Ten Years With Dilana's "InsideOut"

The passage of time is a funny thing. As we age, some memories become fuzzy, fading like our breath as it rises into a cold night's air, while some remain etched in our minds, deeper as the sands of time build up around the edges. Music is a memory that works like this, with certain songs and certain records becoming a part of us, the ink the notes are written in staining our blood, until we feel we could draw the art with our veins.

The year was 2005, and I was a smart-alec college student who thought himself above watching reality tv. Ok, that part hasn't changed much. I had known of a show the previous summer where INXS searched for a new lead singer, although since I cared little for their music, I hadn't seen a second of it. It seemed hokey, and beneath the intellect of a philosophy major such as myself.

But for reasons I never understood, when a second season of the show premiered, I found myself turning it on. I did this despite not being interested in the three men who would make up the winning band; Tommy Lee, Jayson Newstead, and Gilby Clarke. If you told me today this show existed, there isn't a chance I would watch. But times were different back then.

It only took one episode for me to fall under the spell of a certain contestant, who would go on to finish second in the competition, but first in many of our hearts. Dilana's voice immediately caught my attention, and spoke to me even when the songs she sang were someone else's. I have never been able to explain the appeal a voice contains, why we love some and hate others, while everyone else might disagree with us. Regardless of the limitations of language to allow me to say what I felt, I knew I was hearing a voice that spoke to me like few ever had, and soon none ever could.

Hearing cover songs is one thing, but to be sure I needed to hear what Dilana the artist could do. I wasn't going to be content to have only those performances to remember. I was a fan, but to become devoted would require music of her own. That process would take time, and test both my patience and hers.

It took a few years, but rumors of her album finally reached me. Label issues led to it being shelved, then sold, then put into a holding pattern, until one day I saw it pop up in the Amazon MP3 store. I rushed to make the purchase as quickly as I could, lest fate make it disappear once again. In fact, I got my copy so early that the files are marked "Darklight" rather than "InsideOut". They would suffice until I could track down a copy on CD, which would take yet more time, but the waiting was worth the anxiety.

"InsideOut" is not a perfect album, and that's what makes it so great. It is the story of Dilana stretching herself in all directions, finding her voice as an artist. It is far different from "Wonderfool", an album I didn't yet know existed, and is yet more different from "Beautiful Monster", the record that would show Dilana's artistic soul fully developed. "InsideOut" is the metamorphosis, wherein Dilana emerged a tattooed butterfly, her songs a dazzling rainbow like the multi-colored ink adorning her skin. It is also the metamorphoses wherein I went from being a fan of her voice, to a devoted follower of an artist.

I have written before about my love for "Falling Apart", which is my favorite song of all time, so I won't rehash that story yet again. Suffice it to say, I get the same tingle down my spine listening to Dilana's power rising atop the crunchy guitars and roaring organ that I did when I first saw a video of her playing it live, in terrible quality, when finding live footage on YouTube was still a big deal.

If nothing else, "InsideOut" is a diverse record. Across the dozen songs, Dilana gives us her versions of pop, gritty rock, Zeppelin-esque epics, and soul-bearing ballads. The only common theme is her voice, and how she uses it to paint her masterpieces in vivid color.

I  am not someone who feels things deeply, let alone from art, but I don't know how to listen to "Dirty Little Secret" without feeling every ounce of pain Dilana puts into her performance. When I say that a singer's job is to convey the song's meaning, this is what I mean. Even if I have never been in that position, and I can't relate on a human level to the situation she's singing about, her soul flows through her voice in a way no vocal coach could teach. Meat Loaf often said he viewed his role as that of an actor bringing the characters in the songs to life. Dilana is the complete opposite, using her every breath to give the songs life, her life.

Dilana amazes in other ways. When we reach the ends of "Solid Gold" and "Still Wanting", she reached into the deep and belts out notes hard to believe, such is the power and ease with which she sings. And unlike most singers, even when she sings loud enough to consume the space the entire band would occupy, her tone is pure. She is a mystery to this day.

Listening to "InsideOut" today, it feels as fresh to my ears as that first day, as my hands shook hitting the play button. The fear of being disappointed is gone, but it has been replaced by the worn-in love that comes with time. There still aren't any records that sound like this, and there sure as hell aren't any voices that come close. If my finding Dilana was an inexplicable moment in time, "InsideOut" is the hourglass on a humid summer day, the sands glued together and refusing to let another second pass. I am still in that moment, all these years later, and that is never going to change.

Over the last decade, I have changed, and so to has the world. I don't see things the way I used to, and I don't think the way I used to, but I still hear "InsideOut" the way I did back then. Each time I pull it off the shelf, I'm freshening the ink Dilana has tattooed on my soul, because that's where this music lives.

Sheryl Crow once sang, "the first cut is the deepest." I loved records before this, but I never loved an artist the way I did after hearing "InsideOut". This is my first cut, and I wear the scar with pride.

I always will.