While her work obeys the formal conventions of a global dance culture that hybridises hip-hop, electronica, and different Caribbean idioms, Lovestory critiques it lyrically.
Her songs radiate sex positivity, communicating a woman’s perspective with heat and humour.
But it’s how they do it that distinguishes Lovestory from other artists who have trod that perilous path.
Born Isabella Rodriguez in Honduras, she moved with her family to the American state of Virginia in her early teens and then to Montreal a few years later.
It was in that cosmopolitan Canadian city, whose inhabitants have proudly fought the linguistic imperialism of English speakers for centuries, that she resolved to write in Spanish. And adopted the Lovestory persona, radicalising her native inclinations.
Given her Francophone surroundings, that might seem like a curious decision. However, Rodriguez recognised that Latino culture was uniquely positioned to function as an alternative to Anglo-American hegemony.
Emigration of Spanish speakers from the Americas to Europe and the United States is at an all-time high. And they have brought the music they love wherever they go.
Perreo, the subgenre most associated with Lovestory’s sound, derives from reggaeton, which in turn builds on the legacy of Spanish-language hip-hop and the various styles of dance music that sprang up throughout the Caribbean basin in the wake of reggae’s globalisation in the 1970s.
The genius of Lovestory’s approach is that she turns the way pop songs have traditionally handled explicit content inside out.
Instead of hinting at her desires with innuendo and double entendres, she puts them right out in the open.
But because Lovestory does so primarily in Spanish, for an audience that isn’t explicitly “ethnic”, her lyrics frequently conceal as they reveal.
The song “Exibisionista” off her 2022 debut album Amor Hardcore thematises this intriguing dialectic:
Quiero enseñar (mis teta’ y mi culo)
Quiero verme desnuda (y sin disimulo)
Yo soy una estrella (yo dejo mi huella)
Yo soy demasiado (y a tí te gusta)
The woman who sings these words doesn’t want to hold back and doesn’t want to dissemble.
But part of that directness comes from avoiding the mediation of translation.
Lovestory’s language demands that you bridge the difference between her heritage and yours, not vice versa.
As her recent Boiler Room show in Munich made clear, this approach isn’t holding her back.
Not that she is unwilling to make concessions in the name of better communication.
As its acronymic title indicates, “VIP” takes the blunt approach of rappers Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion. In place of the sexual metaphors in songs like “Mariposa”, it generates lyrical friction by switching between Spanish and English:
V-I-P, very important pussy
Eyes on me (Ice on me)
V-I-P, very important pussy
Apretadita, couture, siempre juicy
Although this kind of nonchalant boasting still makes many women uncomfortable, it delivers a powerful response to the misogyny that reduces them to mute objects of male pleasure.
The pun on “VIP” is crucial, because the pussy in question belongs to a person who speaks her desires into being.
Not to mention someone who appreciates the cultural exchange between VIP and WAP.
For all of the carnal immediacy of Lovestory’s lyrics, she demonstrates a poet’s gift for imbuing language with private meaning.
Her best-known track “Mariposa”, turns the movement of butterfly wings into a powerful image of sexual abandon:
Abre tus alas como mariposa
No puedes parar de mover esa cosa
Sabe a chicle y huele a rosa
Muévelo, no te hagas la chistosa
She returns to the word in other songs, calling this picture forth, but also complicating it.
On “Golosa” she sings about having a tattoo of a butterfly, suggesting a self-reflexivity in which the word leaves its “huella” on her flesh.
Listeners who come to Lovestory’s music from an alternative rock background might find it hard to appreciate the critical dimension to her work.
Whereas Riot Grrrl-adjacent singers like early Courtney Love or Sleater-Kinney’s Corin Tucker communicate their passion by pushing their voices to the limit, Lovestory keeps hers in check, fitting it seamlessly into music that wouldn’t raise an eyebrow at the club.
But form is a Trojan horse for content.
Pop feminism doesn’t have to rage to make an impact. In Isabella Lovestory’s hands, it teases and taunts.
The music may go down easily, but its message hits all the harder.
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Photograph courtesy of Wikimedia. Published under a Creative Commons license.
