Neoperreo Singer Isabella Lovestory Isn't Afraid of Labels

Isabella Lovestory is grateful for the generational designation conferred on her. "Thank you for not calling me a complete millennial," she tells New Times over Zoom from her parents' home in Montreal, where she's resting before embarking on her next tour.

Lovestory, born Isabella Rodríguez Rivera, discusses her place in the current zeitgeist and how her status as a 32-year-old zennial allows her to appeal to both demographics.

"I have this sort of millennial experience where I didn't completely grow up with TikTok. I still have that like spirit of wanting to read. I grew up with the old version of the internet," she shares. "I want to know information and still going outside, whereas I think Gen Z is definitely addicted to the speed of information. Now I find myself doomscrolling like every night, so I think that each generation has both good and bad. I can understand the cynicism of Gen Z."

One thing Lovestory admits makes her sound like a "bitter millennial" is Gen Z's obsession with aesthetics, which can often come across as superficial. "Gen Z can just kind of have this addiction to trends and aesthetics."

Regardless of her borderline millennial status, Lovestory has emerged as one of Gen Z's favorite stars. That's largely due to her position as one of the early pioneers of the neoperreo movement, a subgenre of reggaeton that pushes the sound to its avant-garde limits, much like how hyperpop did for pop music. Other acts include La Goony Chonga, MJ Nebreda, and Tomasa del Real, with aspects of the sound already being adopted by more mainstream acts like Bad Gyal and Rosalía.

"I wanted to make reggaeton that I wasn't listening to," Lovestory says of her journey toward the underground sound. "I have that kind of experimental way of thinking about my music, where I'm like mixing genres together." Unlike the closely related hyperpop movement, in which some of the biggest names rebelled against being labeled as much, Lovestory welcomes the neoperreo tag. "I loved being named as such because I didn't know it back then."

Despite calling Montreal her home base, Lovestory is originally from Tegucigalpa, Honduras, where she and her family lived until the age of 13, moving to Virginia when her mom got a job at the Honduran embassy in nearby Washington, D.C. Four years later, her family would move again to the heart of French-speaking Canada, Montreal. "We moved because there was a possibility her family would have had to return to Honduras," she adds.

Like most immigrants, Lovestory's family was looking to escape the rise of gun violence in the country. "We were kind of all over the place and obviously," she says. "I'm very privileged to be able to move around and come here. Still, I felt a lot of culture shock when I moved, for sure."
As a first-generation immigrant, Lovestory is somewhat the black sheep of her family. Instead of studying medicine or law, she opted to attend art school, which, if you know anything about the expectations immigrant parents put on their children, is just as bad as not going to school at all.

"My dad used to have a radio show for a little bit. He was the first person to put on like the Cure, the Smiths, and all this alternative music that hadn't been played in Houndarian radio back in the late nineties. So he totally loves music — they both love music," Lovestory says of her parents. "I grew up listening to all these alternative indie groups and very musical house, but they were also like immigrants. They want me to be a doctor."

She only added salt to her parents' wounds when she dropped out of art school. "They are still to this day saying, 'You need to go back to school,'" she adds. "The fact that I've felt this way in my whole life, like the black sheep everywhere I was, I think that that's kind of a driving force in what I do because I don't feel like I belong to anything particularly. I like to embrace that in my art."

As the child of immigrants, Lovestory's art can be read as her living between two worlds. Campy telenovelas and Disney Channel shows like Lizzie McGuire and Hannah Montana equally influence her work. And despite having moved to the U.S. and Canada as a teenager, Lovestory has chosen to sing in Spanish, occasionally peppering in English words.

"Because Spanish is my first language, it just felt easier to express myself that way. Also, I love reggaeton, and especially when I started making music, it was all I was listening to," she says of singing in Spanish. "It just came easier for me, and I mean, I speak it at home. It's just also sexier; it's more poetic, obviously. 
There are more words that you can say that maybe don't even exist in English, and there's more playfulness with the language than I think in English."

Lovestory admits that her rebellious personality is imbued in everything she does. That defiant spirit was evident on her 2022 debut, Amor Hardcore, and continues on her recent sophomore effort, Vanity. Where Amor Hardcore was abrasive and even at times masculine, Vanity feels much softer and more feminine.

"I was going through a more vulnerable part of my life after my first world tour with Amor Hardcore, which was very insane and chaotic," she says about how Vanity came together. "It was also the first time that I was looking at myself in the mirror so much, being like a public person for the first time, and having my image be so out there all the time. It was the first time I was going through the reality of who I was in my career, and I wanted to talk about the darkness of that beauty and how I was feeling in the moment was just very much softer and feminine."

The album's title track sees Lovestory coo over a synthpop beat. "¿Por qué será? ¿Por qué será?/La vanidad es crueldad/¿Por qué será? ¿Por qué será?/Las mentiras son realidad." ("Why would that be? Why would that be? Vanity is cruelty. Why would that be? Why would that be? Lies are reality.") It's a more introspective side of Lovestory that's not always present in her work.
That's not to say the chaotic side of Lovestory is absent on Vanity. Tracks like "Eurotrash," "Fresa Metal," and "Telenovela" showcase both her feminine energy and humor.

"I wanted to show my different influences, like the pop side, the more indie side, the more electronic side, and show people that I wasn't just this one-dimensional reggaeton hot bitch," Lovestory says. "I was definitely nervous to show people this side because people see me and they think of 'Mariposa' and they think Amor Hardcore. I do love reggaeton and I love that side of myself, but I'll never be just one thing."

The many sides of Lovestory will be on display when she embarks on her Vanity Tour, which kicks off in Miami on Friday, September 12, at the Ground.

"During the last tour, I was making everything myself. I made all the costumes myself, and they got stolen two days before the tour started," Lovestory remembers. "I quickly had to learn how to perform without the mindset of having certain costumes." She views the theft as a learning experience, helping her let go of things and roll with the punches.

For the Vanity Tour, Lovestory says to expect to see the pop star side of her on stage, which includes more theatrics and choreography. " I'm going to have two unicorn dancers twerking on stage," she teases about the upcoming tour. "I'm going to have an opener called Cece Natalie. She does kind of like experimental pop."

Where you won't catch Lovestory during this tour is at the bar. "I learned to be less chaotic in my brain. I'm definitely not going to drink as much," she says, laughing. "I'm definitely just going to take one shot of tequila before my show and go to sleep right after, because it's very, very exhausting."

Isabella Lovestory. With Ali RQ, Cece Natalie, Marte, Berrakka, and Xana. 11 p.m. Friday, September 12, at the Ground, 31 NE 11th St., Miami; thegroundmiami.com. Tickets cost $15 to $25 via dice.fm.