FEATURE:
Spotlight
Isabel LaRosa
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HAVING just completed…
some great shows in Australia, she is looking forward to a date in India and then back in the U.S. Isabel LaRosa released the E.P., favourite, last year. I think this year is going to be a big one for LaRosa. She is an inspiring Cuban-American artist who rose to public prominence after her 2022 single, i’m yours, went viral on social media. A big success on TikTok. I want to bring in four interviews that show different sides to Isabel LaRosa. A lot of eyes are trained her way. I will start out with CLASH and their interview from October. They spotlighted an artist who was trying to build a world that people could get lost in:
“Isabel LaRosa – whose dark-pop first blew up on TikTok in 2022 – writes and directs all her music videos. They take place in cars on empty roads lined with ominous woods, at house parties, or on silent, dark suburban streets whose quiet flatness you dream to escape from, but romanticise when you do. “We film almost all my videos in Atlanta or upstate New York because I’m like, this needs to look like where I’m from, and it has to have the east coast woods,” LaRosa laughs. “I was home-schooled for a really long time, and I was the weird, outdoors-y kid, like I would literally sit in trees all day, writing really cryptic stories.”
LaRosa, who turned 20 in September, has been performing since childhood, when her saxophonist father would take her and her brother, Thomas, to “jams and open mic nights”, where she’d sing jazz standards while Thomas played guitar: “I’m very grateful for all the experience I had performing because now it doesn’t feel like a foreign thing.”
But she kind of laughs when she thinks back to those wholesome moments. These days, her show is bathed in blood red light – very Carrie – and spiky with white strobing. Her name fills the wall behind her in an Akira-style font with the final ‘A’ forming an inverted crucifix. It’s just her, a backing track, and Thomas, his guitar riffs slicing through the synths. On record, she has a sensual falsetto but, live, the duo toe the line of a rock show, upping the pace and letting LaRosa dig into her lower vocal register.
Before her 2022 breakthrough track, ‘I’m yours’ (currently sitting on 426 million Spotify streams), LaRosa had released a handful of singles. Some, like ‘Therapy’ and ’16 Candles’, contain faint echoes of the yearning that would become one of her hallmarks, but, for the most part, she was simply experimenting.
“With ‘16 Candles’ and ‘Game Boy’, I was really trying to find the lane that felt right and I didn’t know what it was yet. Then I wrote a song called ‘HAUNTED’ and that matched the vision in my head of what I wanted my visuals to be like. Dark. Moody. That was where it clicked for me.”
Much of LaRosa’s music is built around dreamy choruses that soar, cathedral-like, and evoke the mind-altering, stomach-knotting desire that one feels only a few times in life. It’s no surprise then that her viral tracks – ‘older’, ‘favorite’, ‘i’m yours’ – are beloved of fan editors on TikTok, who use them as soundtracks for artful and incredibly thirsty montages of their favourite singers and actors.
LaRosa laughs. She’s seen plenty of them over the years. “I want my music to feel like it could be in a movie, and that you’re the main character. That’s what I like listening to, you know, it’s the most fun thing. When I lived in my hometown, I’d bike at 3am around the city and blare music in my ears. You want something that makes you feel cinematic.”
This is why her videos are miniature movies and why, for a brief moment (“One month, when I was fifteen,” she laughs), LaRosa considered changing careers from music to film. She created a visual trilogy for ‘HAUNTED’, ‘HELP’ and ‘HEAVEN’, and plugged into her love of horror in “older” where she’s not alone in her secret crush on a teacher as her schoolmates vie for his attention.
“Everyone has [probably] had a crush on a teacher at some point, but I wanted to play on the simplicity of that with a plot twist. In middle school – the worst time to go to school – girl relationships during that time are so insane. It’s brutal. I didn’t go to school for a long time for a reason. I had best friends that hated me. I wanted some relatability [in that video] where she’s your friend but there’s this intense competition under the surface, I feel like a lot of girls can relate to that.”
