?
D’Lourdes: If I didn’t feel like I was risking something each song, I didn’t feel like I was doing it right. As a listener, I love work that feels like it has stakes behind it (another extremely theatre thing of me to say). I’m also just terrible at lying, so really, it’s just me telling the truth, as much as I possibly could. The vulnerability can be found in both the lyrics and the production – it’s a goal of mine to take risks into things that maybe make no sense to anyone else but me. Choosing to play it safe feels like a waste of time when no one is really depending on you to do something specific. I will say, in a literal sense, it looked a lot like me crying at the studio desk for whatever reason, maybe because the content felt too personal or I hated my voice, but most likely because my computer froze at 4 am when I would be trying to bounce stems, which is about as vulnerable as it gets.
OSR: How do you approach balancing genre and identity when making music?
D’Lourdes: I look at genre as an expression of someone’s internal life, so if someone makes or connects with rock music, for example, there’s an energy in it that they connect with. As a person, I just really love a lot of different types of music, and they all do something different for me, so whenever I genre jump as an artist, it really is genuine. I like to pick and choose what elements from each genre I connect with and run with them, maybe try to combine them to maximize their potential, as opposed to boxing myself into one type of expression. I’m really still at the beginning of my career, so my sound may not be as polished as it might be one day, but I do know that no one else sounds like me, just like how I know no one has ever lived the same life as me. And controversially, this is my tinfoil-hat soapbox… I think the genre is phasing out. There is so much fusion and genre-bending happening in mainstream music that attempting to sound like one type of genre isn’t a realistic goal anymore. The timeless thing to do is to do whatever you want!!
OSR: Was there a particular moment during the recording where something just clicked?
D’Lourdes: The last addition to the album was ‘God Forbid’, and it was written because the album needed just one more upbeat song, so I just brain vomited whatever I had left. It’s a song about wanting to be great and accepting the potential of defeat that comes with it. It was written and done within 2 weeks, and I immediately released it as the last single before the album. That was the biggest click for me in a lot of ways because I realized that I cared about this project so much that it hurt, and that I needed to just let it go. I wanted to make it great, but at some point, you have GOT to let go of the angst and laugh about the absurdity of “greatness” and do what you gotta do. Writing and finishing the song in such a quick turnaround also reignited the fire to finish the damn thing, cause I felt like I proved to myself that I could do it and that everything will be ok at the end of the day.
OSR: Did you find it hard to let go of perfection and embrace the rawness of this album?
D’Lourdes: As a perfectionist, absolutely. I know there are still imperfections, I can literally still hear them. But there was no scenario in my immediate life that was going to somehow catapult me into perfection before the project would start to feel stale. I wanted to release this project when it still felt alive. I am a self-sustained, independent artist and actor with like 7 different side jobs, depending on the month. Why try to sound like someone with the “best producers in the world” when that is just not the case, though I personally think my collaborators are gods. I, as a person, am not “refined” or “perfect”, so it’s no skin off my back to do an unrefined, imperfect project. Also, my haphazard first release getting as much viral love and viral hate as it did helped me not care as much about the cleanliness, but rather about the content. I had already seen death threats in response to my work, so the worst already happened. Maybe it made me a little too impenetrable, but all in all, I love that this is a thing I made with people I love and respect, and if “raw” and “imperfect” is what people get from it, I’m totally okay with it.
OSR: Now that the album’s out, what does success look like for you?
D’Lourdes: It’s my dream to sustain my life with music and to tour and perform full-time. I think I have all the same dreams as every music artist, but I do my best not to let that fully define success. I’m definitely going to do everything in my power to make those dreams happen, but first and foremost, I want to be a safe space for people like me – queer, trans, non-binary, POC, but also for anyone else who feels like their emotions are too big for their body. I learned early on that trends come and go, so I hope to be a steady, dependable presence in someone’s life. Success to me looks like continued creation and risks, finding the people that connect with my music and story, and going wherever that momentum takes me.
Many thanks to D’Lourdes for speaking with us. You can find out more about D’Lourdes on their Facebook, Threads, TikTok, and Spotify.
