Record breaker through and through, a banging solo start for the Montreal music old-stager
It all started when a young girl picked up a pen at age 9 and discovered a hidden talent.
Born in a musical family, with a father attending weekly band rehearsals, Bella Galasso knew her fate lied in the hands of the music gods.
At the age of 13, after a few years of getting her lyrics notebooks confiscated at school, she begged for guitar lessons to accompany her words.
Writing is what I feel I do the best. It just always feels right. I love writing music, so learning instruments and playing them has always been fun. And it feels like it’s something I’m good at. So I just never stopped.
Influenced by renowned legends like The Beatles and Joni Mitchell, country singers like Kasey Musgraves, and Indie-folk musicians like Phoebe Bridgers, Galasso’s vocals are strong, dreamlike, and captivating.
As she advanced in her guitar lessons, she discovered her love for singing and went on to study it at Vanier College for three years.
But a pleasant surprise: she majored in Jazz.
Studying music definitely had its ups and downs. It definitely benefitted my singing voice, and my ability to understand what I’m doing more. It helped me understand music in a more theoretical way, and the cord progressions, so I was able to kind of express what I wanted in actual written form, which I wasn’t able to do before. But in some ways, I felt very stifled too.
Studying Jazz, while helpful in many ways, didn’t feel like something Galasso wanted to stay in. The Jazz genre wasn’t something she felt at home in, nor something she sensed was the right fit for her.
On top of studying music in CEGEP, Galasso also continued her academic journey as an English major in Concordia University, partly for her love of reading, and mostly to hone her skills in writing.
I was a big reader as a kid, and it influenced a lot of my songs when I was a teenager. I barely used to write about anything personal, that was kind of my whole thing. Before I started my solo career, my lyrics were all based off books I was reading or shows I was watching.
Bella Galasso is definitely not an unknown face or an unfamiliar name in the Montreal music scene.
Prior to launching her solo career in 2022 with her debut single “Ruin a Party,” she was was in a pop-country band called The Record Breakers.
Formed in 2014 for a Beatles-related celebration, the band explored and develop their identity throughout the years, to finally land on their unique sound after a fateful encounter with the well-known Canadian country band Blue Rodeo, from Toronto, Ontario. The Record Breakers opened for Bon Jovi in 2018 at the Bell Centre. They were crowned “Discovery of The Year” at Festival New Country Brome in 2019, and were selected by CBC Searchlight to be in their Top 50 Producer Picks in 2020.
In 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic forced everyone into lockdown and quarantine, Galasso felt a natural push her to start writing about personal experiences, and her own feelings.
Life got honestly a little sadder and a little hard, and I’ve fortunately had a very good life throughout the years, and never had much suffering or struggle, and I know a lot of good art and good songs come from that. So when things got a little darker in 2020, I already had an outlet to express that and I used it.
She doesn’t however subscribe to the school of thought that the best art comes from struggle and dark times. On the contrary, she believes it to be limiting to think so.
Every feeling, and every emotion you put in a song, be it sad or happy, when things are going alright or life gets a bit dark, holds a different kind of passion that we should all engage in, and enjoy.
Galasso released her first solo single in May 2022.
I wanted to do a full pop song, cause in my band, I was always singing Country Rock so I never got to play around with synth, and more pop, upbeat songs. So I went full force on that one, because I really love pop music. But in my soul, I truly feel at home in Folk Pop.
A more ballad-like song was released, more than a year later in October 2023, to further showcase her musical preference, titled “fall asleep with the moon.”
The single was a nice prelude to Galasso’s debut EP.
On November 2023, she released Pretty From the Top Floor, a collection of songs with a common theme of anxiety, and fear of growing up – something most, if not all of us, can relate to.
Produced by Avbury Studios, the EP is the perfect soundtrack for your morning commute, or in a car ride with the rain pelting on the windows, watching the raindrops race each other.
The road [to recording the EP] was long, and hard, because we kept getting sick. We would be on a roll for weeks, and then one of us would get sick, and that would pull us back for another few weeks. It took us a whole year to make! But it was also really fun, I love making records.
“Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You,” the EP’s first track, was the easiest song to record, according to Galasso.
Something was happening that day in the studio. It was on a day where we weren’t supposed to be recording anything, but I just remember laying down, and belting the lyrics, and that was the final take. It just happened.
Whereas “Most Days,” also the longest song on the EP and a last-minute add-on before the singer went into the studio to begin the recording process, was the hardest.
It’s just really difficult to make a song that long interesting. I remember writing it a week before we started recording, because I just felt like I was missing something.
And truly, the EP would not have been complete without it.
A rollercoaster of emotions from beginning to end, “Most Days” gives the track-list a beautiful closure, from the very first words.
When Galasso begins her song with an elongated, dreamlike “Long-story-short,” it feels like the story is coming to an end, and she is bidding us farewell. The feeling of anxiety ever-present in the EP are culminated in the final track, while also managing to exude a sort of release. A sentiment of surrender to the realities of life, where every day is a new adventure, and all we can do is enjoy the ride.
When I was writing these songs, I felt like I was the only one feeling like this, and it was a very lonely place to be. But writing them also felt like a release, like I’m presenting myself to the world, and saying yeah this is me. But what I also hope is that people resonate with them, and that my songs assure them that it’s okay, you’re not alone in this feeling, because I feel it too.
Stream Pretty From the Top Floor on all platforms, and lookout for Bella Galasso’s upcoming live shows by following her on her socials!
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