When meeting LaRosa in the big, shiny London headquarters of her label, she jumps out of her chair, all smiles. She asks each person how their day is going. For someone with over 1.5 billion Spotify streams on a handful of songs, LaRosa is solidly down to earth, but LaRosa doesn’t feel much like a famous person. TikTok’s creation of monster hits is effective but it often comes with a facelessness that makes it increasingly harder for artists to gain traction long-term.
“I always thought if you have a big song, you’ll be more of a celebrity but it doesn’t work like that now. There can be such a disconnect. It takes so much time to build awareness of who you are and your visual world. I just have to remind myself that this is a long game and I’m not doing it for that. The faster you go up, the faster you can go down,” she says. “So I’m trying to slowly build a world that people can get lost in. I want to have a very strong artist image and persona so that it’s easy to understand what that world is besides the music”.
PHOTO CREDIT: Sam Monendo
I am going to move to DIY. Their interview with Isabel LaRosa shone a light on her Muse single. Another wonderful song from an artist who is showing that she could be a huge mainstream artist of the future. Surely someone who is going to be headlining festivals stages soon enough. She is going to go a very long way:
“Her ethereal, infatuated new single ‘Muse’ – teased for ten months before its release – did in fact ‘do numbers’. Videos using the track’s snarling riff racked up hundreds of thousands of views, including one sharing photos of LaRosa at this year’s VMAs. That night was her first time on a red carpet; an exciting but daunting early career highlight. “I feel like, in moments like that, my brain shuts off,” she says. “I’ll get off the carpet and I don’t remember anything that just happened.” She did at least remember not to smile (“The most off-brand thing ever”), and came away determined to return as a performer. “It’s cool to have those moments where you’re like, ‘Oh shit, I’m at the VMAs right now!’” she grins. “It’s very inspiring.”
The 20-year-old from Annapolis, Maryland may have mastered the non-smiling, effortless cool girl look online, but behind the spiked boots and sparkly eyeshadow there’s a palpable anxiety about making the most of her ascent. “It sounds grim, but I try to operate like I may never have another song again,” she explains. “I’m always trying to just keep people interested and entertained, while also maintaining what I want to do.”
Away from the internet, she’s currently seeing a far more tangible version of her fanbase in the sold-out rooms of her ‘Heaven Doesn’t Wait’ tour. Last month, she played London’s Heaven: a bucket list gig since she saw Tate McRae perform there last December. But even with her audience physically in front of her, LaRosa feels the same urgency to keep them onside that she does online. Once they start cheering, she needs to make sure they don’t stop.
“I think I have to learn how to relax onstage,” she admits. Last month she shared a bill with McRae and others at the Prudential Center Arena in New Jersey, but the Heaven headliner was still the more nerve-inducing. “It’s less pressure when I’m like, ‘They’re here for Tate McRae, they’re not here for me!” she says. “Sometimes I think, ‘Damn, why do you guys care? I wouldn’t care this much if I were you’. I don’t know what the phrase is… is it imposter syndrome?”
It’s no surprise that life can feel overwhelming for LaRosa given how much her platform has grown in the last few years. She credits the people around her with helping her stay grounded, particularly her brother. Their ‘alternative younger sister, producer older brother’ dynamic has already prompted countless comparisons to Billie Eilish and Finneas; “Oh my God – literally, I can’t escape it!” she laughs. “Sound-wise I feel pretty different from [Billie], but in terms of who I look up to as an artist – and Finneas as a producer and writer – I absolutely am such a huge fan of them.”
