FEATURE: Spotlight: SOFIA ISELLA — Music Musings & Such

FEATURE:

Spotlight

SOFIA ISELLA

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WITH an illustrious and busy…

string of gigs behind her, a lot of fans have witnessed SOFIA ISELLA in the flesh. ISELLA has supported Taylor Swift in the U.K. She has just completed dates in the U.K. and will no doubt be thinking of a rest and maybe recording new music in soon enough. Her acclaimed new E.P., I Can Be Your Mother, was released on 6th September. It is fantastic! I am fairly new to her work. I am going to get to a couple of relatively recent interviews with SOFIA ISELLA. Describing herself in brief words (“Classically trained violinist. Songwriter, producer. A slut for words. I've never lost a fight with a tiger”), this is an artist that is starting to get a lot of press attention. I really hope that this increases. I want to start off with an interview from last year with Rue Morgue. They asked the then-eighteen-year-old ISELLA about her upcoming single, Everybody Supports Women:

“At only 18 years old, SOFIA ISELLA is already one of her generation’s foremost social critics within the music industry. Her stark, unsettling, dynamic music combines elements of industrial electronic with Sofia’s rich vocals and her experience as a classically trained musician to create an immersive world of her own creation. Influenced by her own observations of the world – as well as her love for dark, sometimes horrific, imagery – Sofia’s lyrics critique sexism, internet addiction, and imagine a future that belongs to the people who have traditionally been excluded from historical narratives. In between festival appearances, Sofia took some time to chat with us here at Rue Morgue about her artistry, her love of the horror genre, and her upcoming single “Everybody Supports Women,” out today.

Hello Sofia! Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with Rue Morgue. To begin, I’d like to give you an opportunity to describe your art to our readers; How would you pitch your music to a new listener?

Howdy. Thanks for having me. Industrial, political, opinionated, very lyrically oriented. Sylvia Plath, Margaret Atwood, Nine Inch Nails, Saya Gray, Beck, Imogen Heap, these are the gods I pray to. And I’m a slut for words. Oh my GOD words. Poetry. All that jazz.

In so many ways, your music explores the horrors of our modern society (“Us and Pigs” is a great example). How do you go about your songwriting process?

Different every time. I chuck some stuff around. Rip the walls off. Shatter the windows. Claw my face off. Usual stuff, I won’t bore you with the details. I like my words, usually, I love starting with them and building the rest of that or starting with production and top lining. But even when I do that, I can also pull words I previously wrote and insert them in. “Us and Pigs” started that way for instance. I was bored free writing by a poolside and out of nowhere I started a new paragraph and wrote the concept for the second verse “pump us full of sperm, put us in a barn, us and pigs on a Mississippi farm,” I reread it, scared myself, and put the phone down. Later on, I was at the piano and I pulled the words from that free write and inserted it into the little waltz I was playing on the piano.

How would you frame your upcoming single, “Everybody Supports Women,” to our readers?

If you’re a woman, and you’ve had even a flicker of success in any aspect or part of your life – and it doesn’t have to be on a major global scale, I mean it could be you were the Most Popular Fucking 5th Grader – you’ll know exactly what the song is talking about. I was once at this concert and the artist was introducing a song they wrote about this GIRL. And this GIRL, they said, was NICE. And SMART AND FUNNY AND TALENTED AND PRETTY. And then they do a dramatic pause AND. SHE does CHARITYYYYYY. And the entire crowd just groaned and screamed. Obviously, the artist was not saying this without seeing the irony, but I thought it was a real and true analysis of how people deal with other people having lives that seem better than our own. I wrote it that night in the dark as soon as I was back from the show.

I know that in addition to being an incredibly talented singer/songwriter, you are also a classically trained violinist and producer. How has your musical background informed your approach to creating dark/alternative pop?

To a certain degree, I’ve had to fight against my classical training. The technique and career of classical music is so intense and if you go down that route, it’s a bit more constrained than I ever naturally was. I was brought up in a conservatory-type institution, where luckily I had a supportive family and main teacher who would help me fight it, but I was always getting in trouble if I moved too much during a performance, or if I wore black pants instead of a black skirt. You know the vibe. But violin is incorporated in EVERYTHING I do musically, from recordings to live shows. Even having to fight certain aspects, I’m still really grateful to have the background in the classical world and it gave me a lot, I’m sure it influences me more than I’m even aware of.

Finally, what does the future look like for SOFIA ISELLA? Anything exciting to tease?

OHHHOHO I’m an excited duck. One excited duck. There’s a certain song that I’m going to be doing after “Everybody Supports Women,” something something and something soon. Something something exciting. Things are getting lined up, getting ready to shoot. Also heading back home to LA soon, currently in the UK doing festivals”.

I want to move to an interview with The Standard. SOFIA ISELLA recalls how it was her mother waking her up and asking if she wanted to support Taylor Swift at Wembley that she discovered the big news. Quite a huge moment! Interviewed prior to the release of I Can Be Your Mother, this is an artist who I think will have the biggest year of her career in 2025. All signs point to her being a worldwide sensation:

“SOFIA ISELLA (she stylises her artistic name in capitals), was born in the US, but has lived in Australia’s Gold Coast since her family were quarantined there during the pandemic for her dad’s job. Writing songs since the age of eight, she’s built her career with low-fi gigs and canny online promotion, and only did her first headline show in London last month at the Camden Assembly, which has a capacity of a few hundred. A classically trained violinist since the age of three, she’s previously supported Tom Odell and Melanie Martinez.

