Seize The Daya

One Grammy-nominated collab track with The Chainsmokers, two platinum hits of her own and an amazing debut album—yeah, it’s safe to say that Daya, 18, is winning at life.

- Sydney Adamson

Daya’s not a girl who’s afraid of taking leaps. Take, for example, the time she jumped from an airplane 12,000 feet above the Pacific Ocean while skydiving in Hawaii, or when she hopped off a moving train in India to make it to the Taj Mahal before it closed.

“We were on a delayed train and if we stayed on, it would have been too late to get in,” she says of a trip to see her family when she was 14. “So my uncle was like, ‘We’re jumping off!’ And we did!”

And now, Daya’s taking even bigger leaps in life. After kicking off her very first headlining tour in February, the 18-year-old singer is cresting the wave of success.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock lately, chances are you’ve been playing her hits like “Sit Still, Look Pretty,” “Hide Away” and “Don’t Let Me Down” (a collab with The Chainsmokers) on repeat. Thanks to tell-it-like-it-is lyrics and an effortlessly cool sound, Daya’s been sitting pretty at the top of the charts since she burst onto the music scene almost two years ago.

Not bad for someone who just graduated from high school last spring.

Rise Up

Picture this: You’re walking around Times Square and look up to see a huge billboard—of yourself. Or maybe one day you’re singing in front of a small, hometown crowd and months later performing at Coachella. That’s what life has been like for Daya, who, by her own description, is simply a “normal girl.”

“When I started off, I didn’t have a huge fan base—I just had a couple of followers,” Daya says. “I think what’s made it so cool is that everyone’s like, ‘Who’s this girl? Where did she come from?’”