“Are We Gonna Talk?”: David Diaz On Friendships, Creativity, and Reigniting Passions
Samantha Colleran, October 2026
After taking some time away, David Diaz is back with his first solo single since 2023. “Are We Gonna Talk?” is an 80s inspired synth pop track exploring the feelings around letting go of a one sided friendship, leaving behind the unanswered calls and emotional unavailability. I had the chance to catch up with David to talk about the song and how the single rollout has reignited his passion for creating music that connects with the right people. Read our conversation below!
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Samantha Colleran: Hi David! I’m so excited to chat with you today. It’s been a while, but we have some new music from you.
David Diaz: It’s been a hot minute.
SC: We’re going to get right into it. “Are We Gonna Talk?” explores emotional unavailability, unanswered calls, having some moments of clarity and realizing things are a little different in a relationship. This song is actually about a friendship, tell me more about what inspired the song and how it came to be. I know it’s been a little while in the making.
DD: The song was done around three years ago, around April 2023. It’s about a friend I’ve had multiple falling outs and make ups with. We had an issue and I was trying to message him, but he stopped talking to me for some reason. Our relationship was very one sided at the time. Whenever he needed something I would give it; time, advice, money. It’s a bit of a character flaw on my end; I was always the fixer, the helper, the people pleaser. I texted him and asked if we were going to talk and he ghosted me. I found out he was seeing my messages but was ignoring them. I took the silence as an answer and decided I was done chasing people who weren’t putting effort and attention into our relationships, and I wrote a song about it. One of the texts I sent was “Are we gonna talk at all?” and I thought, “That sounds like a song”. I wrote it, recorded it, and held onto the demo for a while.
SC: It’s interesting to see artists explore friendship, it’s not something that’s touched on often in songwriting. I think this can be applied to romantic relationships, but I appreciate the friendship foundation of it. One of your strongest suits is vulnerability in songwriting, being open about emotions, it shines through, especially on this one. The fact that it was just a text message that inspired the whole song, I love it. Can I ask why you held onto it for so long? Was it too personal, were you waiting for the right time?
DD: It wasn’t that it was too personal, it was a mix of waiting for the right time and some other factors. I was all over the place. I was at the height of my depression, I was creatively stunted and didn’t know what I wanted to do anymore, I thought about quitting music because I wasn’t having fun anymore. I got to a place where I was reconsidering things. THe time and money it takes to put into music, I was stuck. For that song in particular I could have gone to my distributor and put it out that night because I was feeling really emotional. Friend breakups are a thing, they’re up there with romantic breakups.
SC: They’re so bad!
DD: It’s terrible. Especially with friends because everyone is involved. You have friends who are also friends with your friend, or there’s a group, and everyone finds out and things happen. Everything was going on and I was in a place where I couldn’t do it anymore. The song was done, I said what I needed to say, but it didn’t feel like the right time. I waited, and then I went through a bit of a rebrand. I started doing the whole 80s thing during the release of “Only I Get Sad”, but I wanted to lean more into it visually. With this one, I wanted to wait until I could do it in a way I was really happy with. I found a producer who helped me rework the song so it had more of the 80s feel I wanted. He did such an amazing job, so much so that when he sent it to me the first time that was the only version I took because it was so perfect, I had no notes.
I’m a quality over quantity person, which is why I haven’t put out a song since 2023. People always told me to put songs out just because, and I thought about it. Traction and relevance are important these days, but I’ve gotten to a point where I don’t care. We live in an age where everything is so quick and AI can make a song in two seconds. People are dropping songs on Spotify, it’s like, 500,000 a day or something. There’s songs out there for people to listen to and stuff to keep them busy, I don’t want to do something to keep someone busy or fill space or silence. Sometimes silence is a good thing, taking a step back is necessary. I think I forgot that when I was putting out music, because I was always thinking of the next thing and staying popular and relevant and saying all the right things. I was falling into this formulaic version of what I wanted to be as an artist and I lost the passion for it. I took time to rethink everything. I put out some covers and worked on some features where I wasn’t the main artist, but I was working on things on the backend for about three years trying to figure out what I really wanted to do.
SC: Quality over quantity is so important, especially in these days where everyone is trying to be the next best thing and get content out because they’ll get X amount of followers. I’ve also been in a slump, I haven’t written anything in a while. Even when I am feeling inspired, I think “I’m not going to say it the way I want to say it”. Sometimes you just have to hold onto things until they’re ready. You mentioned your producer who worked their 80s magic, and nailed it. How did you guys meet?
DD: His name is Luke Kondak, he’s absolutely awesome. I found him online through Instagram or YouTube and messaged him, not really thinking anything would come of it. I listened to the stuff he had done for other people and I really liked it. I sent him a couple of demos, and “Are We Gonna Talk?” was the one that stood out the most. He kept the parts of the song I wanted, but gave me parts that I knew I wanted but couldn’t articulate in terms of production. In the studio, I can record and mix and master, but production I’m still learning after all these years. He did an amazing job.
