SOFIA ISELLA’s work has always looked you in the eye. It’s not confrontation—it’s confrontation’s smarter, more poetic cousin. With her second EP, I’m camera . (yes, space and period intentional, like a breath held before a punchline-due out on 23 May), ISELLA is back in full view, chronicling the absurdities of fame, sex, and the futures we didn’t sign up for with the clarity and bite of a writer twice her age.
The newly dropped track ‘Crowd Caffeine’ is a standout—a dizzying, calculated jolt of sonic paranoia co-produced with Mr Hudson, born out of a stray quote from Grimes (of course). Isella wrote it to “scare the crowd at a random point,” which is exactly the kind of theatrical honesty we need from young pop disruptors. It’s both cynical and sincere. It sounds like the internet trying to exorcise itself.
ISELLA, who is only 20 and already reads like she’s been burning through Sylvia Plath and Sylvia Plath critics since she could hold a library card, has done her time on the road. She’s opened for Melanie Martinez, Tom Odell, and yes, Taylor Swift at Wembley Stadium. Her YOU’LL UNDERSTAND, DICK. TOUR is selling out across the U.S., offering packed rooms a setlist threaded with violin, violence, poetry, and pop hooks that feel like subversive chants from a post-Lolita dreamworld.
Stream ‘Crowd Caffeine’ HERE.
