On ‘Vanity’, Isabella Lovestory confronts the twisted nature of beauty standards

A full moon is rising. Stirring a pink paloma rimmed with Tajín seasoning, genre-bending pop polymath Isabella Lovestory begins to cast her spell. A snake tattoo slithers across her curated body of artwork as we bond over star signs and a mutual love of each other's ink at a Latin-owned audiophile haunt in Brixton, The Shrub & Shutter.

"Do you believe in ghosts? I've seen a few," she grins, and we riff on the parallels between the paranormal and personal perception. After all, both are illusions that are haunted by a longing to freeze time and a desire to be forever seen. Hauntology, much like vanity, is a nostalgia for lost futures—a way the past shapes the present—and it runs like a current coursing through Isabella's aesthetic.

As we clink cocktails, something wicked this way comes. 'Vanity', Isabella's sophomore album, is being pressed to wax. She's gearing up for a packed summer of festivals, from Barcelona's Primavera to Brooklyn's LadyLand at Under the K Bridge, ready to transfix eardrums worldwide with her most sonically realised and stylistically ambitious project yet.

"I've been working on 'Vanity' for three years. When I first started making music, I had it all mapped out in my head. I knew exactly what I needed to do and the kind of music that would get attention. But with 'Vanity', I wanted to show my full range. I wanted to share the music I truly love, what I grew up listening to, and push the boundaries of art and expression."

Isabella Lovestory is a maximalist of mediums. She develops the creative direction for her visual elements, designs her own tour costumes and crafts music with a cinematic obsession. She possesses the prowess to tear apart any stage with sweat-soaked choreography that echoes Christina Aguilera's 'Dirrty' era, then drops vocal hooks like a Neoperreo popstar rewriting the reggaeton rulebook with unapologetic Ivy Queen-level confidence.

Since 2018, she's evolved from a bedroom SoundCloud producer making music for her cat to grabbing the mic at her own New York gallery shows and supporting the likes of Pitbull and Tommy Genesis. Her self-released debut, 'Amor Hardcore', was critically hyped and launched her onto a global trajectory, touring internationally for a growing cult fanbase, writing for K-pop girl group LE SSERAFIM, and securing features with Shygirl and DJ Python. Most recently, she's caught the attention of Death Grips, running into the Sacramento experimental hip hop outfit and discussing collaborating.

Behind jet-black waves, Isabella's eyes sparkle like obsidian crystal. "'Vanity' sounds like a robotic funeral," she says. "It has a metallic, analogue vibe. It's Ghost in the Shell meets punk-pop, reggaeton with an ultra-feminine edge."

The overarching theme of 'Vanity' delves into the fragility of beauty. Spanning the grotesque and the glamorous, from sexually liberated, empowered personas to animated alter egos. "This album is shiny yet rusty, fancy yet trashy, like ancient encrusted diamonds," Isabella winks. "It's about the indestructible essence of beauty and also how easily a mirror shatters. I don't mind when things break. I like collecting the pieces and making something new."

The concept of "vanity" is classically symbolised by a mirror—a portal for self-reflection, a gateway to narcissism or where ghosts might emerge through the cracks. Looking within can be enchanting, but it can also scare the shit out of you — that's exactly what happened on Isabella's 30th birthday.

"The title-track off this project is the most personal and emotional song for me. I got so hyper fixated with beauty last year that it became the theme," she confesses. "I turned 30, and instead of celebrating this sort of 'milestone' and feeling like a beautiful woman, I got cystic acne, and I got a really bad perm. I felt the exact opposite. I became obsessed with having control over my appearance and my life in every single way."

"There's a dark side to beauty. A dark side that can literally kill you as a female performer—the pressure to be beautiful, to be perfect, to constantly question what the fuck that even means or looks like."

Not only that, Isabella started writing 'Vanity' after her first major headline tour and one of the hardest lessons she's ever learned. "I had designed, sewn, and made all 10 of my costumes for the 27-date tour. The day before our first show, they were all stolen. All my shit was gone. I had nothing to wear," she reveals.

"I learned super fast and the hard way about how to embrace this loss of power and material things. I couldn't rely on anything external. That sorta 'ego death' didn't just inspire 'Vanity', but it forced me to really look in the mirror and be myself. To reclaim autonomy and know that I could perform naked and still feel like me."

"The deeper I dug into it, I decided—if vanity's gonna rule me or loom over me in any way, then I'm gonna take hold of it and embrace it! Instead of it being my saboteur, I'll make it my superpower."

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With a snap of her fingers, Isabella and her creative team conjured Vanity—an animated sidekick persona inspired by Lizzie McGuire to visually represent her new outlook. "I decided, 'Bitch, I'm gonna make you a little vampire cartoon. A devil. A goddess that sits on my shoulder!"

Over crystalline '80s electro keys, Isabella kicks off her perspective shift with the opening invocation "Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?" she moans. "Isabella Lovestory, baby!" as her forthcoming album erupts in a climax of exploding glass.

