It takes a sure composure, as a teen, to stroll out onto Taylor Swift’s stage in a sold-out stadium and play a gap set to tens of 1000’s of followers who’ve by no means heard of you. However it takes much more conviction to make use of the event to play music virtually assured to go away them squirming — dirty, bloodletting noise-rock and electro about being a sexual menace and rising disillusioned with God.
The now-20-year-old singer-songwriter Sofia Isella did that final yr, opening on the Australian run of Swift’s Eras tour. “Taylor was an angel for permitting me to share that stage,” L.A.-raised Isella stated. “I want I might have recorded that feeling. However the present itself is just not as nerve-wracking as it’s enjoying for 20 folks. There’s one thing a couple of big room that nearly feels a bit dissociative, prefer it’s not likely taking place or it’s not likely there.”
“Dissociative” is a good descriptor for Isella’s music, too — disorienting, unnerving, drawing out feelings you won’t perceive. However there’s a lot talent within the performances and creativeness in her preparations that they could properly get Isella — who performs the Fonda Theater on Nov. 16 — onto a lot greater phases of her personal, simply because the world will get a lot bleaker round her.
“This subsequent document, I’m having a lot enjoyable with s— that’s actually f— darkish,” Isella stated. “It’s like, the one technique to cease screaming about it’s to have a second laughing about it.”
Isella grew up in Los Angeles in a household with sufficient entertainment-biz acclaim to make being an artist really feel like a viable profession. But they nonetheless let her be feral and freewheeling in creating her craft. Her father, the Chilean American cinematographer Claudio Miranda, received an Oscar for 2012’s “Lifetime of Pi” and shot “High Gun: Maverick” and the current racing hit “F1” (Her mother is the writer Kelli Bean-Miranda). Trying again on her bucolic childhood in L.A., Isella recalled it full of music and boundless encouragement, worlds away from her social media-addled friends.
“I’d been homeschooled my complete life,” Isella stated. “My mother would go away little trails of poetry books for me to search out, and my dad would arrange GarageBand and depart me for hours with all of the devices and nothing however free time. I didn’t actually have a cellphone till I used to be 16. Once I first was on TikTok, I noticed everybody had the identical persona, as a result of that they had been watching one another for therefore lengthy. Being round youngsters my age was so unusual, as a result of I’d grown up round adults — like, ‘Oh, these youngsters are so candy and type and lovely, however they assume I’m one in every of them.’”
After her household quickly moved to Australia through the pandemic and Isella started self-releasing music, it grew to become clear that her skills set her very far aside. Drawing on her early background in classical music and a fascination with scabrous rock and digital music, she discovered a sound that melded the Velvet Underground and Nico’s elegant miserablism, Chelsea Wolfe and Lingua Ignota’s doom-laden artwork steel and the close-miked , creepy goth-pop of Billie Eilish’s first LP.
Isella started self-releasing music through the pandemic. Since then, she’s landed opener spots on a number of high-profile excursions.
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Her early music confirmed a withering humor and skepticism of the tradition round her (“All of Human Data Made Us Dumb,” “All people Helps Ladies”), however singles got here at speedy clip and translated surprisingly properly on the social media platforms she loathed (she has 1.3 million followers on TikTok). All of it received her onto phases with Melanie Martinez and Glass Animals and, finally, Swift. (A Florence + The Machine area tour opening slot is up subsequent.)
On 2024’s writhing EP “I Can Be Your Mom,” songs like “Intercourse Idea” had the sensual fatalism of poets like Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath, paired with the drippy erotic menace of 9 Inch Nails. “I’ll bend him over backwards, give him one thing to consider in,” she sings. “We’ll play the sport, each go insane after which we’ll name it even … I’m the one god that you just’ll ever consider in.”
“The primary EP was this complete story of giving delivery to your self, this big stretched-out muse,” Isella stated, leaning right into a stemwinder in regards to the genesis of artwork. “It simply doesn’t really feel prefer it’s coming from me. It feels prefer it’s coming from some bizarre factor I considerably worship.”
A Could 2025 follow-up, “I’m Digital camera,” handled the depersonalizing results of sudden consideration. On “Josephine,” she makes tour life really feel like a proverbial grippy-sock trip to the breakdown ward — “I’m sock-footed, sick and egocentric holding strangers’ palms … I misplaced one thing, I offered it, I solely bear in mind the ache.”
Isella’s wariness of establishments extends to her recording profession. She’s nonetheless unbiased for now — shocking for an artist on Swift’s radar — and uncompromising about what a label would demand of her in comparison with what they’ll present. “I’ve met with a variety of the massive canine, and so they’re very type folks, however I simply love the sensation of being unbiased,” Isella stated. “Perhaps I’ll change my thoughts on that, however I’m making an attempt to totally perceive a label and what its features are, what it provides the artist in a social media day. I’m making an attempt to totally assess that earlier than I signal any magic papers.”
Her latest materials (and her subversively eerie, Francesa Woodman-evoking music movies like “Muse”) really feel completely timed to the apocalyptic temper in L.A. and the U.S. now, the place an inexorable slide to destroy feels biblical. “Out Within the Backyard,” from September, hits among the Southern gothic moods of Ethel Cain, however with a way of acidic pity that’s all her personal. “That there’s a small a part of me that’s envious / That you just full-heartedly consider somebody is all the time there,” she sings. “That may all the time love you, and there’s a plan for you on the market.”
Even at her bleakest, there’s a curdled humor beneath (her present tour is subtitled “You’ll Perceive Extra, Dick”). But when this little sliver of younger fame has taught Isella something, it’s that even when everybody needs a chunk of you, nobody is definitely coming to avoid wasting any of us.
“There’s nothing with weight, nothing that’s significant, to blind religion,” Isella stated. “On this subsequent document, I’m about to go actually indignant as a result of faith actually pisses me off, it inflames me. However it’s probably the most lovely placebo to think about that there’s a father that loves you it doesn’t matter what you do. I’m a extremely fortunate individual in that I’ve all the time been secure and guarded, however for those who’ve had a tough life, that’s insanely highly effective to think about that and consider that.”
