Stacey Dineen: 'I want to be known for my music, not as the girl who was bullied'
Stacey Dineen: traded in 200,000 Instagram followers to pursue music
In a world in which image and branding counts for so much, a huge Instagram following would be considered a bonus for anyone launching a music career. For Stacey Dineen, however, her first steps towards forging a future in music were marked by her disabling her Instagram account, and waving goodbye to a follower count of almost 200,000.
In 2017, when she was only 18, Dineen, from Knocklong, Co Limerick, won The Fashion Hero, a Canadian reality TV show championing diversity and difference in fashion. She began to draw a large following on social media, as she became a body-positive activist, sharing her own experiences of being bullied and body-shamed.
Dineen went on to make several media appearances, including on The Late Late Show, becoming an inspiration to others struggling with their body image. However, while she was determined to promote body positivity, she also found that the bullying and mental health issues she spoke about had come to define her.
"I had a relatively tough time in primary and secondary — I used to get attacked over my weight the whole time. But that is also something I am trying to steer away from. Almost every article about me has been about my mental health, my depression, my suicide attempts. I am trying to focus on my career.
"I don’t want people reading the same thing over and over again. I disabled my Instagram account because it wasn’t me — it took away from everything else, it was like the depression and mental health stuff was all that I was. I want to be known for my music. I don’t want to be the girl who was bullied,” she says.
Lockdown provided the perfect opportunity for the 23-year-old to take time out and focus on her future — to finally act on her dreams of pursuing a music career. Her debut single Ghost of You has just been released and has already received airplay on BBC Radio. Like all the best songs, it is about coming to terms with heartbreak.
"I have always wanted to pursue music but I never actually had the confidence to do it. I’ve always put it on the back burner. Then with lockdown, I had all the time in the world to focus on it. So I wrote this song. Me and my fiancé split up about nine months ago and basically I used all of that hurt. Writing about it has helped me massively."
Dineen has received huge support from her family along the way.
"We all have a very good relationship, so if anything is wrong, we can go straight to each other. Growing up with that support is a big part of me going for the career I want. I left school when I was in fifth year. My family fully supported that decision, they said there are so many options out there now, if I wanted to go back to education, I can. They said 'do what you want to do and we’ll support you’. That helped me massively because I couldn’t really figure out who I was in school because I was always so different to everyone else."
Dineen had been hesitant about recording Ghost of You but she ended up doing it spontaneously on a trip to London at Christmas because she felt the time was right.
"I wrote it, then I was over in London, we went over to do a spot of Christmas shopping and I got a bit of a buzz. I had the song written, I knew it was good but I was not forcing myself to go and record it, there was something holding me back. I got a spur-of-the-moment idea to just record it, so I booked the studio for that night, and I went and did it.”
She has recorded two more songs at home in Limerick since then, which she will be releasing in March and April, and she is hoping to release an EP in September.
There are also other equally exciting opportunities on the horizon — the week after we chat she is flying to South Africa to record an episode of the second season of The Fashion Hero, on which she is a mentor. Even more thrilling is that she will be working with the show’s new presenter, AJ McLean, formerly of The Backstreet Boys.
“I’m fan-girling a bit over that. My mother is like, ‘that’s not fair’. I’ll just sit him down and force him to listen to my songs,” she laughs.
Ultimately, she would love to sign with a record label but is concentrating on building up a portfolio of songs first.
“Making a living from music is very hard. I think that’s everyone’s dream, for a label to hear their music and to say ‘I believe in this person, I’m going to invest in them’. That would be the dream, eventually.”
Dineen says she would also like to get some stage time under her belt, but first she has to manage her anxiety around performing live.
“My problem is I have massive stage fright, I have never even sang in front of my parents. I live with my aunt, so she has heard me singing in the shower. But that is another thing I want to tackle this year, getting on stage and performing. I would love to play festivals within the next couple of years, that is the goal I have set for myself.”
She may be focussing more on her music career but Dineen still speaks passionately about the pressures that face young people today, which she says are fuelled by social media. She has two older brothers, and a younger sister.
"My little sister is only 13, and she is so self-aware and grown-up. The stuff she knows about I never would have known. Having a phone, everyone is growing up too fast. Influencers are a big part of that. The majority of influencers, they don’t show the bad parts of their lives. Nobody shows the bad parts of their lives. People are comparing themselves with others and then you are growing up thinking about your weight."
She says she is happy to move away from the tag of ‘influencer’ imposed on her by other people.
“I never would have referred to myself as an influencer. If somebody asked me what I did, I would never have said influencer…no. It is so easy to become an influencer now with the likes of TikTok. It is fine being an influencer but when you are known for nothing other than having a large following, I think it is a bit pointless.”
Dineen also recognises the irony that as she was promoting mental wellbeing on social media, it was harming her own mental health.
“I would get DMs [direct messages] all the time from girls and boys, telling me I had helped them accept themselves and that part was really nice. But then I had to deal with the DMs from fake accounts mocking my weight and stuff like that. Any time you put something up, you were going to get hate. It wasn’t a nice environment to be in. I have found that mentally, since I have disabled it, I have been much happier. I think more and more people are doing the same thing, disabling their accounts. I think it is much healthier.”
Dineen says she is much more at ease using social media to promote her music only.
“My music Instagram is literally a clean slate. I am glad I can put my music to the front. Because that is what I wanted to be known for all along.”
With the release of her debut single, Dineen says she feels she is exposing her vulnerability in a different way, which excites rather than scares her.
“I do feel like I have found my spark again. It is daunting to record a song but releasing it, you are exposing your vulnerable side because people are listening to your story, your lyrics. They are basically listening to a piece of you. I was always so nervous about that but like I said, I was never going to make a career of this if I was only ever going to dream about doing it, I had to actually start doing it. I am very excited for the music to come out and to be known for that — this is Stacey, chasing her music dreams, you could do it too.”
- Ghost of You is out now.