"I didn't know I would become a popstar. I never thought I would be a singer. But I was an artist from the day I was born."

Isabella Rodríguez Rivera, AKA Isabella Lovestory, is a child of post-punk. Born to a Honduran radio DJ father who managed underground rock bands in Tegucigalpa and a rebellious architect mother.

"Music and resistance was in my blood. My parents were the black sheep of the family. They listened to The Cure, The Smiths, new wave, electro-pop, and alternative rock, which are all big influences for me." Isabella reflects. "My dad encouraged me to write poems. He had a huge impact on me by taking me to shows when I was super young and introducing me to new music; he still does."

As Isabella's music knowledge and her creative skill set grew, so did a palpable drive to carve out her own path.

"I was always an outcast. I was never the popular girl. I was always drawing, in dance classes and highly imaginative. But when I wasn't running around the mountains like a fairy or in my mirror wanting to be Britney Spears, I was a "crazy" ADHD kid, who was not fit for the school system. I got into trouble and fights. I was either in detention, suspended or getting kicked out."

Violent crime was rising across the city. When Isabella was 13, she and her mother survived a shooting. Soon after, her mum sacrificed her career for the family's safety and took a job as a secretary at the Honduran embassy in Virginia.

"Honduras was becoming more and more dangerous, but I hated Virginia. It was a culture shock. I went from the most beautiful mango and lemon trees to this very ratchet public school where I was an immigrant. Those were really formative years. I became an internet nerd. I got super into Tumblr, met all my friends on there, discovered so much music. I got into Sonic Youth, alt '90s bands like Garbage and reggaeton OGs like Jowell & Randy. I created my own little world online, watching movies every day."

She moved to Montreal at 17, after a coup d'état back in Honduras threatened her mum's job. "Any friend group I made was always being ripped apart. I didn't have any more time to 'belong' anywhere, but Montreal actually had a 'scene' and I quickly became a part of it. I became more artsy and more of a hipster."

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Isabella went to university to study fine arts, dropped out but unknowingly unearthed her future in music as a result. "Because of the internet, I'd made a lot of friends in the art world. I was a drawing teacher for cute kids at one point. My paintings and sculptures made it to shows in New York that I sung at and DJed at. But I felt like, realistically, I was never going to make money off of being an art school kid."

Isabella blushes about her epiphany 'Maybe that's the first time "Vanity" whispered in my ear, from my shoulder, but it hit me.." she explains "I was in a multimedia class. I was editing, making music videos, doing creative direction, I loved fashion, writing songs. Also, I was hot, I wasn't getting any younger. So I decided to make an art project where I combined all of my mediums into one thing: a pop star! And that's how it all started."

Isabella's first song in the SoundCloud ether is entitled 'gati lindo precious' a honeyed Latin trap track laced with meow samples that was written for her cat.

"I put 'gati lindo precious' on YouTube, was downloading beats from there and singing into a shitty microphone. I was seeing a lot of what was going on in the underground reggaeton scene too and it felt like it was really a lacking how experimental the old school genre was. I also met my longtime, collaborator and producer Chicken who was a club kid and in the art world."  

Isabella continued bending genres and crafting her own blend of perreo pop with Chicken and other producers like Club Eat, Ddumloop and her boyfriend, Chilean experimental reggaeton producer Kamixlo. She released DJ mixes and tracks on SoundCloud, which eventually evolved into her debut mixtape 'Juguete' in 2018—a lo-fi, '80s-inspired project. She followed it with back-to-back EPs, 'Humo' (2019) and 'Mariposa' (2020), which saw her gain traction, flip the male-dominated, "machista" narrative of reggaeton and make a pulsating metamorphosis into her Lovestory persona.

'Mariposa' is a surrealist fever dream soaked in sass. On 'Kitten Heels', Isabella purrs about her tiny stilettos (which she struts into the shower wearing in the video before blasting them with a hair dryer) and drinking whiskey and cola. On 'Golosa', a horny club anthem,  she teases about her butterfly tattoo and flying to Paris to have sex in a jacuzzi.

"I didn't have a pre-mediated set of rules to make music. I wanted to have fun through this new character. I wanted to express myself and embrace my sexuality." Isabella proudly states, "I never cater to men. Reggaeton is classically catered for men, by men, to men. It's this outdated machista narrative that I wasn't going to be a part of. Instead, I wanted to give it my own twist that was hyper feminine."

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While Daddy Yankee made $50 million dollars on 'Gasolina' and is rumoured to have sold a portion of his catalogue in 2024 for a cool $217 million, the distinctive female vocalists that provided the moans and adlibs for it like Jenny "La Sexy Voz" not only went uncredited but were uncompenstaed and without royalties. Numerous other women in reggaeton like Glory "La Gata Gangster" and a long list of others were subject to the same.

