Tiffany Day on Translating Grief and Anxiety Into Electronic Music

If electronic dance music is supposed to be about losing yourself in the drop, Tiffany Day has been using it to find herself instead. Over a decade ago, the hyperpop breakout was a 15-year-old with headphones on, sitting in her bedroom trying to reverse-engineer the feelings that Whethan's 'XE3' flip was producing somewhere inside her cerebrum.

From Future Bass Superfan to Scene Fixture

Day has since grown from superfan to scene fixture, releasing anguished bangers across projects that have explored grief, anxiety, nihilism and the gnawing claustrophobia of becoming someone people recognize. One of the first tracks that hooked her into EDM was a flip that Whethan did back in 2015 called 'Mssingno – XE3 (Whethan Turn).' "I remember sitting in my room with my headphones, trying to dissect what exactly I was hearing and why it made me feel so emotional and how the hell he made those noises," she recalled in an interview with EDM.com.

That question became the blueprint for an entire career. She convinced her parents to drive over two hours on a school night to see Whethan perform. The song pulled her into other artists in that world of future bass, like Flume, Lucian, and Vanic.

The Transition From Pop to Electronic

When Day started making original music, she was writing pop because she had learned how to write music on a guitar. In 2019, she met Jef, a producer who also has an artist project called MELVV. The first song they made together was called 'GROWNUP.' "It was like, 'Wow, this song just feels so me.' I had never been more proud of a song at the time," she said. "I think maybe it was that moment that I realized I wanted to keep making electronically influenced songs."

Her latest single, a collaboration with slayr called 'CONSTANTLY,' purées glitched-out trap and angsty hip-hop into a convulsive ripper. Day says she's particularly proud of the track's last drop, where "there's so many layers that you can't even really tell what's going on individually."

Translating Existential Dread Into Euphoria

Day's approach to electronic music is unconventional. While she notes that acoustic music allows listeners to process sadness slowly, electronic music hits like a "heart attack." The frenzied production of HALO soundtracked her anxieties about fame and self-worth. Before that, LOVER TOFU FRUIT was deeply informed by her struggles with nihilism and mortality after her grandfather's passing.

"As much as EDM is linked to euphoria, I also think it can be linked to just feeling anything intensely," she explained. "Certain songs can make you reminisce on a moment, or maybe realize something about yourself that you haven't before." The stories she tells now deserve something with more impact, especially because all of her feelings have been pushed deep down for a while.

Day, who also moonlights as a dubstep producer under a secretive alias, continues to use dance music as her own form of therapy. The full interview is available now on EDM.com.