Like the O’Connells, the LaRosas were encouraged to pursue music by their parents, armed with jazz standards and taken to open mic nights by their father. When Isabel turned ten, access to YouTube allowed her to expand her musical horizons to the likes of Melanie Martinez, Ariana Grande and The Neighbourhood, leading to her love of alt-leaning pop. “All my stuff is pop hidden with cool production,” she suggests. “They’re all just pop songs — it’s not that alternative.” She did have a few dead-ends on the path to her current sound, which finally “clicked” in 2022 with the eerie, thumping ‘HAUNTED’. She admits she tries not to think about ‘GAMEBOY’, for instance: a bouncing hyperpop track from 2021. “I think it’s a cool song,” she clarifies. “It’s just SO different from what I do now. But I’m very grateful for any step that helped me find what feels like myself”.
A couple more interviews before wrapping up. I am moving to 1883 and their interesting discussion. Isabel LaRosa discussed keeping the momentum going, a big European tour on the horizon and the packed schedule awaiting her. I am new to her music but am really hooked. An artist with her own sound yet one that can translate and cross genres:
“Your music has a very cinematic, darker pop vibe. How did you first get into music, and why did you choose this particular genre?
I’ve always been around music. My dad is a casual jazz musician, and he was big on teaching us jazz standards when we were little. My brother Thomas and I used to jam with him when I was about seven — Thomas on guitar and me singing. But as I got older, I discovered artists like The Neighbourhood, Lady Gaga, and Melanie Martinez on YouTube, and I was hooked on that darker, alternative pop sound. It just felt like home to me, more so than bubblegum pop, even though I’m a huge fan of that genre too. It’s just not what I feel aligns with my own style.
You’ve said in another interview that some shows like Euphoria and Stranger Things inspired the sound and visuals for other songs. What’s the specific influence that comes to you from these shows?
In terms of visuals and shows, they’ve always been something closely intertwined with the music — Euphoria, True Detective are darker shows. There was a second when I was in high school when I was debating on just going into film and directing. Obviously that didn’t happen, but my goal is to make sure my music feels grand and cinematic. That’s the kind of music that I love.
As a Cuban-American, has your heritage influenced your music in any way?
I grew up surrounded by Cuban music, especially salsa, which is such a huge part of my childhood and my life. I’ve always wanted to do something that felt more Latin but I wanted to find a way to incorporate it in a natural way into my sound because my music and traditional salsa are very different. My brother and I are still exploring how to do that in a way that feels authentic to both of us.
Your recent songs — “favorite“, “pretty boy“, “i’m yours“ — have gained a lot of traction on social media, especially TikTok. Do you feel any pressure to keep that momentum going?
Definitely. The great thing about social media and TikTok is that, honestly, I wouldn’t have my career without it. It’s given me so many opportunities, and it’s amazing how quickly things can go viral. You could have something blow up overnight, and suddenly it’s a number-one hit—all from just one video. But the flip side is that everything moves so fast, and you’re always trying to keep that momentum, which can get a little stressful. Still, I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I’m so grateful for the platform and the career it’s helped me build.
Fans have been dying for you to release more music, especially songs like Muse and Home which you teased during your tour. And “Evil,“ which you said you wrote for the Wednesday TV show. What can you tell us about them?
See, I love lying on TikTok because I didn’t even write that song for Wednesday. But hey, maybe they’ll see it and actually want to use it, then it could become real! I’m also releasing a new track called Muse, which everyone’s been asking for a while now, and I’m excited to finally get it out there. I do feel a bit bad it took so long, but it’s happening. As for Home, it’s definitely coming out — just not sure when yet, but it’s on the way. All these songs I’ve teased will come out; it’s just a matter of timing.
Since it’s titled Muse, who’s the inspiration behind it? Are you your own muse or is there a different one we don’t know about?
I definitely have a muse who’s inspired the song. He inspires a lot of my songs and my fans know who he is. He’s an artist, so we write songs about each other and it’s great”.
I will end with an interview from Women in Pop. She talked about how she has always been attracted to alternative sounds and sides but is a Pop girl at heart. I am really keen to see what comes next. I think that the rest of this year will see Isabel LaRosa go from strength to strength. This is an artist that you need to keep an eye out for:
“The themes that you explore, both in your music and also visually in the gorgeous music videos you create, is love, but it is a shift on love. You sing about obsession, but from various angles, which I find really interesting, and feeling stuck and having so much time to pour into certain emotions. Are you writing predominantly a from personal experience, or does this all just come from a world you have created?
