Photo Credit: Will Heffernan
Stacey Ryan first began building a TikTok following with her jazz renditions of popular songs. However, in January 2022, Stacey decided to put her own spin on the viral open verse challenge. Posting a short clip of her original song “Don’t Text Me When You’re Drunk,” she invited fellow artists to share their own take. Zai1k’s duet stood out. After thousands of full song requests, the two artists decided to collaborate on the single that now has over 12 million streams on Spotify.
Her new track, “Deep End,” picks up where her previous single left off. It is a “fun” and “flirty” number about cautiously wading into love and highlights her signature vocal runs.
Stacey recently made her Moroccan Lounge debut to perform her viral and new material. The intimate venue provided a great opportunity for Stacey to give a standout performance, and see some of the faces that have followed her rise.
We chatted with Stacey about “Deep End,” collaborating on the viral duet, and more!
What was the inspiration behind your new single “Deep End”?
I remember being in the writing session and there was a fun, flirty vibe just in the room and we decided to just take that and run with it. The song wrote itself so quickly!
What was the writing and production process like?
We were really feeling a Prince/Janelle Monáe vibe (cool pop production with light percussion and some interesting rhythm/chord choices). The vibe of the production definitely lent itself to the flirty lyrics and overall the session was so fun!
If you could set fans up in the perfect environment to listen to the single, what do you imagine it looking like?
Definitely lounging by or in a pool with friends around. It’s a party song!
At the beginning of the year, you went viral with your open verse challenge for your song “Don’t Text Me When You’re Drunk.” What prompted you to post it as an open verse on TikTok?
So, Sadie Jean’s open verse for her song WYD now was going completely viral and I remember her being all over my FYP with awesome duets to her video. I had posted a snippet of “Don’t Text Me When You’re Drunk” a couple of weeks earlier, and with my manager we decided to give it a shot by posting an open verse challenge because you never know what could happen, right? I produced the track and put out the video and the rest is history.
What caught your attention about Zai1k’s duet?
I loved Zai1k’s duet because I love how he blended his more hip hop/rap style to my jazzy/pop vibe, and I think it creates this unique style that everyone gravitated to!
What was it like collaborating? How did you manage to capture both your styles?
Collaborating was very interesting because we never even met before the song came out! I was home in Montreal sending in my vocal tracks to my producers in LA and Zai (who’s from Florida), just so happened to be in LA right around the time we were looking to make an official version, and he was in the studio the next day cutting vocals with me on Zoom. I would’ve loved to be in LA for the recording/production process, but I think the fact that the song was made in only 13 days from two different countries is a very cool feat!
What was it like performing both singles at your recent performance at the Moroccan Lounge?
It was actually a very stressful day because I had completely lost my voice two days before the show and was at the doctors office that morning to get some medication to try and pull through for the show that night. That mixed with pure adrenaline got me through the show and it was AMAZING seeing everyone singing back my songs to me that have only been released for a short while.
What can fans look forward to next?
More of everything!! More music, more live performances, more social media content (I finally just moved my recording set up from Montreal to LA) so just keep an eye out for all that!
What is one quote that you have heard or that you go by that you want to ECHO out to the world?
I don’t know if this is a quote, but words I’ve been living by recently are “don’t over stress about something that is out of your control or not in the moment,” and I have saved myself from a lot of stress!!
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