With a heartbreaking tale rendered by RafDolBac’s amazing voice, his third song, “Growing Up,” is a superb examination of the bittersweet path from childhood to maturity. The publication of the song is expected to have a profound impact on listeners of all ages, as its poignant themes effectively capture the essence of life’s changes.
We talk to RafDolBac about the release and much more…
Thanks for joining us, RafDolBac! Can you introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your musical journey?
Hi, thank you for having me! My name is Raf, I’m 19 years old and I’m from Quebec, Canada. I’m a singer-songwriter, composer and musician. I started making music when I was in 8th grade, I believe, during my second year of high school. When I started writing songs, I used to think I was really bad at it. I knew I wanted to be an artist and a singer but I used to think that I’d be the kind of artist to have other people write lyrics for them and then I would maaaybe compose? I wasn’t quite sure where I was going. But as I got older, I started meeting different people from the industry after participating in La Voix Junior, which is the equivalent of France’s The Voice Kids but here in Quebec, so it was The Voice but with children. I participated in the first season of that, there were only two. Because of this experience, I got to meet a lot of people in the industry and a lot of them would tell me “Hey, don’t stop working, if you have creative impulses, just jump on them”. I didn’t really take them seriously at first because I thought “I’m just a kid, what’s the best that I can do?” But then, one day, I had a moment where I was like “Alright, I really wanna do this for a living so let’s try to take this whole artist thing a little more seriously”. And like I said, I used to think my songwriting was trash so I developed this motto “Material is material”. This really saved me because what that meant to me was “Even if I create something that I don’t like, someone out there might love it and that someone could make that creation work out” and that’s all it takes, you know? That’s what I need to start as a musician, I need an audience, I need people who like my music. I had so little faith in myself and in my capacities to make music and that motto really helped me. To believe that other people could like my work even more than I do, that really pushed me to keep going. It threw me into this creative flourish where I just didn’t stop. Whenever I had the slightest creative idea, even if I was in a party or whatever, I would just go to the corner of the room and record myself on my phone and sing to myself. I never wasted a moment to write. Eventually, I had like 20, 30, 40 songs that I had written in the span of a year or something! Sure, some of them weren’t finished but I still had all of this material, thanks to that motto of mine. That really got me to where I am now. A couple of years went by and one day, I was having lunch with a family friend that I had met at La Voix Junior, his name is Jean-Sébastien, and he told me “Hey, if you have stuff, by the way, that you wanna work on, just call me, let’s get together and I could help you with it, let’s make it happen” and I said “Sure!” and that’s what I did! I was like “I do have a lot of songs… like a LOT” and he said “Send them all to me” so I sent them all to him and he went through every single one. Eventually, he made a list of his favorites and next thing I know, he wants to sign me to his record label. From that point on, we started making music together professionally with him as my producer and now we’re here! I’ve released three songs: Hallways, The 1st, and the latest, Growing Up, and I’m so grateful to have gotten here and I’m so excited to get even further!
Your new single “Growing Up” touches on the transition from childhood to adulthood. Can you share more about the inspiration behind this track and what it means to you personally?
The inspiration behind Growing Up was when I moved out of my childhood home to go to college. I lived in the same house all my life, I’ve never moved. I spent the first 18 years of my life in the same house until I moved out to go to college. I got a dorm room at said college and I loved it in the beginning. But then life got real very fast. I was living by myself
and I had to take on all of these responsibilities really quickly, responsibilities that I wasn’t necessarily prepared for. When you’re a kid and you grow up with your family, you sort of get used to have everything given to you. Your parents making dinner for the family, for example! It’s dumb small things like that that you don’t really think about when you have them. When I moved out, I was like “Oh shit, now I have to do all of these things by myself”. A lot of these things I wasn’t taught how to do and I suddenly had to learn on my own. It was a lot of stress really fast. There were a lot of days where I would just sit by myself in my room and think to myself “I miss the freedom, I miss all the tiny little moments” and these moments could have been from something like 2 years before! 2 years is nothing! But I had no idea then that I would move out, you know? I could’ve been taking little walks around the block in the sun back then and I would think nothing of it but now, I think back on it and I think “Wow, that was so calming and relaxing and fun and I was so grateful to be alive back then without even knowing it”. All these big moments of nostalgia for such small little moments of my childhood and teenagehood made me want to write Growing Up.
The song “Growing Up” reflects on both the joys of youth and the challenges of adulthood. How did you approach writing and balancing these contrasting themes in your lyrics and music?
When I started writing this song, I knew that I didn’t want it to be a sad song. I was never sad about the situation, it was nostalgia and I was always very rational emotionally about it. I wanted to differentiate the nostalgia from the sadness so I wrote the song in a way that’s like “Growing up is hard, growing up is tough but it’s also inevitable, it’s out of our control.” I wrote it while, yes, missing my childhood and being nostalgic and stuff but also while being aware that there are more things to come in the future. I believed, and I still do, that the future is bright for me. There’s a little of that in the song, too.
