Daffo - Poor Madeline

“Poor Madeline” is a slow-burning, intense indie-rock track about being uprooted. The Pennsylvania singer/songwriter Gabi Demberg, aka Daffo, fuses a personal experience with a classic children’s book character.

Gabi explains:

“Poor Madeline” is about the loss of the feeling of home. I wrote it when I was 17, my parents sold my childhood home and I went off to boarding school. I ended up moving 6 times in the span of 9 months. I had nowhere to keep my things, because I never really had my own room, so I kept giving them away and leaving them at various friends and family members' houses. When I wrote the song I kept thinking about the “Madeline” children books by Ludwig Bemelmans, where Madeline is at boarding school in Paris and gets appendicitis. At the time I was having these very intense stomach problems and panic attacks, and I kept thinking I had appendicitis, so I thought her name would be fitting for the song. Anyway I was a depressed teenager, still technically am, but now at least I find home within myself wherever I am.”

Listen to our Song Pick of the Day, “Poor Madeline,” below: