Isabel LaRosa joins The NEW 96.5's Bennett to chat about what her writing process looks like with her brother Thomas, her rise to stardom through TikTok, her latest single "favorite," and much more. Watch above, or listen below.
Listen to Isabel LaRosa's exclusive interview with Bennett on The NEW 96.5 below.
Isabel grew up surrounded by music, being brought to the jazz clubs by her father where he'd play the saxophone and hearing her brother Thomas play guitar at home. While looking back on her childhood experience, she shares with Bennett what it was like writing her first song with her Thomas.
"I wanted to be cool like Thomas, so when he started writing songs I was like 'oh maybe I can do this too.' I think he was like 11, and I was 7 [...] The first song you (Thomas) wrote was called "High Tide," and then the first song we ever wrote together I think was called "Somewhere Angels Fly,""
As she continues to reminisce on memories with her brother, Isabel shares how she continues to write with her brother and how their collaboration got her to where she is today.
"So your rise to popularity kind of came through, like, quarantine, right?" Bennett asks. "You're on TikTok, you're posting away, and nothing happens right away, right? You're posting like crazy - 4 or 5 times a day?"
Isabel admits she posted upwards of 10 times a day, and went on to share that she privated a lot of her videos from that time period as she pursued her attempts to go viral. While Thomas and their shared friend Ari went viral on ahead of Isabel, eventually she found her niche.
"The first song that I ever did anything with was called "Haunted" and I didn't want to do it at first because it was, like, out of my comfort zone. But, if Thomas hadn't pushed me to do it, like, I wouldn't be here. You always gotta be willing to just try different things, because you really just don't know."
Isabel's latest single "favorite" dropped on May 29, and she goes on to share what the writing process was like for her, and how she doesn't let TikTok metrics dictate her music.
"To be honest, everything that we tease or put out on the internet we always really, really believe in [...] But, favorite was kind of a shot in the dark. It originally had a different melody, then we sat on it for a really long time, then we kind of forgot, then we were like 'oh, this is kind of, like, a really cool hook,' then I think Thomas rewrote the melody, and then we were like 'okay, before we pick one song we're gonna release, we're gonna just try this one other thing and see if it works, y'know, hopefully it does.' and that was favorite."
"Every time I feel like I know TikTok, and I'm like 'oh, I got it,' I don't. I can never predict it [...] Not that I don't love all the songs we write, but you have to go into it with knowledge that not everything, even if you love the song, it doesn't mean that it's gonna be big, and it doesn't mean that it's not a good song, it just may not work on the app for whatever reason [...] but, I know that numbers on TikTok doesn't dictate whether I love the song, and it doesn't dictate how good the song is, it just means it just didn't work for the moment. But, it also doesn't mean that song isn't gonna come out either."
Watch + listen to Isabel LaRosa perform "favorite", "i'm yours", and "older" at The NEW 96.5
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