How TYDE’s Years-Long Struggle With The Medical System Led To Their New Single, ‘Let The Dust Fall’

Brisbane’s female-fronted 8-piece known for their genre-bending style, TYDE, are back. And they’ve got something to say. Dropping their new single, Let The Dust Fall, today (November 15), TYDE wants to take their fight to the medical system - the one that let their frontwoman Ella Belfanti down in 2020.

Four years ago, Belfanti was gardening and touched some leaves that caused a rash. When it started to cause her pain, she went to the hospital, where she was prescribed some topical steroid cream to clear up the rash. Not thinking much of it, Belfanti used it for the next 10 days, as recommended by her doctor. Little did she know, this would begin a years-long struggle with her body - and the medical system.

“When I stopped using the cream, my whole body broke out in a rash. My eyes swelled up. I couldn't sleep. I was shaking. I looked like I was having a severe allergic reaction,” Belfanti said.

“Obviously, I went back to the doctor like, ‘What's going on?’, and they went, ‘Oh my God, it looks like an allergic reaction. Here's some more steroid creams to control the rash. Keep using those, and we'll allergy test you and try and see what's going on.’ And basically, over the next 18 months, I was in this cycle of just needing to use stronger and stronger doses of the steroids.”

As the rashes kept getting worse, Belfanti got more desperate, going to dermatologists, researchers, and the like, to find what was wrong with her. But all of her allergy tests were coming up negative.

“It turns out that steroids, the topical steroid creams, are addictive, and when you stop using them, you go through this withdrawal process, which involves your hormone levels going out of wack. I had really unstable levels of cortisol in my body, I couldn't produce my own, which stopped me from sleeping. So I was only sleeping half an hour a night. I was just, like, living in a bathtub, because my skin was so thin that if I turned my head, my neck skin would split open.”

The first six months of withdrawal were the worst, forcing Belfanti to move back in with her parents so that they could take care of her. That’s when she wrote Let The Dust Fall.

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“It's just talking about this feeling of, like, ‘I have been poisoned and there's nothing I can do but wait it out.’ The lyric ‘let the dust fall’ literally refers to all of my skin just shedding constantly. I would sit down on the couch for five minutes, stand up and there would be a pile of dust that I'd have to vacuum up after myself. I pretty much just hung out outside on our balcony, so I wasn't creating these piles of skin dust in our house.

“So, the song talks about being really angry and feeling like I had nowhere to hold anyone accountable, and also feeling like it's not really any individual’s fault either. It's just like, how do you even start to take on this issue?”

Belfanti’s concerns about her “really difficult and unbearable withdrawal” were never addressed. Instead, she was “gaslit” by doctors, who said the rashes caused by the cream were just another flare up of eczema.

“In Australia, I still haven't had a doctor acknowledge that what I've gone through was an addiction and withdrawal process. I felt very gaslit by pretty much everyone I've tried to speak to. I think that's the really hard thing, that I'm like, ‘Hey, this hurt me.’ And no one in the medical system was willing to go, ‘Oh, this, this treatment was the wrong thing for you. I'm sorry. Let's find a solution’, rather than, ‘No, you should just keep using it’ or something like that. That feeling of being invalidated, of just never being acknowledged, was so hard.”

According to Belfanti, Let The Dust Fall is a song for “anyone who’s been gaslit” like she has.

“Anyone who's feeling lost and like they have no way to hold anyone accountable for the harm done by the medical system, I want them to feel seen because of this song, because it's a really hard thing to go through, especially if you don't have any community around you who's also gone through stuff like that. So, anyone going through topical steroid withdrawal, this song is for you.

“This song is about more than just my story - the medical system in its current form causes harm in so many areas, by failing to look for root causes and preferencing bandaid solutions with side effects, and it leaves people feeling helpless. It also leaves people with a lot of frustration and anger and no way to hold anyone accountable for the harm done to them.”

‘Let The Dust Fall’ by TYDE is out now on all streaming services.