ISELLA has not yet released an album, just a series of singles since 2022, and will only play six songs at Wembley. But all are remarkably accomplished, with pulsating and complex electronic production that’s reminiscent of Billie Eilish. Isella has 500,000 Instagram followers, many of whom leave comments saying how her songs speak to them deeply, and they can’t understand why she’s not better known.

While she’s young, her work has maturity, and an often unsettling intensity: like Swift, Isella feels lyrics are all important. As well as Nine Inch Nails star Trent Reznor and Beck, she credits writers Sylvia Plath and Margaret Atwood among her key influences. One song, Unattractive, has the words: “I wanna pull my face off, it's impulsive”. Another song, Everybody Supports Women, explores the performative nature of social media feminism. “Everybody supports women until a woman's doing better than you,” go the lyrics. “Everybody wants you to love yourself until you actually do.”

ISELLA is one of five young women who are supporting Swift for five gigs this week – they’re all playing before her main support act, Paramore. The young musician, who is kicking off the shows, stands out, partly because all the others are all British: RAYE, Suki Holly Humberstone and Maisie Peters.

Like many of the women, ISELLA is a huge fan of the all-conquering country star. She says Swift’s new album The Tortured Poets Department did “a bunch of numbers” on me, calling it a “f**king hurricane”, with the “the most ribcage squeezing sentences I’ve ever seen on an album”. “Just the prolificacy alone, and not only that but the quality of prolificacy, was so inspiring I could cry,” Isella says passionately.

“I would walk through the day and remember a line and just repeat it over and over at different speeds,” Isella says of the record, which also inspired her to write more. “It gave me that feeling of that’s what we’re all doing it for,” Isella says. “To send shockwaves of that communal inspiration that regurgitates and recycles itself.”

Isella is approaching this gig a little differently to her other ones. “This whole thing is about celebrating Taylor’s legacy,” she says passionately, of her preparation for a stadium crowd. “Just to speak on it on a more physical level, it’s insane. I just get so excited for a challenge, I chomp at the bit... I’ve been going into mode for it since March. I know that Taylor trains for it like an Olympian and that’s the way to do it. She’s a fantastic role model for anyone, both men and women. I look up to her.”

One thing that won’t be different is how much Isella’s family play a role in her music – with her mum actually a part of the live show. “The things I’ll be doing the same though since I used to play gigs at an empty bar or empty malls in Australia, is my family is all a part of it,” she explains. “My mom is running the tracks backstage from empty spaces to Wembley Stadium, my little sister takes my photos, my dad made the intro visuals that I walk out to. They’re the reason I’m still sane… somewhat” she jokes.

For now, Isella can’t wait to get out there. “I can’t speak to why Taylor chooses her openers or what her thought process is because I’ve never talked to her, and I don’t know her personally,” she says. “But she creates an environment of safety in her world, especially in her live music setting, and that kindness and love that she cultivates into her fans makes it less daunting to be walking onto the biggest stage in the world”.

It is a shame that there have not really been any critical reviews for I Can Be Your Mother. Some fans have on message boards, yet there seems to be nothing in the way of a magazine or website offering their thoughts. Regardless. It is an E.P. that everyone should seek out. Speaking with NME earlier this month, SOFIA ISELLA discussed her debut E.P., supporting Taylor Swift and her growing fanbase:

“The artwork for your EP features you with a pregnant belly on your back. What inspired that visual?

“I think visuals are very important. Pregnancy, I was thinking that was the kind of object I wanted to play around with and move. I remember, I was just in the hallway and I was like, ‘it should be in the back. It’s like, pregnant with a career’. Like, there’s two ways to be pregnant and you’re pregnant from the career that you’re growing, pregnant with yourself. That’s kind of where I was feeling with that. I loved the unsettlingness of it.”

On being somewhat unsettling, your sound is often likened to Billie Eilish or Melanie Martinez – how do you feel about comparisons to your alt pop predecessors?

“I love Billie. I remember listening to ‘You Should See Me in a Crown’, and I was crying because I was like, ‘this is so good’. It was such a mind-blowing new thing to see. I love the comparisons that I get. I think that everyone is different, but also, I get comparing [me to other] to people. And I think, really, it’s an incredible compliment.”

“I’ve always been very careful with myself because of how people treat famous people”

Who are some of your dream collaborators?

“I mean, Billie is just one of those iconic people. I love Billie, I love Trent Reznor, I love Ethel Cain. I’m usually a very solo type of creator, but there are some exceptions to that rule where I’m just like, ‘oh, you’re just you’re just phenomenal. You’re just so insane.’

“I love [Cain’s] aesthetic. She’s so good at visuals, and so good at creating a whole world that I think is so important. The sonics of some of her things are just so haunting. I listen to them on night drives, and it’s just a crazy, very unique sonic and whole world she’s got going on.”

The content you do share with fans on YouTube and TikTok is often done in short bursts. Is that done consciously, in light of your relationship to social media?

“This is kind of a topic I’ve never really talked about. I’ve always been very careful with myself, [because of] how people treat famous people, and just me wanting to be at an arm’s length. There’s two aspects of this. One, trying to hold onto my own sanity and my own self, and at the same time, giving them – especially the hardcore people – more.

“I have this private Instagram account, and that’s for people who ever find it, so they have things earlier. They have a snippet of a song, they always see the artwork before anyone else does and we have our own little inside jokes. And it’s a great community. But I also like keeping parts of myself that might not necessarily need to be [out there, private]”.

I will end it there. A rising artist that you really need to know about, SOFIA ISELLA has enjoyed a memorable year. Supporting Taylor Swift, touring through cities and towns and releasing her debut E.P., things will get even better for the Los Angeles-raised superstar. A wonderful artist that I have really got into over the past few weeks, 2024 has very much been…