As recent music history has made abundantly clear, slapping a term for any relative in your band’s name is a low-key way get some eyes and ears on your project (Soccer Mommy, Hockey Dad… we could go on). Up until last week, though, we’d never seen anyone capitalize on the trend as brilliantly as Aunty Social, the project of Toronto’s Daniela Gitto.
The bedroom-style alt-pop artist released her new single “Trying” last Friday (July 26), documenting her own “losing my religion” story when she separated herself from an ultra-pious upbringing — and the paranoia that came with it.
“Before all of this, religion was my identity,” Gitto shares. “It’s what I relied on, it’s what I followed. I was raised in a Catholic family, I went to a Catholic school. Once that was gone, I really didn’t know who I was. I felt like all this progress that I had made from six to sixteen was completely void, and then I had to muster up all the things that make me who I am.”
She goes on to explain, “Everyone’s experience with religion is different, whether positive or negative. Mine was born in fear and repetition, policing not only my actions, but also thoughts because I believed God was always listening. I did the sign of the cross three times each time I passed a church, cemetery, my Nonna’s house and even when I saw a dead animal on the side of the road. If I missed one I’d become anxious and do the sign of the cross in threes, as many times as I felt necessary so that God knew I was sorry. I still feel the tendencies to this day, like a spiritual Stockholm syndrome.”
Parse through Aunty Social’s post-religion confessional below.