At age 11, she began playing guitar and writing her own songs, performing at the Mariposa Folk Festival and the Fiddlers' Green club in Toronto.
"[3] Lying about her age,[3] at 13 she joined a government-sponsored educational music program, Summer Sounds '71,[3] which auditioned students at various southern Ontario middle and high schools, with the objective of selecting 30 singers, songwriters, musicians and performers who would receive the opportunity to spend the first month north of the city of Toronto at a summer camp.
The students would collaborate creatively, forming small music groups and bands for which they rehearsed and built a full show that toured and performed at various events throughout Ontario for the second month.
The EP featured four songs written and composed by Dalbello: "Mourning In The Morning", "The Old Man", "Come Sun Days" and "Human".
She told Billboard, "I felt there was no point in making records if I hadn't found a sense of how I fitted in musically, and how to express myself.
Dalbello then submitted four self-produced song demos to her U.S. label and manager, only to have them rejected because they wanted a real producer.
[9] To her surprise, her label and manager excitedly called her up saying that they loved the new demos and believed "Bill" was the perfect producer for the project.
However, Dalbello would contribute guest vocals to Hine's "virtual band" project Thinkman, appearing on the title track of their 1986 debut album, The Formula.
However, with the knowledge that Bill Da Salleo was actually Dalbello, her manager began to question the strength of the album's production and commercial viability.
After the album's release, Dalbello ended her contract with Capitol Records and decided to relocate to Los Angeles in 1990.
[3] During her time in L.A., Dalbello spent four years expanding her musical contacts and writing songs for other artists such as Branford Marsalis and Julian Lennon, and co-writing with successful songwriters Carole Bayer Sager, Franne Golde, Bruce Roberts, Holly Knight and Gerald O'Brien.
In addition to having appeared on Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson's solo album Victor, contributing the lead vocal to the song "Start Today", and having recorded duets with Duran Duran's John Taylor and Boz Scaggs ("Miss Sun" from his 1980 album "Hits"), her vocals have appeared on records for Cher, Richard Marx, Heart, Alice Cooper, Patti LaBelle, Toto, Nena (for whom she wrote an entire translation album It's All in the Game) and Canadian artists Rough Trade, Kim Mitchell and Glass Tiger.
Because of her powerful voice and aggressive persona, as well as her career path of starting out as a conventional mainstream dance-pop singer before reinventing herself as an idiosyncratic alternative rock artist, comparisons have been drawn between Dalbello and Alanis Morissette.
"[3] Dalbello credited women rockers such as Chrissie Hynde (of the Pretenders), Annie Lennox (of Eurythmics) and Patti Smith as paving the way for her and others.
Some of the artists and writers she has co-written with are her friends Bryan Adams, Julian Lennon and Ann and Nancy Wilson of Heart, as well as David Foster, Carole Bayer-Sager, Holly Knight, Chaka Khan, Branford Marsalis, Damhnait Doyle and Dan Hill.
Throughout her recording career, Dalbello has been a session vocalist and voiceover artist on TV and radio commercials in North America, for which she now also writes and arranges music.
Her song "Faith in You (With All Your Heart)" was used to promote the launch of the Ford Focus automobile in North America; commercials featuring it played in movie theatres and on television.
[9] In late 2011 Dalbello recorded three 30-second songs, "Every Moment", "Lift You Up", and "Something Good", for The Keg chain of steakhouse restaurants in Canada and the United States.