"So many incredibly talented and iconic women weren't credited. That's why I wrote 'Gateo' with Ms Nina, a key figure in the feminist reggaeton and neoperreo movement. I wanted to make a song with feline energy that mocked men. Mocking what society views as degrading to women is fun—because nobody gets to decide what a woman's true desires are."

'Gateo' is just one of many feverish singles on Isabella Lovestory's breakout LP 'Amor Hardcore', where she sharpens her claws on braggadocious hooks—swapping out doggystyle and twerking for flirtatious, cat-like crawling. She boasts about taking your girl, stashing a gun between her tits, or the thrill of having sex while the neighbours watch on 'Exhibicionista', produced by Miami-hailing producer DJ Nick León who contributed to a string of other 'Amor Hardcore' dancefloor heaters.

Beyond the raunchy lyrics, 'Amor Hardcore' was a salacious first taste of the eclectic sonic palette Isabella was serving. Electric guitar riffs melts into off-kilter perreo, Dominican dembow from vocalist Chucky73 collides with chopped-up samples from 2000s Puerto Rican reggaeton pioneers Voltio and Calle 13's 'Chulin Culin Chunfly'. Rumour has it that there was an experimental shoegaze track with live drums that didn't make the cut.

"I don't have an agenda. It all just comes naturally because I'm a bad bitch” Isabella declares.

Isabella's confidence, like her dynamic dexterity as both an artist and a cinephile, is next-level. Visual references are a constant source of inspiration for her lyrics and aesthetic. "I like to think of my albums like hotels or rooms in a mansion. Each song is on a different floor. The intro is the lobby. Maybe every floor or every track is its own movie? The last song is the rooftop, where you end up partying. An elevator opens, and you look at the stars. Then, it loops from sunrise to sunset. "

At the mention of film, Isabella electrifies. She riffs on her dream of becoming a director one day, reeling off praise for provocative French filmmaker Catherine Breillat and the Japanese revenge horror Audition—a visceral examination of misogyny, feminism, and, ultimately, emasculation.

She excitedly whips out her phone to show stills from her upcoming music video for 'Vanity', which she's just shot in Paris on film. "It was so much pressure. I had no idea we were shooting it on film. I had to rehearse each shot five times because every minute is like €500! It's crazy. But it was so cool. I loved it."

True to her artistic allure, heritage, and themes, Isabella Lovestory made headlines with the camp, sci-fi, body-horror video for 'Telenovela' (inspired by Mexican melodramas) which followed a string of "more is more" bangers like 'Botoxxx', 'VIP', 'Putita Boutique', 'Eurotrash' and 'Gorgeous'.

Nothing is off-limits. Isabella redefines reggaeton and summons future nostalgia, swerving through early-'00s R&B and violins, then bouncing on percussive funk, melancholic synths, new wave, and goth electronica with a Y2K lick.

Isabella's multifaceted talent has also been exemplified by her writing music for K-[op act SSERAFIM. "I don't know how I manifested that, but I'm obsessed with K-pop. The production is so experimental to me. The way they exploit every minute and collide so many influences; the songs are like Frankenstein." Isabella radiates: "They direct e-mailed me and were like,' Can you write over this beat?' for their song 'ANTIFRAGILE'. It had this Neoperreo style; it was a dream come true. I literally sang into a shitty microphone I bought off Amazon, sent it to them, and it went to Number One in South Korea."

Fast forward to the present, and Isabella Lovestory has recently jumped on features with PinkPantheress and Shygirl on the single 'True Religion' and DJ Python on 'Besos Robados' from his 'I was put on this earth' EP for XL and has her heart set on locking down a collaboration with Kim Gordon.

Lovestory by name and by nature, Isabella is also a totally transfixing conversationalist, unintentionally weaving what feels like her own a graphic novela. As another pink Paloma arrives, she tells me about the time she drank a shot of snake venom in Tokyo… just before a good-looking ghost appeared in the bathtub of her haunted hotel. She pulls me deeper still with tales of staying in notoriously possessed hotels in Miami and Mexico City, and how she's had a penchant for the paranormal, that stretches back to her childhood when her math tutor in Honduras told her she was a medium.

Turning the pages back to the living Isabella articulates, "With 'Vanity', I wanted to romanticise darkness, the struggle I experienced with having my image be so out there and turn it into storytelling. Each song is a different side of me dealing with vanity itself, in its beautiful and also twisted side."

"When you ask me what the next album will sound like, I have no idea. I'd love to make a spy album," she laughs. "With 'Vanity', I'm just excited to have a bigger budget—more production—so the live shows can feel like a play. I don't have to dance my ass off for every single song in the set."

"I love that punk vibe on stage, where everything feels so crazy it's like an exorcism. But honestly, with 'Vanity', I'm just vibrating with excitement for the world to hear it...". She smiles as we hug and walk our separate ways into the night. "I wanted a bold image and a bold sound. Now, I'm showing off my geeky side. I'm ready to get weird."

'Vanity' is out on June 27, pre-order it here

Tracy Kawalik is a freelance music journalist, follow her on Twitter