Q&A: VALLEY BOY FINDS HEALING THROUGH REMINISCENCE IN DEBUT ALBUM CHILDREN OF DIVORCE
NOVEMBER 7, 2025
Written by Ellie Noti
Photos by Cole Silberman
LA-based musician Valley Boy’s Children of Divorce wraps its listeners in familiar arms, inviting them to laugh, to cry, to find themselves through the callback of specific scenes from his childhood with those he grew up around. From a profoundly understanding and empathic perspective, Valley Boy (James Alan Ghaleb Amaradio) dissects these moments, painting a picture of adolescence that is just as intense as it is playful. We sat down to talk about his influences, the undertaking of such a significant project, and the importance of sharing your truth.
PETTY: How are you feeling about the upcoming release of your album?
JAMES: Well, you know, I’m feeling all of the ways. I’m working on it up until the very last minute… This is gonna be my first album. It’s the album I’ve always had an idea of wanting to make, which is an album about kids who have divorced parents and how that affects their life moving forward. I’m excited and nervous and all of the things, and I oscillate between that constantly.
PETTY: It’s a really touching concept, going back though your childhood and writing about it. What was it like walking back down memory lane?
JAMES: It’s therapeutic. It was a little bit fun. It was a lot, a bit painful. The more I pulled the thread of one memory, another memory came up and another memory came up and suddenly so many things and so many difficult times that I’ve gone through that I’ve forgotten and repressed, I was able to rework and recontextualize. It’s funny how it feels small in the light of some other problems in the world thinking how, like, Your parents split up. That’s not that big of a deal. But it was a big deal in my life because it leads to a host of these other issues, instability and all these other things that go on.
PETTY: I really understand where you’re coming from. There is something, especially in the song “Naruto”, the beat is so punchy but the lyrics are so heavy. I feel like it really captures that—I don’t want to say childhood innocence because that makes it sound like you don’t know what’s going on as a child, because you do and you just might not have the words to express it.
JAMES: Yeah, that’s it. We go through these things as kids, and we experience everything alongside everyone else, and we don’t have the tools yet to fully express and contextualize it. With that song, I was trying to purposely be, okay—Be 12 years old aesthetically, but also aware of what’s happening around you. …
I don’t want to paint too broadly saying that if your parents got divorced you’re going to be fucked up with X Y and Z. It’s more like, anecdotally that’s what I’ve seen from people that come from homes that have instability. You have higher incidents of depression. You have higher incidents of drug abuse and addiction. I think you get into sexual activity earlier and more chaotically, and you kind of stay that way. Romantically, you’re taught really toxic things and destructive habits because that’s what you’ve been shown so you seek them out and you recreate them, playing them out over and over again until eventually you start noticing the pattern and you get past it.
As much as it’s been hard, it’s such an important concept for me because it really did, for better or worse, shape my life. It’s been hard to talk on the subject because the range of experience is infinite. There’s so much to say, like how do you even say it. There are times where I kind of (feel) crushed by how I’m barely scratching the surface of my experiences or the experience of my friends or early girlfriends, or cousins or siblings or parents.
PETTY: It says something really important, because as much as all the experiences are different, it really does create this club of kids that all have this one common denominator. It helps you feel less alone when you are talking about it, because everyone has something that they can relate to within that.
JAMES: That’s the powerful thing about it too. Creating a space within a record where I can discuss these things and other people can relate to it and remember their own childhood and their own experiences. I think, growing up, it’s shaped me so much, but I didn’t really speak about it with my friends. I didn’t have the tools at the time or maybe the willingness to try. It’s tricky to talk about the things that are so hard for us. … When we do, it takes some of the weight off it. Then we can have songs and moments where we poke fun at the sort of ridiculousness of it. Like maybe in the song “Naruto”, where I compare not knowing how many seasons are going to be left in the anime with not knowing how many seasons I’m going to be without a father, and having just as much control over either thing—which is zero control.
PETTY: Have you played any of these songs live yet?
JAMES: I got to tour this year with Chezile, this artist who’s cool and having a big moment, and this artist Laurel who is also fantastic, so I got to do some Canada tours and perform a lot of these song on the road, and it's been really special to get to do it… I’m excited to get to play (for) more people. Share mine, and let people share theirs. I think that’s important. My favorite kind of music has done that for me, makes me feel like someone has really shared their soul more than just an artifice, more than just a fun fantasy. It encourages me to share mine too, whatever my life is.
