Songfacts®:

• "Not At This Party" explores the emotional disconnect of being physically present at a social event while mentally dwelling on a past relationship. Dasha details her struggle to move on despite outward appearances.
• Dasha wrote the song with Ashley Gorley and Ben Johnson. Johnson and Gorley frequently write together; their other collaborations include Parmalee's "Take My Name," Nate Smith's "Bulletproof" and Jelly Roll's "Liar."
  
  Dasha started the writing session that birthed "Not at This Party" by handing hitmaker Ashley Gorley her phone and inviting him to scroll through her list of song titles. "I already liked all of them," she told Billboard. "Obviously. I wrote them down."
  
  One phrase caught Gorley's eye: Not at This Party. What he didn't know was that it came from a very real moment in Dasha's life. A few weeks earlier, she'd shown up at a social gathering while feeling mentally checked out - a byproduct of sudden rising fame and the awkward attention that came with it.
  
  "So many people trying to small-talk me," she recalled. "I remember thinking to myself, 'I'm just not at this party.'" She pulled out her phone and logged the phrase on the spot."
• Dasha had the title filed on her phone for a while. "It's about that universal experience of being out with friends, but mentally checked out," she said, which is just a kinder way of saying, "Your ex is still living rent-free in your head."
  
  "When I wrote it with Ashley Gorley and Ben Johnson, I was going through something with a guy, and the song just flowed," Dasha added. "We really tried to capture that mix of distraction and guilt in the song."
• The track, co-produced by Ben Johnson and Johnny Reno, lives in a sonic cul-de-sac between pop and country. "Raw mandolin, banjo solos, fiddle," Dasha Told Holler Country. "Then, it also has that big pop hook that I love."
• The music video, helmed by Aerin Moreno (known for his work with Tate McRae and Tyla), leans into the quiet drama. We follow Dasha as she ghosts her own evening: standing awkwardly at the edge of crowds, lingering in the bathroom, checking her phone, and appearing detached from the revelry around her.
• Dasha, Gorley and Johnson wrote "Not At This Party" in about 90 minutes, then recorded the demo in another 90. The final track features banjo, guitar, fiddle (by Johnson's wife, Lauren Conklin), and Dasha's two-take lead vocal, captured raw with a SM7 mic.
  
  "If I had time to overthink it, I might have sung it differently," she said. "And it wouldn't have hit as hard."