Dasha

One Liner:  Pop country one hit wonder who wants to abandon her boyfriend in Austin in his time of need

Wikipedia Genre:  pop, country

Home: California

Poster Position: 13
Both Weekends.
Friday at 2:45.

American Express Stage.

Thoughts:  oh noes.  Her Spotify bio is "cuntry" and now I feel sad.

I think we are looking at a TikTok star here, because she has one song with 85 times the next song's stream counts, and then her fifth most popular song is a version of that same song but sped up.  Which is a very TikTok thing these days to offer sped up and slowed down versions of songs so that the weird Tikkers can Tok their stuff at different speeds.  But at least the song is named "Austin," so we've got that going for us.  180.2 million streams.

Makes me think of Kesha doing something slightly countrified.  Oh, she's not being nice to Austin at all.  She's saying that her loser boyfriend will still be stuck here after she leaves him to go to L.A.  Well that isn't nearly as appealing for me.  She's got a younger, dirtier, Taylor Swift vibe going on in there.  Haha!  The top comment on the YouTube video is that this was Eminem dating Taylor Swift.  Perfect, no notes.

Dasha is a planetary period in Indian astrology, or an alternative translation of the word for a Russian summer home.  The other four Dashas listed on Wikipedia are Ukranian, Israeli, Russian, and Belarusian.  It's like a damn NPR story up in here.  Her real name is Anna Dasha Novotny, and despite that name she was born in San Luis Obispo, California.  She left there to attend Belmont University in Nashville until COVID sent her packing.  Pretty limited bio though...

Her first song, 2020's "Don't Mean a Thing" is straight crappy pop.  Uninteresting beat, effects on her voice, vapid.  She still sounds like that in 2021 with "$hiny Things," and into 2022 with "FUCK YOU" or "Eyeliner" as well.  Her first album was 2023's Dirty Blonde, which collected a bunch of those earlier singles and added a few new ones, but this is straight pop.  Not a lot of streams for anything on there - "Olivia" has the most with 2.1 million.

I'm kind of rushing through this writeup because I desperately want to move on to something else.  She released What Happens Now? in 2024, which looks to be a quick release to capitalize on the "Austin" thing with only eight songs on there.  Nothing seems to have much traction beyond that one tune but I'll give you "King of California" with 1.1 million streams.

Doing the Texas thing here again.  She doesn't appear to have any connection to Texas at all, but she name checks both Texas and Austin here.  I wish this was a different King of [insert state here] song.  Time for a ranking:

1. Jason Isbell - King of Oklahoma
2. Brett Cobb - King of Alabama
3. Getting hit by a Capitol Metro Bus after your girlfriend left you to move back to L.A. and said you'll be a drunk loser forever
4. Dasha - King of California

Bunch of great "King of" songs.  the Road.  Pain.  Wishful Thinking.  I'm sure I'm missing lots and google is surprisingly unhelpful.  But that one up there ain't it.  I don't like to be rude in these writeups - everyone loves different things in the musical world, but this one absolutely feels to me like a one-hit thing that we won't remember in a year.