Gabi Gamberg aka Daffo

by Em Ingram

NYU Clive Davis student Gabi Gamberg knew from a young age that musical and performance arts would be central to their life, but they certainly didn’t anticipate the accolades they would receive on the night before their 19th birthday in March 2023. 

“I posted a video of me singing [on TikTok],” Gamberg said, “and the next morning I woke up on my birthday, it had blown up.” Gamberg’s TikTok quickly gained over a million views, and their account now has 50,000 followers. 

Prior to the viral TikTok, Gamberg marked January as the moment their musical career began to shift after they changed their stage name to Daffo. Gamberg told Embodied, “It was like right after I shaved my head and I changed my name and then blew up on TikTok. And I feel like a whole era started. It was really strange. It’s really strange how things happened for me. It always happens in seasons.”

What inspired the name change?

“It's very cheesy, but growing up, well, I guess it started with, I think my sister was the one that came up with Daffodil… My sisters wanted to name me Daffodil, but they also wanted to call me SpongeBob,” Gamberg laughed. “I always had daffodils in my front yard, and every time we would pull out of the driveway and pass them in the spring, my mom would be like, ‘The daffodils are singing.’”

Despite virality, Gamberg felt that their viral song, “The Slit Experiment,” wasn’t truly representative of their songwriting: “‘Poor Madeline’ was my favorite song that I’d written at the time, and I just wished that ‘Poor Madeline’ would blow up. And it fucking came true, and it’s very strange; maybe manifesting is real.”

At the beginning of the year, Daffo had under 200 monthly Spotify listeners; at the time of interviewing Gamberg, they were at almost 40,000 monthly listeners. As of publishing, they have surpassed 120,000. In the first week on Spotify, their song “Poor Madeline” received over a hundred thousand streams. “It's been really strange and feels very not real because it's just like a number on a screen,” Gamberg said.

Daffo’s 2021 album, Crisis Kit, released under their real name, also gained popularity after their viral post. “I was actually going to delete Crisis Kit off of streaming services [because of the name change],” Gamberg said. “But after everything happened on TikTok, it got a lot more attention, so I thought I would leave it up there for history's sake, you know.”

Who else is Daffo?

The band has been in flux for some time, though Gamberg (Daffo) is accompanied by a few pivotal members. 

“I don't have official members because my band changes around a lot, which is really frustrating rehearsal-wise and performance-wise, but I have two more permanent members,” Gamberg said. “Sam Cronin is my bassist. They've been kind of one of the most consistent members for a while, and they do some backup vocals as well. I live with them; they’re one of my best friends.”

Gamberg also considers their producer a part of the band. “Hudson Pollack, who produces all my stuff, is definitely like a part of Daffo. They produced Crisis Kit and Pest…We met at the Berklee College of Music Summer program in 2019. I also have Natalie Moosher, who’s in the music business program at NYU, and then my sister’s boyfriend on drums.”

What is your musical background?

“I’ve been playing guitar since I was maybe eight or something. But I’m, like, self-taught. And then I was classically trained on violin for nine years,” Gamberg said. “My dad plays guitar, my mom plays piano. My dad is the one that kind of got me started on guitar, but I was already classically trained in violin. So I kind of had the hands for it, like the fingers and stuff. And I surpassed him real quick. So after that, I was pretty much self-taught.”

Gamberg was a first-chair violinist in orchestra through middle school, a time when they also began to delve deep into songwriting. “As soon as I started playing guitar, I started writing songs,” they said. “I wrote two songs a week when I was younger. I was, like, really prolific.”

Around this time, their mind was expanded and exposed to the world of indie music by their older sister. They “didn't know that there was this whole world of music that was indie and alternative.” 

On Thanksgiving in 2017, Gamberg experienced a movie-like moment, which solidified their commitment to making indie music. While on their period, fighting with their older sisters and experiencing an allergy attack from their dog Sparky, Gamberg sat, upset, in their living room, listening to music. They said, “‘Embody’ by Frankie Cosmos came on, and there’s this line that goes, ‘On tour with Gabby. We embody all the grace and lightness.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, I'm going to do this.’”

Toward the end of their freshman year of high school, Gamberg decided to prioritize their musical interests: “I told my mom, ‘I’m dropping out of high school. I’m going to make music. I’m gonna move to New York and make music.’ And then she was like, ‘Maybe don't drop out of high school.’ So I literally Googled Songwriting High School and went to the first place on my Google search, which was at Idyllwild Arts Academy. So I went to a boarding arts high school my last two years of high school and studied songwriting and music tech.”

Did You Know You Wanted To Go To Clive Music School?

“No, I did not want to go to college. I don’t really know how I ended up here,” Gamberg said. Since Daffo has taken off this year, Gamberg is now considering dropping out and moving to Los Angeles to pursue their career full-time. 

“I feel like I’ve been in a state of waiting for a long time,” Gamberg said. “Like, things will blow up, and they seem to be moving really quickly. But at the same time, I’m just sitting at home, waiting for a call, or waiting to move to L.A. or like, waiting for my life to start.”

What is your newest EP?

Daffo released their latest extended play album, Pest, on October 20th. Over this past summer, Gamberg went out to Los Angeles to record with Pollack, where he lives and makes music with Quincy. 

“I got there, and we started making the music. And then we were like, we need more time…so I was there for about a month working on the project,” Gamberg said. “Last week, I recorded some final vocals for a song called ‘Good God’ that's going to be on the EP. It’s our focus track.” With so many eyes on Daffo, Gamberg is excited to deliver.

“It’s like grunge folk… the themes are definitely focused on shame and illness because I'm just always sick. I’m allergic to everything. I’m neurodivergent, and I also got diagnosed with ADHD in the process of making this record.”

Daffo hosted a D.I.Y. release party to commemorate the release day in an apartment in Brooklyn. The internet has been the launching pad for many of the biggest music careers of the twenty-first century. Some may call it fate or say its luck, but Daffo’s career is already heading towards a star-studded trajectory that is anything but a coincidence.