Isabella Lovestory

Isabella Lovestory is a Honduran multidisciplinary performer. The child of the DJ who brought The Smiths and The Cure to Honduras, Isabella’s post-punk roots belied a teen love for Britney Spears and Garbage’s Shirley Manson, as well as reggaeton greats like Jowell & Randy and Plan B, and defiant, unapologetic women like early Lady Gaga, Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon and M.I.A. From releasing music on Soundcloud in 2018 with downloaded YouTube beats, she has since become a key player in the neoperreo subgenre of El Movimiento. A playful erotic and cheeky experimentalist with a punk ethos, she proved herself able to collaborate with UK alt-dance producer Palmistry as easily as she can trade slick verses with Puerto Rico’s Villano Antillano. Her reggaeton-heavy debut Amor Hardcore saw Isabella collaborate with the likes of Ms Nina and Nick León, further cementing her as an alt-Latinx darling. After coming up in that scene, Isabella refused to be tied down to one genre. Stripping herself of features and guided only by trusted producers Chicken and Kamixlo as well as her own intuition, Vanity is a pointed departure from the sound that put her on the map. A metallic and alternative pastiche, the album is more aligned with Spanish trap and goth electronica than alt-reggaeton. Aesthetically calling to mind neoclassical darkwave, Vanity channels British New Romantics like David Bowie and Siouxie and the Banshees and visual kei J-rock group Malice Mizer. In the world of Vanity, the cruelty in beauty is laid bare, funhouse mirrors distort the body and soul, and Isabella Lovestory asserts herself as a multidisciplinary creative running free with chameleonic abandon. “Vanity is that struggle that I’ve experienced with having my image be so out there,” she says. “I wanted to romanticize that darkness and turning it into storytelling. I think that’s the goth, emotional side of this album. Each song is a different side of me dealing with vanity itself, in all its beautiful darkness. In the title track, I say I’m a perfume bottle: the bottle is beautiful, but what’s inside is toxic —and it smells so good.