The esoteric inspiration for Isabella Lovestory’s latest record, “Vanity,” comes from an unlikely source: the folkloric vampire.
“I feel like I am the vampire,” she said between bites of tajadas, or fried plantains, inside the Rincon Hondureño restaurant in Los Angeles. “And I’m chasing a beautiful woman, which is me.”
Legend has it that vampires can’t see themselves in the mirror, so they remain unaware of their own image; as a result of that constraint, they spend their entire lives in pursuit of beauty. This “fantastical, mythical” creature is something of an obsession for the Honduran experimental pop artist, and this trope is subliminally captured throughout the 13 tracks on “Vanity,” which drops June 27.
“Vanity” is Isabella’s second full-length record in three years, following her grimy, neoperreo debut, “Amor Hardcore.” But that record operated with textures best found in dark basements and sweaty alleyways; this one is brighter, crafted from a mood board of mid-2000s club hits and John Waters movies. Four-on-the-floor 808 beats give way to booming tresillo rhythms, and at times, on songs like “Bling,” Isabella poses the question: What if “The Fame”-era Lady Gaga was Latina? It’s equal parts electroclash and reggaeton, a post-genre blend that sounds beamed in from a dystopian future.
“It’s like a poisonous lollipop,” she said. “I’m always interested in contrast and tension, and I never want to be just one thing. I always wanna have that contrast.”
It’s also deeply descriptive, with a fitting focus on the self’s visage. On the title track, Isabella likens herself to “una botella de perfume / un objeto hecho de espuma,” that is also a “fantasía que no puedo controlar.” Other songs, like the phonk music-adjacent “Perfecta” and “Gorgeous,” speak of being perfect like a mannequin and “elegante como una esmeralda andante.” The lyrics are ripped out of a dream journal, conjured from evocative memories of love and lust.
By all accounts, Isabella Lovestory, born Isabella Rodríguez Rivera, is her own self-sustaining pop star. Born in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, she immigrated to the United States as a teen, attending high school in Virginia before relocating to Montreal at 17. It gives her music a worldly quality, reflected in multilingual tracks like “Eurotrash,” which Rivera sings in English, Spanish and French.
This, along with her practice-based arts education, injects a punk ethos into her artistry and makes her — in her words — “scrappy as hell.”
When I asked Rivera what she is responsible for in her camp, she laughed and said, “Everything.” That includes all image-related facets of her artistry, from making her album artwork to editing her videos.
And in that lies another interesting tension: the idea of self-sustaining pop celebrity, straddling these two worlds of DIY inventiveness and image-heavy exposure. It’s something she likens, at multiple points, to performance art, this idea of projecting forward someone you’re not.
“Isabella Lovestory is a very complex persona,” Rivera said. “I think it’s more like an expression of my inner world … like I have a little projector and Isabella Lovestory’s a hologram of what goes on inside my heart.”
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
The storytelling on your albums is immersive. How do you feel like “Vanity” is expanding the Isabella Lovestory cinematic universe? For this one, I’m showing a more vulnerable side and a softer side that I haven’t shown before. The last record, “Amor Hardcore,” was more reggaeton, and I was experimenting with what I could do with that sound. It had a more old-school vibe, I was like a rebellious-teenager-badass-b—. And this one, I’m still a badass b—. [Laughs] But I think I’m showing more of my sweeter side, my more vulnerable, dreamier side. It’s more of a very deep look into the mirror.
Is that the thesis statement for the record?I think so. It’s kinda like “Alice in Wonderland” in that way. Where you fall into a rabbit hole, and you enter a mirror, and there’s no way out. It’s psychedelic. You have different layers and different sounds, but it’s all part of one tunnel.
Is that what you’re trying to say about the concept of vanity? That it’s a rabbit hole? Exactly. I think it’s a never-ending evil cycle, but it’s also very beautiful. Sins are part of our experience as people in this world. I’m ridiculing it in a way, where I let it take over me, but I also take it over.
