GAYLE is starting the New Year off right: Thanks to her hit "abcdefu," the teen singer from Texas is appearing on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon Wednesday evening. Of course, the version of "abcdefu" you hear on the radio is the censored version, swapping "forget you" for "eff you." But GAYLE isn't sure it fully conveys the breakup anthem's emotion.
"I don't know if it's as angry," GAYLE says of the censored — or "nicer" — version. It's one of several versions of the song, including an "angrier" version and a "chill" version.
"I like to think that it can maybe spark people's interest enough to at least, like, try and hear the original," she notes. "The goal with that song was for, hopefully, the censored version to hit as hard. I don't know if 'forget you' is as, like, angry."
GAYLE's anger was was sparked by a real-life event: Her breakup with a boyfriend who, she says, inspired several of the other songs she's released.
"I have a song called 'Orange Peel'— it's about him. 'Happy for You' — it's about him and it's…like, 'You're the best thing ever and I'm the complete worst,' basically," she explains to ABC Audio. "So it definitely shows the evolution of emotion. Like…'I love you so much. Oh my God, I'm the worst. I'm the problem…Wait a minute. Eff you!'"
But Gayle, just named Billboard's Chartbreaker for January, realizes that just because one of her songs is getting popular doesn't automatically mean she's now a huge pop star.
"'abc…' is…just one song," she notes. "And so, my goal is to just keep telling my story and keep doing what I do, and hopefully people don't hate it and we're just going to kinda go from there and see what happens."
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