On the newest episode of the V Wanna Know podcast, up-and-coming pop singer GAYLE and host Mathias Rosenzweig learned all about the troublesome history of diet culture from professor, researcher, and nutritionist, Dr. Lindo Bacon.

“From a very young age, I’ve always struggled with food,” GAYLE said for her reasoning behind choosing diet culture to be the topic of the day. “Especially trying to make it in the music industry, I was literally 10-11 years old and being told to lose weight so that I could be successful.”

Bacon talked about the common misconception, especially with young people, that being thin equates to success. GAYLE opened up about how it impacted her growing up, remembering past diet trends she participated in thinking they would help her chances of making it big in music: “The thought was put into my head that I had to look a specific way in order to be successful, so for me, dieting was almost a form of control. Because when you’re in music, you can only do what is in your control to be successful.”

Though she’s been making music for years, the 17-year-old shot to fame last year after her song “abcdefu” went viral on TikTok, months after its release. “Even if you don’t know GAYLE, you’ve definitely heard her music,” Rosenzweig said, referring to the song, which has over 620 million streams on Spotify to date. The song is about an ex of GAYLE’s (who she now has blocked on every social media channel) who did some major damage, inspiring the flamingly catchy chorus: “A-B-C-D-E, F-U / And your mom and your sister and your job / And your broke-ass car and that shit you call art / Fuck you and your friends that I’ll never see again / Everybody but your dog, you can all fuck off.”

Following the success of “abcdefu,” GAYLE released “a study of the human experience volume one,” her first EP, this March. GAYLE told Rosenzweig that much of the EP is inspired by a friendship-turned-romance that ended up destroying the friendship. GAYLE drew from her personal experiences to capture the pain of feeling used and lied to in her songs. Now, she’s getting the last laugh, as she hits the road to open for indie-pop trio AJR on their next tour, starting in Florida on May 3.

Tune in to this episode of V Wanna Know to learn more about GAYLE’s music, and to hear from Bacon about the origins and the dangers of diet culture.