Being a pop star is so new to me, you know? I became a public person, and having my face be my tool and my money maker is crazy to me. It’s me dealing with that: the darkness of beauty and the darkness of a saturated world of images that we have to constantly deal with.
What’s on the mood board for “Vanity”? What were you listening to and thinking about? I was also watching a lot of Fellini, John Waters and Old Hollywood movies. I love absurd humor and the absurdity in gluttony and beauty, making fun of the stereotypes that we live in. This is what I’m doing with my project. I’m really into fairy tales, but twisted ones, like [in the movie] “Donkey Skin.” It’s absurd, very dark, but it looks so shiny and colorful and so childlike.
I felt the fairy tale in “Fresa Metal.” That song starts with this thunderstorm soundscape, and then you have a “Dracula”-esque synthesizer come in. It feels like you’re setting up a damsel-in-distress narrative. “Fresa Metal” was inspired by this dream I had, where there was this record label building. And this pop star that was working at the label. But the building was built on an underground basement where vampires lived, and then they capture the pop star, and they kidnap her and make her work underground.
I’m not a very logical person, I always failed [at] math, so I just think in images all the time. My ultimate goal is to be a director. When I started making music, it was so exciting to me because I could make my cover art, I could direct my own videos. I could do all my costumes. Ultimately, I want to make a movie, and then do the score, and then star in it.
Do you feel like you were treading new sonic ground on “Vanity” or just expanding upon what you were doing on “Amor Hardcore”?It’s definitely going into new territories. I was scared to show softer sides, because people love aggression; it’s what’s popping right now. Like Charli [XCX] or Nettspend, it’s just really, really loud. So I was scared of doing something that’s different. But at the same time, it challenged me to go deeper. I love it to be really colorful in anything I do, and also for it to feel like a roller coaster, which is what I love about K-pop.
Something I find interesting about your projects is that they all have intro tracks. What is the importance of an intro track to you? It’s an ode to that tradition in old-school reggaeton. The intro track is pure experimentation, because you can have freedom in doing something that stands alone and is not necessarily a track. You can just give the album that cherry on top.
When I listen to old-school reggaeton albums, they had so much fun because it was such a new genre back then. Especially in the early 2000s. They had that rawness of doing something for fun, and a lot of curiosity. They didn’t have rules on how to make something.
I can see that. “Vanity Intro” has this sonic palette where you’re setting up a classic pop record, and then a reggaeton beat comes into the back half, directly smacking things together.Like, you hear [sound effects like] a perfume bottle. You hear a car screeching. It allows you to have a little mini-movie in your head, which is something super important to me in all the songs: for everybody to create their own little dreamscape of what’s happening.
In “Eurotrash,” you use multiple voices and singing styles. How do you approach your vocals? On this song in particular, there’s both this seductive whisper and this exaggerated, bimbo breathiness. What I love about old-school reggaeton, again, is they always had these duos: [one with] the raspier, more masculine voice, and [the other with] the high-pitched singing voice. I love to create different characters in a song, and I love contrast in every single way.
You’ve crafted a unique place for yourself in both pop and Latin music. Do you feel like you have contemporaries or imitators?The curse of doing something for the first time, or doing something you don’t see happening, is that people will take those very authentic aspects of the underground and curate them with a creative team to make them mainstream years later.
Especially as a Honduran immigrant, I feel like there’s a lot of erasure. There’s not a lot of Honduran people doing stuff, because it’s a f— corrupt government in Honduras, and people suffer, the art suffers. There’s beautiful talent, there’s beautiful music, it’s a beautiful country. But I think in moving around so much, I never really had a place where I felt supported by a community in that way.
I created my own community myself through the internet, or becoming friends with the outcasts and the underground. It’s like a blessing and a curse, you know? But it is my life, and I think I’ll always be the underground, quirked-up shawty for sure.
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