The Chosen Ones

The Chosen Ones is the name Graham Dunne says the band gave Billy Dunne and Daisy Jones. It was not presented as an official title or a name the pair necessarily knew about. Instead, it expressed the group’s sense that the two had an exceptional creative force—one that could produce remarkable work, but required care to keep from flaring into conflict.

A Private Name for a Creative Pair

The phrase follows Rod Reyes’s description of Billy and Daisy together as a small fire: good when controlled, dangerous if fed with kerosene. Rod says Teddy Price worked to keep them calm, while Eddie Loving observes that this effort to manage their sobriety and stability was not extended to him. Against that practical account of unequal attention, Graham’s nickname sounds admiring, but also acknowledges the strain around the pair. Being “chosen” does not mean being easy to live or work with.

The band was recording a backlog of songs written by Billy and Daisy and already discussing what could fit on the album. Graham’s name for them thus belongs to a period when their collaboration had become central to the record’s making. Its suggestion of specialness is grounded in their shared work, rather than in any stated belief that they were literally destined for success.

From Collaboration to Image

The album’s public image gave the partnership a visible form. During the cover shoot, Billy and Daisy stood at opposite ends of the group. The photographer kept shooting as Daisy looked toward Billy, then caught the brief instant when he turned and met her gaze. That eye contact offered a striking image of connection inside a group portrait, though the chosen nickname itself remained the band’s private language.

Another photograph focused on the pair’s torsos rather than their faces. The photographer described the contrast between Billy’s straight-edged silhouette and Daisy’s curves, and noticed an object in her pocket that looked like a vial, while admitting he could not identify it for certain. He read the image as bringing together sex, drugs, summer, and rock ’n’ roll. The photograph’s charged, carefully composed ambiguity shows how the pair’s creative association could become part of the album’s larger mythology without reducing it to a simple story of romance.

Recognition and Its Meaning

The album cover became more than a marketing image. Elaine Chang recalls that, for teenagers in the late 1970s, it was a defining image of Daisy: she appeared confident and in control of her sexuality, rather than posing to please Billy or the viewer. Chang says that this self-possession was why she fell in love with Daisy as a young girl. The image therefore extended the idea of exceptional status beyond the band’s private nickname, while making Daisy’s own agency central to its appeal.

That public recognition continued as the band’s profile grew. Daisy accepted the Grammy for Record of the Year in a disheveled look and a cream silk slip dress, appearing confident and in command of the band and her talent. The account places this moment after she had left Niccolo Argento and describes her as fully in command of herself. The Chosen Ones names the band’s perception of Billy and Daisy’s unusual creative pairing; the later image of Daisy’s public authority also makes clear that her significance cannot be contained by the pair’s shared mythology.