American singer d4vd on wanting to become a singer: 'My parents thought I was getting scammed'

David Anthony Burke, known professionally as d4vd, is an American singer and songwriter. He is best known for his song “Romantic Homicide”, which peaked at number 33 on the Billboard Hot 100. When asked what inspired him to be a singer and a song writer, he said, “Lyrically a writer. I was inspired to write comic books when I was in fifth grade and sixth grade and poetry as well.“ On his single Romantic Homicide I was trying to encapsulate the feeling of losing somebody, that grief and overcoming that loss; essentially killing that person in your mind. It’s about moving on, trying to move on. On the evolution of music It has been very interesting, because I have just got exposed to a variety of music. Right from Elvis Presley to Michael Jackson and to go even behind, the kind of jazz music we used to have, all these sounds are coming back from the dead. How many new guys have inspired the actual stars! It’s actually very cool to see all these sounds coming back from the dead. It’s cool to see this evolution of music. On wanting to becoming an artist My parents had thought I was getting scammed, I had to make them sit on the couch and tell them I was getting emails from record labels. The two friends that I have that live in North Carolina and Louisiana, they gave a heads up and I made my first song. They hated it, but I kept going anyways. About the artist d4vd emerged as a visionary artist only one year after he began writing and recording heart-piercing tracks alone in his sister’s closet in Houston, Texas. d4vd gained his now-eclectic taste in rap and indie music from internet wormholes and fan-made Fortnite videos on YouTube, which he also started creating as a home-schooled teenager. As an avid player who has amassed over fifty thousand subscribers on his Limit Ant gaming channel, he noticed that the songs in his game montages were getting copyright strikes, and his mother suggested that he should write his own original music as a solution. This motivated d4vd to start recording his own tracks after discovering an easy-to-use music-making app called BandLab. He’s released a smattering of singles touching everything from indie-alternative to pop to R&B, and the 17-year-old, born David Burke, scored a breakout hit in summer 2022 with the melancholic indie rock song “Romantic Homicide,” whose brutally honest lyrics about heartbreak and resentment have connected with hundreds of thousands of listeners. d4vd’s intuitive command of lyricism stems from his years of scribbling raps and poems in his journal since childhood and his versatile interests shine in his music, drawing primarily from manga for his “real and grounded” narratives. “Romantic Homicide,” a song recorded entirely on an iPhone, reached No. 33 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart before d4vd even graduated from high school. Building off the success of ‘Romantic Homicide’, d4vd’s slow-building beachy ballad “Here With Me” which currently sits on the Billboard Hot 100.