As a teenager, it takes a certain amount of self-control to walk on Taylor Swift's stage in a sold-out stadium and open for tens of thousands of fans who have never heard of you. But it takes even more conviction to seize the opportunity to play music that's almost guaranteed to make them squirm – dirty, bloody noise rock and electro about sexual menace and growing disillusionment with God.
20-year-old singer-songwriter Sofia Isella did it last year while supporting Swift's Eras Australian tour. “Taylor was an angel for letting me share that stage,” said Isella, who grew up in Los Angeles. “I wish I could record that feeling. But the show itself isn't as nerve-wracking as doing it for 20 people. There's something about a huge room that feels a little dissociative, like it's not really happening or isn't there at all.”
“Dissociative” is also a decent description of Isella's music: it's disorienting, unnerving, evoking emotions you may not understand. But there is so much skill and imagination in her arrangements that they may well end up with Isella playing Fonda Theatre, November 16. – to much larger stages, while the world around her becomes much darker.
“On the next album, I’m having a lot of fun with… it’s really fucking dark,” Isella said. “It’s like the only way to stop screaming about it is to laugh about it for a moment.”
Isella grew up in Los Angeles in a family with enough fame in the entertainment industry that a career as an entertainer seemed viable. However, they still allow her to be wild and free in developing her craft. Her father, Chilean American cinematographer Claudio Miranda, won an Oscar for 2012's Life of Pi and directed Top Gun: Maverick and the recent Formula One racing hit (her mother is author Kelly Bean-Miranda). Recalling her bucolic childhood in Los Angeles, Isella remembers it being filled with music and endless support, away from her social media-addled peers.
“I’ve been homeschooled my whole life,” Isella said. “My mom would leave me little books of poetry and my dad would set up GarageBand and leave me for a few hours with all the instruments and just free time. I didn't even have a phone until I was 16. When I first got on TikTok, I saw that everyone had the same personality because they'd been watching each other for so long. Being around kids my age was so weird because I grew up around adults – like, 'Oh, these kids are so cute and kind and charming, but they think I'm one of them.”
After her family temporarily moved to Australia during the pandemic and Isella began releasing music on her own, it became clear that her talents set her far apart. Drawing on her early experience in classical music and her fascination with raw rock and electronic music, she found a sound that combined the Velvet Underground and the elegant miserablism of Nico, the doomed art metal of Chelsea Wolfe and Lingua Ignota and the eerie goth-pop of Billie Eilish's first album.
During the pandemic, Isella began releasing music on her own. Since then, she has performed in the first positions on many high-profile tours.
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Her early music displayed a withering humor and skepticism of the culture around her (“All Human Knowledge Has Made Us Dumb,” “Everybody Supports Women”), but the singles quickly gained popularity and played surprisingly well on social media, which she hated (she has 1.3 million followers on TikTok). All of this led her to the stage with Melanie Martinez and the Glass Animals and, eventually, Swift. (The opening of the Florence + the Machine arena tour is next.)
On 2024's meandering I Can Be Your Mother EP, songs like “Sex Concept” contained the sensual fatalism of poets like Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath combined with the dripping erotic menace of Nine Inch Nails. “I’ll turn him around, give him something to believe in,” she sings. “We'll play this game, we'll both go crazy, and then we'll even the score… I'm the only god you'll ever believe in.”
“The first EP was the whole story of the birth of myself, this giant prostrate muse,” Isella said, leaning toward the winder about the birth of art. “It just feels like it's not coming from me. It feels like it's coming from some weird thing that I kind of worship.”
The next episode of I Am a Camera, released in May 2025, dealt with the depersonalizing effect of sudden attention. On “Josephine,” she turns touring life into the proverbial emergency room vacation: “I'm sick and sick and selfish, holding the hands of strangers… I lost something, I sold it, all I remember is the pain.”
Isella's wariness of institutions extends to her recording career. For now, she's still independent, which is surprising for an artist on Swift's radar, and uncompromising about what the label will require of her versus what they can provide. “I’ve met a lot of big dogs and they are very kind people, but I just like the feeling of independence,” Isella said. “Maybe I'll change my mind on this, but I'm trying to fully understand the label and what it does, what it does for the artist on social media. I'm trying to fully evaluate that before I sign any magic papers.”
Her newest material (and her subversively creepy Francesca Woodman-esque music videos like “Muse”) fits perfectly with the apocalyptic mood in Los Angeles and the US now, where the inexorable slide towards destruction seems biblical. “Out in the Garden,” released in September, captures some of Ethel Kane's Southern gothic sentiments, but with a sense of caustic pity that is unique to her. “A small part of me is jealous / That you truly believe that someone is always there,” she sings. “It will always love you and there is a plan for you.”
Even at her darkest, there's a vapid humor underneath (her current tour is subtitled “You'll Understand More, Dick”). But if this little piece of young glory has taught Isella anything, it's that even when everyone wants a piece of you, no one will actually come to save any of us.
“There is nothing meaningful, nothing meaningful about blind faith,” Isella said. “I'm going to get really angry on this next record because religion really pisses me off, it sets me on fire. But it's the most beautiful placebo to imagine that there's a father who loves you no matter what you do. I've been really lucky because I've always been safe and protected, but if you've had a hard life, it's insanely powerful to imagine that and believe it.”