SC: You guys make such a solid duo, it was so fun to listen to. It sounded very you. It’s all you on the vocals, right? The harmonies are crazy.
DD: I get that question a lot from people, “Who’s that in the background?”
SC: Me, myself, and I!
DD: I have no problem with people who have background vocalists. I come from an independent artist background, so if you can do it yourself, it’s good to learn to do things. I went to school for music and I can sing with a pretty large range, so I use it to my advantage. I do the background vocals on almost all of my songs, unless I have friends jump in to help out.
SC: You’ve been featured on other songs and done covers, but you’ve taken a bit of a backseat with music, for lack of a better term. How do you feel now that the song is out? How has your relationship with music changed since stepping back into that main performer role?
DD: I feel so good about it. It was nice to do covers and collabs with people because it helped me stay involved in music. I was still recording and writing behind the scenes, I’m working on stuff now that I put on the shelf back then. The way I operate as an artist has changed a lot. I recently started working with a publicist, I said something to her that she may have been put off by. With publicists, they get you out there and market you and put you in front of people’s faces. For a while, I was trying to separate David The Artist and David The Person. Even if that didn’t come across to people and I seemed authentic, which I try to be, I was compartmentalizing. I realized I don’t want to be part of the ‘music industry’, because at the end of the day it is a machine and I felt like a little cog inside that mechanism. I was falling into the formula of what people expected from me and what I thought I had to do. People were telling me I was too fat, or my voice was weird, or I wasn’t doing enough, or I wasn’t “pretty enough”. If people are telling me I’m not enough of this or that, I don’t want to fit in at all. I decided I was going to do whatever the hell I wanted. I was scared to do it, because I didn’t know what it meant for past relationships or future opportunities, but I stopped caring. If being myself all the time in all the places is a problem for someone, I don’t think they should be around me.
Circling back, I told my publicist “I’m not for everybody, and I don’t want to be”. The same way I treat relationships and friendships is the same way I treat my music; I do things, I make sounds, I go to places, I read things and talk to people that maybe not everybody likes, and that’s just how the world works. Rock music is not my thing, I’m not saying it’s terrible, I just don’t go out of my way to listen to it. I can agree that there are rock songs with lyrics that I read and think, “Wow, that’s really heartfelt”, but I don’t want to sit here and listen to Metallica. I can appreciate and respect their artistry, but I don’t have to like them. That’s the problem with the music industry, everyone wants so hard to be liked. I hear so many artists like Harry [Styles] and Lizzo and other top artists talk about chasing numbers and being popular. They’re dealing with it on their level, and I’m dealing with it on a micro level where I am in the ladder, I don’t even want to get to a point where they’re at if I have to still deal with those feelings, especially signed to a label. I wanted to get a grip on how I wanted to operate as a whole, so I decided not to associate with that aspect of the industry. I’m doing it because it’s fun and I love it. I want to do music and shows and satisfy that for myself so I can eat at the end of the day, and have a house, and have belongings, and do the things I want to do, and fund the stuff that’s fun. I don’t want the music to be there for the sake of attention or to meet a number goal. I want it to be there because it’s something I’m passionate about, I want to say something at a specific time in a specific way for specific people. Sometimes people have an issue with that because you have to be for everyone, but you don’t! If that’s what you want to do, sure, let’s see how long that lasts. You can’t make everyone happy, and that’s what I realized. I started having more fun with it. Things are more relaxed, less expectational. I’m leaning into spontaneity and creativity. I lost it for a while, but I found it again.
SC: That’s amazing! Especially in this day and age, everyone is chasing numbers. Even in some interviews, Harry did talk about taking a step back and rethinking how to… you come off something as massive as Harry’s House and think how to go bigger, better, but you don’t always have to go bigger and better. It’s more about what’s speaking to you, and what’s special to you, and how you’re seeing the world and feeling things. You can tell with the promo for “Are We Gonna Talk?” that it’s been more fun for you. The little graphics, I just saw you recently posted the voicemail reel. How did you come up with the promotional aspect for the song?
DD: I wanted to lean into the 80s theme more visually. Since I nailed the sound and there are other songs that are also in the 80s world. Some songs are new disco, some are funky, glam rock, all these different 80s flavors. I felt I wouldn’t be having fun with it if I didn’t put myself into the world visually. I’ve always been a huge fan of world building, it’s so fun, especially on tours and Broadway shows or walkthrough experiences. We’re both New Yorkers, so we see that all the time with pop ups. Even in Florida, when I moved here I didn’t realize that with Disney and Universal we’d have those things too. I love being immersed and escaping to another era or being introduced to something completely new. I wanted to find a way to do that, I took everything that happened in the modern day and turned it into an 80s version. Some of the stuff I’ve been doing has been last minute, I would scrap something and do something different because it was more fun.
The voice you hear on the most recent video is my friend Andrea. She actually came up with the name for my production company, Sad Boy Productions. A couple years ago when we’d be out and about, she’d say “Sad boy productions over here”. I liked it, so I took it, and I always credit her for that. For the voicemail, I asked her if she could help me out, and she sent over a few voice messages that I mixed last night and cut this morning, and then I posted it. I loved the visual and storytelling aspect.
