 |
| Yeah, sometimes I show the artist... |
“I consider myself an old soul, a forever soul, an infinite soul, a soul that ain’t ever gonna die. I feed my soul to love, man. It can’t die.”
If you weigh what Lucky Daye has accomplished against what he's gone through, chalking it up to something bigger makes as much sense as anything.
Born in New Orleans 35 years ago as David Debrandon Brown, he was raised in a religious setting that flirted with sociopathy. Described as a “cult” across multiple outlets - I’d call Fader’s 2019 article the most eloquent on details, Vice’s interview the most thorough - his parents and some of his extended family joined before he was born and followed its strict rules of discipline (e.g., beatings for not eating everything off your plate; “"I just know there was a room that I hated that they put us in.”) and as complete a separation from “secular” society as one can manage in 21st century America. That Daye asked Vice not to identify the now-defunct church adds another layer, as did credible, "no-contest" reports of sexual abuse.
Both his parents had left the "church" by the time Daye was eight, but the experience still separated him from the "normal" around him. He navigated all that as well as he could, and the quality of voice helped; he was charming girls with it for pocket money by 9th grade. His father left when he was young, leaving his mother to raise his siblings and him - something that became harder still after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005. Something to note: he tried out for American Idol that same year, singing as David Brown. He wowed all four judges (even that prick Gene Simmons) and went to Hollywood.
Daye’s family moved after Katrina but the search for that religious/spiritual something kept his mother on the same path, if a healthier version of it(?). Feeling increasingly at odds with that upbringing, Daye checked out that life - and with finality and feeling:
If you weigh what Lucky Daye has accomplished against what he's gone through, chalking it up to something bigger makes as much sense as anything.
Born in New Orleans 35 years ago as David Debrandon Brown, he was raised in a religious setting that flirted with sociopathy. Described as a “cult” across multiple outlets - I’d call Fader’s 2019 article the most eloquent on details, Vice’s interview the most thorough - his parents and some of his extended family joined before he was born and followed its strict rules of discipline (e.g., beatings for not eating everything off your plate; “"I just know there was a room that I hated that they put us in.”) and as complete a separation from “secular” society as one can manage in 21st century America. That Daye asked Vice not to identify the now-defunct church adds another layer, as did credible, "no-contest" reports of sexual abuse.
Both his parents had left the "church" by the time Daye was eight, but the experience still separated him from the "normal" around him. He navigated all that as well as he could, and the quality of voice helped; he was charming girls with it for pocket money by 9th grade. His father left when he was young, leaving his mother to raise his siblings and him - something that became harder still after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005. Something to note: he tried out for American Idol that same year, singing as David Brown. He wowed all four judges (even that prick Gene Simmons) and went to Hollywood.
Daye’s family moved after Katrina but the search for that religious/spiritual something kept his mother on the same path, if a healthier version of it(?). Feeling increasingly at odds with that upbringing, Daye checked out that life - and with finality and feeling:
