Ashley Iona wears her heart on her sleeve with her beautiful new single “Leaving.” She wrote the track about finding the courage to leave a bad relationship while living in Los Angeles.
“I wrote leaving when I knew I had to get out of a toxic relationship but the other person didn’t want it to end. I felt trapped and like I was fighting for what I wanted every day,” she recalled. “This song came out of that exhaustion and needing to find more strength. The opening lyrics, ‘Feels like I’m losing a battle’ was where I was started and by the end of the song I’ve found my feet again. Writing it helped me actually get there.”
You don’t want to trust such a personal song with just anyone, so Ashley co-produced the track herself, marking her first time in the producer’s chair.
“I’ve always hired a producer, but then felt like by the end of the process, I was negotiating for what I wanted,” she said. “I already knew how I wanted this song to sound, so I decided to ask Johnny [Romeo, her guitarist and co-producer] if he’d help me make it.”
She also worked closely with recent Sydney College of the Arts graduate Harry Klein on the clip.
“I had this image of being a dark space, so you could barely see me. The video is an intimate journey through that dark place.”
Ashley is currently studying speech pathology at the University of Sydney. If she keeps producing music of this quality, she’s not going to need that degree!