You mentioned that the song evolved from your experiences moving to college and your parents selling your childhood home. How did these significant life changes shape the final version of “Growing Up”?
The song, globally, is about childhood, nostalgia and all of that but that second event, my childhood home being put on the market, definitely shaped the second half of the song. The first thing I wrote for the song was the first verse and the chorus. After that, I sort of left it on the shelf, gathering dust and I didn’t really revisit it for a while until that event. My mom called me and told me that her and my dad were gonna sell the house and I was going through all these emotions and I thought “I need to write a song about it.” I was so heartbroken. But then it dawned on me, I thought “Wait. I don’t need to write a new song about this! I can just put this in Growing Up, it fits!” and so I did. That’s what the final product is.
“Growing Up” bridges pop, alt-rock, and indie genres. Can you tell us about your process for blending these different musical styles to create a cohesive and unique sound?
When I had the idea for Growing Up, I knew that I wanted it to be more on the punk side. I wanted it to be a summer song. I wanted it to be the kind of song that plays on the radio while you’re swimming in the pool and you just turn up the volume. My main inspiration for it was early 2000s punk-rock that I used to listen to as a kid, Simple Plan, Avril Lavigne, that type of stuff but I also wanted it to have a sort of lo-fi sound at the same time. I wanted the song to feel like a teenage revolution but with the nonchalant feel of an actual teenager, if that makes sense.
Your music has transcended various genres over the years. How has your diverse musical background and influences informed your approach to songwriting and production on “Growing Up”?
I’m a huge music nerd. One of my favorite bands is Radiohead and they are musical geniuses. Every nook and cranny of just music in general, they went there. They do everything and anything and they do it flawlessly. With Growing Up, I wanted to go in that direction. I wanted to explore my musical possibilities in terms of composing and just be wild with it. I had never done that before. I don’t have a degree in musical theory, I don’t have that type of background. I understand musical theory a little bit but not enough to master it. I still listen to that type of music on the daily, though. I wanted to draw inspiration from that. The main chord progression of the song, the chord progression of the chorus is the result of that. It goes C major, E major, A minor and then unexpectedly, it goes to Ab major when it should resolve to an F major. It’s definitely not Radiohead-level crazy but it’s a start for me. I also knew that if I had the capacity to go there with my music, I didn’t want to put it all in that song, I wanted to keep some for songs to come.
Reflecting on your career since your appearance on La Voix Junior, how do you think your sound and artistry have evolved over the years?
That’s a difficult question to answer! I’ve been writing and composing for several years now but I’ve never stuck to a certain sound, I don’t think. I knew from the first song I ever wrote that I didn’t just want to do pop music. I really wanted to explore with genres and go places
that people don’t often go to, I wanted to bring the niche to the forefront. The thing is, though, there’s so many of my songs that have yet to be released! I only have three so far so it’s hard to look at my musical evolution. In terms of songwriting, though, I do believe there’s been an evolution. When I started writing, I was still learning. Something I used to tell myself a lot and that I still tell myself today is “Don’t think about what people might think of the music, don’t think of what other people might think about the lyrics, the structure or anything. Write about what you feel, write about what you know. It doesn’t matter if it sounds like a 3 year old wrote it. Write in any way you can.” That helped me so much. It helped me keep going and it helped me learn so much about songwriting in general, without even necessarily wanting to! As I was writing music, I also kept listening to music, as one does. I also kept discovering new music. I kept hearing different ways to write, different types of lyricism, different types of poetry. I think that listening experience kind of shows in the evolution of my songwriting. I like to give credit to Taylor Swift for that. I think Taylor Swift is one of the greatest songwriters of all time. I became a Taylor Swift fan since her folklore album and the thing is when you’re a Swiftie, you’re not just a casual fan, it becomes your religion, hahahaha, so her music since then has been playing in my ears 24/7. I think that has impacted, whether I like it or not, the way I write. I kind of subconsciously studied her writing patterns, I think. It’s sort of a masterclass in itself. It helped me learn so much about how to better my songwriting.
Looking ahead, what can fans expect from you in the near future? Are there any upcoming projects or collaborations you’re excited to share?
I don’t know how much I can say, hahaha! There’s so much I would love to say, though. Right now, I am working on my next single. That’s all I’m gonna say about that. There is a lot of stuff, there are so many songs that are written and that are just there. Some of them I haven’t started recording, some of them I have, some of them are sort of on the shelf for now, so there’s a lot going on, there’s been a lot going on. There’s definitely more to come. If people are starting to hop on the RafDolBac train, I think they won’t be disappointed. It only goes uphill from here.