Honestly, most of it is based on my own life. There are certain songs that I've written from a less honest place, and I can just tell, it's more obvious to me. Me and my brother write everything together, and we tend to write the best stuff when it's closer to home. So honestly, yes, the vast majority of stuff is, my own experiences, and talking about those.
Beautiful, and because you're writing them with someone that knows you so well, you can catch each other up.
Seriously, it's funny because we'll be writing about maybe a situation that's happening in my life, and he'll be writing lyrics too, and it sounds like I would have written them because he knows me and my life so well. I'm so lucky to be able to work with somebody that like, he’s my best friend and we get the best product when we write together. It's just fun, I love it.
I do love that you have this bold and dark pop. I don't like genre because I don't think it's really a thing so much anymore, but you definitely have a signature sound. I'm curious how you feel your sound is evolving as you're navigating this industry, particularly with the single from last year ‘muse’?
The hope is that the sound is always evolving. I feel like it's definitely changed, and the goal has changed since ‘I'm Yours’. Oftentimes we're trying to capture a similar feeling, but just in a different way, but I feel like ‘muse’ is so different feel wise than an ‘I'm Yours’. It’s also fun to incorporate sounds that feel more fitting to our live show, because our live shows are more intense than you think that it would be based on songs like ‘I'm Yours’. So I feel like having songs like ‘muse’ in there is really fun because it adds to the live show when we do play. But honestly, it's just experimenting and always continuing to move forward. It's never good when you're trying to do the same thing over and over and over again, I just like switching it up.
Absolutely, I believe that the world of listeners are much more they're much kinder than my generation were to artists switching it up. They allow room for a shift in sound.
Yeah, it's so interesting. I feel like now the playing field is so even because it's all social media, and so many different things are doing well at the same time. It’s not like there's one sound right now that’s ‘the thing’. It's not like early 2000s pop and that's it. Everything is massive, and I think it's really cool to see.
Speaking of which, your music gives a nod to the darker tinges of beautiful moments. Pulling apart beautiful things and seeing the gray, seeing the bad and the good equally. Was this also present in the kind of music that you listened to and that got you into music in the first place? Music that was a little off kilter?
Yeah, totally. I grew up on a lot of different things, I grew up on a lot of salsa - oddly enough! - and classic rock, because that's what my mom listened to. I also grew up singing jazz standards because that's what my dad listened to. But once I started to get older and was able to understand how to work YouTube, the artists that I gravitated towards were Melanie Martinez, The Neighbourhood, Arctic Monkeys, early Lady Gaga. I've always naturally felt attracted to the alternative, but I still love the songwriting of pop. I love it and I'm a pop girl at my core, but I also love when it has off kilter elements to it too.
Gorgeous. And again, it's the drama. You mentioned your live shows, and you must be absolutely loving it, because they seem to be, just from a viewer's perspective, incredibly physically demanding on you as well, like you really hurl yourself around that stage!
I really do! By the end of it, I'm like, I'm going to pass out. But they’re so much fun. I definitely do a lot of running and a lot of jumping and moving around. I am also such a massive fan of 21 Pilots and I grew up wanting to put on a show like they do, because they were always so high energy and I always admired the fact that it was only two people on stage, and they still put on that intensive show. And I was like, ‘I want to do that’. So it's just [my brother] Thomas and I on stage, and hopefully it's energetic enough. I gotta take up the amount of stage space that a band would take up, so I have to run around”.
If you have not discovered Isabel LaRosa then make sure you follow her on social media. With such a tremendous sound that has won hearts and minds around the world, you will want to check this artist out. There is no telling just how far LaRosa will go. In a competitive Pop market, she has the promise and talent to mix with the very best and brightest. Make sure you do not overlook…
A future icon.
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