PETTY: Yeah, absolutely... Are there any other songs you feel have really resonated (with audiences)?
JAMES: There’s so much that I haven’t played yet, but… the song “Gollum,” which is a little bit more tongue-in-cheek about trust issues and whether we repeat the cycle. The chorus is just me being in this persona, looking at your partner and being like, Well you’d never cheat on me and leave me and break me would you? You wouldn’t do what everyone else has done to me, right? People get a real kick out of that one and it’s quite fun.
The other one that I’ve toured so far, the one that’s coming out next, “Thank God for Alicia,” is kind of like my Jeff Buckley-y moment and an ode to my first childhood love. She came into my life right when my dad was leaving my family and it was this crazy moment. Why I called this song “Thank God for Alicia” was because I didn’t realize how important is was that I had her for that time, even though, truly we dated for like two weeks (laughs), but that fraction of her and for as long as I loved her afterwards was this fantastic escape from this total dumpsterfire of my family at the time, and my father abandoning me. I was able to kind of ignore it because of her. It’s an ode to her in that way, and also realizing that I was a kid and I had no idea what was going on in her life, and I didn’t even ask…It’s this great pubescent post-mortem song and it really tickles a lot of people. There’s some fun lines about when we were younger…in one of the verses I’m talking about how she showed me her thong in English class or something. I’ve had people come up to me after shows remembering the silly shit they did in puberty and all of their little horny times that we can laugh about. Those ones I think have reacted well so far, and the other ones I can’t wait to play.
PETTY: What kind of movie do you think your album could be a soundtrack for?
JAMES: I guess it’s a dramedy!... You have silly moments. We have to poke fun at the ridiculousness of it. The failures of our parents are tragic and funny, and us navigating the world is the same. There’s a lot of loss and a lot of pain, but there's also humor. The album is called Children of Divorce, and the songs are generally all focused on the kids, but the last song is, look, your parents are just kids too. They were just kids all along, so as much as we want to be angry, at a certain point we have to just accept that they aren't gods. They never were. Being older doesn't even necessarily turn you into an adult—it just makes you a bit older, and the sooner you can accept that, the sooner you can start to live your own life and unburden yourself from these things. That’s dramedy!
PETTY: What have you been listening to, watching, reading that is giving you life?
JAMES: I’ve been pretty heavy into the Jeff Buckley thing lately. That’s consistent… One of my big influences for my mental health is this old Persian poet named Hafez. He’s what’s called a Sufi, and he writes these poems, or he did back when he was alive, and they’re these really beautiful, often comedic, always very heartwarming poems about God and love. I didn’t grow up with any sort of religion, but Sufism is cool because it’s a very broad and open view of God, at least from how he describes it. So it’s more just like, describing love and God as a universal accepting force, and it's really really refreshing to read these things. It’s a total great anti-anxiety and anti-depressant.
PETTY: What do you hope listeners take away from Children of Divorce?
JAMES: I hope so much to try to give them a sense of what it felt like, and a space to kind of reflect on their own childhoods and their own friendships…
Musically it’s a bit of a journey. It goes through a lot of genres because each song, case by case, story by story, is letting the person’s story and their lives influence what that music might sound like. I hope they get from it that there is a lot of love and care in the music and a lot of honesty in it.
When I listen to a song that I feel is honest, is true, it just gives me an intangible life force or something. It gives me something that regardless of the subject matter, it heals me a little bit. It doesn't feel like it takes anything from me. Does that make sense? I feel like there's some content and things and types of art in this world that take from the person perceiving it. It might feel good in the moment, but really when you walk away from it, you’re like I got nothing out of that. I’m not saying I’m above that. I spent a lot of my time digesting crappy TV for exactly that reason, as a sort of an escape. But an hour or three or four after that, I haven’t refilled my well. So, I hope that even though it’s on a specific subject, I hope that for whoever listens to it, it reaches them in that place where it feels like something honest, and they can feel less alone and a little like they poured something back into the well instead of taking something out of it.