SC: I love the world building, it makes the whole experience even more immersive. It’s so sweet that Andrea was so quick to help!
DD: It’s so fun to have your friends join. I could do it by myself, but then it would be no fun. I’d be doing everything alone.
SC: It adds a little bit more of an emotional layer of it, it’s more human. Speaking of visuals, are we getting a music video?
DD: The video comes out October 2nd. I am so excited, I actually just watched the final version of it a couple of hours ago. It’s kind of what the promo has been leading up to. Essentially, the vibe is going to turn into an 80s slasher horror. It’s still going to be comedic. I took the advice from Andrea who left the voicemail where she said I should deal with my problems one at a time. My character David takes it literally and decides to murder every person who didn’t call him back. I have a terrifying chrome mask with pantyhose over my face and eyes cut out, a black turtleneck, black biker jacket, and black jeans and boots.
We rented a cabin for the shoot. It’s the prettiest thing during the day, but so fucking scary at night. Inside of it looked like it was frozen in the 80s. We booked it for three days, shot for three days and two nights, it was so much fun. On past videos and campaigns for songs, they’ve been a bit stressful. We were worrying if the song was short enough because of people’s attention spans or the popularity. For this one, I wanted to make sure everyone had fun. Of course I wanted to make sure we got the shots, but at night we were eating and drinking and dancing and stargazing. I wanted it to be memorable, and the crew said they had a great time, that it felt more like a vacation than a videoshoot, which made me so happy. I’m really excited for everyone to see the video. I know where all of this promo is going, and I keep wondering if other people know where it’s going, but they don’t know what I know, it’s taking a turn for the worst in the next couple of days and I’m really excited to see people’s reactions.
SC: Horror has been such a thing in the past year or two with movies like Obsession. Bringing the 80s slasher vibe to the video… It’s perfect. I can’t wait to see it, I’m so excited!
DD: The music and the video don’t match whatsoever. The only thing that connects the song to the video is the promotional aspect, everything else you’re like, “What is going on?” Spoiling a little bit, but when the characters die, their blood isn’t red, it’s baby blue. The place we booked had issues with bookings in the past where things were burnt down or there was a chase scene with weapons and nobody knew what they were doing, so when there was a crew of people outside with weapons or covered in fake blood, other people who had booked places nearby thought they were in danger. We booked this place a year ago, so it was a long time coming. They told us when we booked the place that as long as we were transparent about what we were doing, and as long as there wasn’t any blood we were good. I asked them if it could be blue, and they said yes. We found ways around everything, and it was so much fun.
If you turned off the music and just kept the original audio, we forgot that we were shooting a video for something comedic because the actors did such a good job. The girls were total scream queens, you don’t hear them screaming in the video, but in the behind the scenes they’re screaming their heads off, it’s next level. The guys did such a great job, they’re total opposites of who they are in real life. I can’t wait for you to see it.
SC: It sounds so much fun, I can’t wait to see! Just a couple of quick questions that you know I love to ask. What are you listening to that’s been inspiring you lately, or what have you been enjoying?
DD: I’ve been listening to a lot of old Disney Channel original movie soundtracks. In my car it’s been the first two Cheetah Girls movies, I’m so sorry, I don’t acknowledge three. I’ve also been listening to the Pixel Perfect and The Princess Diaries soundtracks. It’s so nostalgic. I went to pick up a friend at her house for dinner and I had it on, we had a whole jam on the way to dinner. I haven’t been listening to my favorite artists lately, I have a habit of doing that when I’m writing I put them on hold so what I’m doing isn’t too influenced by them. I’m a creature of habit, so I know if I’m listening to my favorite artists it’ll come out in what I’m making. I change what I’m listening to, and I don’t think any Disney Channel came out in what I’m working on.
SC: Maybe we’ll get a David Diaz Disney original soundtrack some day, one day.
DD: That would be so fun!
SC: My final question as always, what can we expect in the future from you?
DD: Definitely new music! I don’t know when, but I’ve got stuff coming out. Still more 80s stuff coming down the line. I have a show on October 31st in Orlando for the Ecos Concert Series, which will be really fun. I’m doing press and promo for “Are We Gonna Talk?” That’s it, really. Everything else is for fun; playing video games, doing escape rooms, balancing time with friends. Since I was working so much on music, I was putting friends and family in the backseat for a while. I can’t make music if I’m not living life to inspire the music, so I took time to go out with friends and find new passions and rediscover old ones, talk to people who I haven’t prioritized. I changed how I operated, and that’s what I hope to do.
SC: You have to live life to write about things, I love to hear that! It’s been an absolute pleasure talking to you, and congratulations on the release!
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“Are We Gonna Talk?” is available on Spotify, Apple Music, and wherever else you listen to your music. Be sure to follow David on Instagram to stay up to date on future releases.