X. ARI has been through a lot of changes in her life, but her commitment to music has remained the same. She’s been a presence in Canadian music for over 20 years: she recorded her first song at age 10 and spent her early teen years touring with pop trio Untamed, who signed to CAA and achieved Canadian radio success with their song “You’re Not Gonna Score.” But in the years following the group’s breakup, Daniella struggled with mental illness, which included psychotic episodes and multiple hospitalizations. Years of trying to downplay her experiences had reached a breaking point. She now says, “People take, on average, 11 years to get help. It took me 15.”
In 2016, X. ARI decided to channel her experiences with mental illness into her art by becoming equal parts alt-pop singer-songwriter and mental wellness advocate. Since then, she’s released six EPs that transform her life experiences into raw, relatable and slickly produced pop songs, including Anja (2021), which chronicles her queer awakening and relationship with her now fiancé, and Uni-Fi (2019), which explores her gender dysphoria via duets with male persona IRA X.
X. ARI pushes her authentic self-acceptance further than just her music. For Uni-Fi, she performed with half of her body in drag to embody X. ARI and IRA X. simultaneously, and teamed up with NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) to speak at schools about living with mental illness to show kids that “they too can achieve their dreams regardless of mental health challenges. I didn’t think I could have that, but here I am, having a fulfilling and meaningful life full of love and creativity.” X. ARI is also the founder of WisdoMania Foundation — a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit that bridges the arts and self-care to bring meaningful experiences to schools, communities and live events.
X. ARI’s merch features items that are important to X. ARI’s own mental wellness practices — a self-reflection journal and scented candles — with a portion of proceeds going to Canadian youth mental health charity Jack.org. These are just a few of the ways that X. ARI has gone about her central mission: to use her creativity to empower listeners and musicians like her who have felt that their mental illness could hold them back, and to show them that they can turn their pain into power, weaknesses into superpowers, burdens into blessings.
With each successive release, X. ARI gets closer to becoming the mental health advocate she always wanted to see in the music industry. “All I needed to see was someone similar to me saying, ‘Hey, I was in the hospital experiencing psychosis and here I am! I’m okay!’ I didn’t see any of that.” She practices what she preaches, frequently uses her social media profiles and website to share honest depictions of her feelings and practices, and to advocate for more inclusive behaviour.
X. ARI’s music can be heard in many episodes of TV series such as The Ultimatum, The L Word, Love Is Blind, Bad Girls Club, Are You the One?, Siesta Key and Teen Mom 2. Since 2019, X. ARI has written and performed songs for video game Arknights, including “Renegade,” which was nominated for the 2021 Hollywood Music in Media Award for Best Original Song in a Video Game and has amassed over 4.2 million streams on YouTube. Another track X. ARI was a vocalist on for Arknight won a Hollywood Music in Media Award in November, 2023.
X. ARI has been dropping at least one single per month since May, 2023. On October 10, 2023, in support of World Mental Health Day, X. ARI released her latest EP, Songs with Dancers. X. ARI will continue to release monthly until the release of her 9th EP “Neuroplastic” funded by FACTOR, in September, 2024. Her 8th EP “Ticket to My Rock Show” is slated for release in March, 2024 and the first single “Make Me Good” came out in November. X. ARI is just filmed a figure skating music video in Toronto and she can’t wait to share it with you!