Beyoncé, Turnstile, SOPHIE: Canadian artist Debby Friday reveals the music that inspired her new album, The Starrr Of The Queen Of Life.

Glitchy dynamism and mercurial emotionality; Debby Friday’s hazy and beautiful new album The Starrr Of The Queen Of Life is a heady pop-fuelled habitat. The Canadian singer-songwriter sounds fearless across the 33 minute runtime, unleashed within eclectic palettes that she decorates with glossy vocal varnish. 

Her second full-length following 2023’s GOOD LUCK, the work develops Debby’s style into something fuller, vast and cohesive, yet unpredictable and exciting. What influenced it? Debby tells Wonderland what she has had On Repeat.

Listen to the album…

Debby Friday Is On Repeat…

Beyoncé – “All Up In Your Mind”

I studied a lot of the pop queens last year while making this album and Beyoncé was top of my list. If you examine her discography, she has this talent for choosing the strangest beats and somehow sliding all over that thing in the most sonically interesting and pleasing ways. She is someone who has a mastery over her vocal expression and I learned a lot from studying her. I loooooove the production on this! 

Amaarae – “Wasted Fates”

Loooooove Amaarae and I love her voice. I’ve always found this track quite surrealist and I enjoy the contrast between the gunshot kicks and her falsetto.

Crystal Castles – “Empathy”

Crystal Castles was a huge part of the history of electronic music in Canada and I was always really inspired by what felt like a fearlessness in the sound. Alice Glass’s voice is more like an instrument than vocals and it transmits so much emotion from this void space. Definitely inspired some of the production choices I made on Arcadia. 

SOPHIE – “Is It Cold In The Water”

I think this track will always be a reference for me. SOPHIE has influenced and changed my life in so many ways. Her sample pack is all over my first EP, “BITCHPUNK”, and I go back to her music often. What I love about this song and also what she did for music is that she was able to take these metallic, shiny, and quite abrasive sounds and make them sound beautiful and operatic. She knew how to imbue pop music with feeling and that definitely inspired my tracks like 1/17 and All I Wanna Do Is Party.

Turnstile – “TLC”

There is a moment about 1:20 into the track where you can literally hear the space close between genres. Punk is electronic and electronic is punk. I’m obsessed with the truth and that moment feels like a truth to me. I love it!

AKRIILA – “www.hotxulito.com”

I found AKRIILA near the end of making my album and epistolares actually changed me and re-invigorated my love for DJing. The production on this record is crazy. It embodies everything I love and believe about music and genre hybridity.

Britney Spears – “Why Should I Be Sad”

Another pop queen I studied. In particular I love the way Britney uses her voice all over this. It changes and transforms and glides in so many different ways that all fit together beautifully. Also, a great example of how pop music has this ability to convey complex and heavy human emotions in a way that everyone can enjoy and you can still dance to. It’s actually hard to do that so I respect it a lot.

Bring Me The Horizon – “Can You Feel My Heart”

This song was a moment of convergence for my co-producer, Darcy Baylis and I. We both love electronic and emo music and we have a lot of overlapping musical influences. There’s some fantastic guitar happening on this track that I feel like Darcy was able to channel for my record.

Santigold – “L.E.S Artises”

I listened to this song many times over the past year of making my album and it was a source of comfort. I love her songwriting on this because it’s so honest. Being an artist and making an album, it’s a journey of psychological and emotional anguish and perseverance. It gets dark and light, it swings you every which way. Like she says, I hope it will be worth what I give up.

Toxe – “Som En Sol”

I’ve been following Toxe for years now, since way back in my Soundcloud days. She was one of the first people who showed me what was possible as a woman producer. I love how rich and nuanced her sonic landscapes are. There’s a lot of subtlety in her work. I love this song because it’s so fun and quite poppy but still very much her production style.