When Chrystal wrote The Days in 2015, she never imagined it would hit the Top 5 in the UK 10 years later, let alone amass hundreds of millions of streams via a DJ Notion remix. What started as a forgotten demo somehow became her breakout hit, launching the Bolton-based songwriter/producer into the spotlight. Here, she reflects on nearly quitting music and the surprise drive-through meet-up that changed it all...
Interview: Miranda Bardsley
It was never my plan to be an artist again, and this year has been quite overwhelming. But it’s also been amazing.
In 2014, the year before I did The Days, I was studying production and songwriting at university. I just wanted to be a producer and songwriter, but I’d written songs for some house producers with my vocals on them, and that’s how I started becoming an artist. I thought, ‘I’ll give it a try for a bit,’ and I ended up making my first album, Unarchived 2014, doing a lot of collaborations and playing festivals and raves around the North.
Around that time and into 2015, I was hearing this organ-y, bassline sound a lot and I loved it, so I was trying to recreate something like that in my music. The Days was one of many songs I was writing at the time. I thought it was a hit from the start, but I thought that about a lot of them – so I wasn’t too focused on it!
One thing I did always know was that I wanted The Days to be catchy. I would see everybody at raves singing along when the tracks had vocal drops, and I’d think, ‘I want it to be like that.’
It was about getting that first bit right – the ‘Do you think about the days…’ line – and the rest went from there. At first, I had this organ bassline with the vocal over it, then I started taking it out in different parts of the song to see where it would be more impactful for the drop, and it worked... 10 years later! [Laughs].
I often change the genres of things I’m working on, and with The Days, I changed it to R&B at one point because I’d asked a few producers if they wanted to help me finish it, but no one was interested. Back then, I’d lose confidence in ideas quickly if they weren’t getting feedback. So I forgot about the original demo and started an R&B version of it. But that ended up unfinished, too!
Then, the song got forgotten about. I continued doing some collaborations but I just felt like it wasn’t working out for me – I was putting in a lot, but I wasn’t really getting much back.
I ended up doing alternative R&B, some pop, that kind of stuff, and a couple of years later I got a record deal with a London-based indie label [37 Records]. But that went in a direction that was a bit too pop for me and, in 2019, I left. I had a rocky few years trying to figure things out but it didn’t feel like music had ever really worked for me in a way that I could get the success I felt I deserved – or even get paid for it – so I just stopped doing it completely.
It was always hard to forget about it, though. When I listened to the radio, I would always think, ‘I can do that…’ And my family and friends would be like, ‘Just do it!’ So, in 2022, I started thinking about doing it again, but this time, I wanted to just focus on being a songwriter. First I started writing at home and I made an EP, Dance Again, then I got a studio in Manchester last year.
It’s funny how I ended up putting The Days out. I was at a drive-through getting a coffee, and my friend was behind me and started beeping me. She pulled up next to me, playing one of my old songs, and said, ‘You need to put these online because I’m sick of going into my emails for them!’ It got me thinking.
I went home that day and I started going through my emails from way back, checking the hard drive from when I first started.
I was going through songs, year by year, picking out the ones that were good, and I started to feel this spark again. I’d always thought they weren’t good because I never got success from them, but listening back to it all, I realised that it was just that other people weren’t getting it at that time. So in June, I put them out, including The Days – which is still just the original, unfinished demo!
By July, the song started popping off on TikTok, because my sister had posted it. I was like, ‘What the heck?’ I was not expecting it. Then there were a lot of remixes, including Notion’s. When I first saw a video of him playing it out, with people singing the lyrics like it was already an anthem, I was just like, ‘This is huge…’
Where I’m from, in Bolton, dance music has never gone away – there’s always someone driving by blasting a bounce track – but it does feel like it’s gone absolutely huge right now, everywhere.
I think, when it comes to dance music on the charts, it’s always the main genres coming back around, like now, with UK garage.
Personally, this song just made me realise that I should’ve always trusted my vision. I always knew that The Days would be a big song, but I let too many people redirect me too many times and I convinced myself it wasn’t good. I think that’s why music never fully worked for me before this. I never had anyone to look up to.
I trust in myself now though, and if I do the whole ‘artist’ thing again because of this? I’ll do it differently, in a way that suits me.
