On her debut album The Cycle, the Shropshire singer-songwriter takes on a ‘broken system’ that underestimates the vibrancy of disabled lives
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Dandy, a 28-year-old alternative pop musician from Shropshire, has every reason to be angry. An abusive relationship in her early 20s left her powerless, she says, while the deaths of thousands of fellow disabled people under the benefits system have filled her with pain and rage.
In Their Shoes, the lead single from her self-recorded, self-produced debut album, The Cycle, excoriates this “broken system that’s rigged to lose” with portraits of characters such as Mary: “When she’s at the assessment / She holds her pride / As they ask why she hasn’t / Pursued suicide.”