In our musical culture, we tend to overlook a lot of smaller artists. We miss out on music that is amazingly impactful and creative. A great example of an artist who is sadly overlooked is the artist Sofia Isella.
Sofia makes music that dives deep into serious social issues like sexism, the objectification of women, mental health and internet addiction, all while explaining and describing these things in a beautifully dark and cinematic way. Her debut EP, I Can Be Your Mother, which she released in 2024 contains a few songs that address these issues.
I’m going to address a few of her songs here. That goes to say though, you should listen to the other songs she has, not just the ones I mention. The first song I am going to talk about is her song “All of Human Knowledge Made Us Dumb”mwhich she released on Oct. 7, 2022. This song addresses the paradox of living in the “digital age,” where we have literally every answer to every question, but we don’t really have any genuine understanding and human connection. Lyrically, she writes, “..I can know every answer that’s ever been known, but when everyone’s together, everyone’s alone, cause we look so much better when we’re in the phone” is the main lyric that I am talking about. We as a society see everything through the rose colored glasses known as The Internet. Everything looks better online. “It’s so colorful here, everyone’s so happy in here.” The song ends with the lines, “So grab my attention by the throat, I’ll be laughing on my own, I lost weeks and everyone, but we’re all having so much fun.” These lyrics close the song with the point being, we no longer have attention spans, the internet makes us waste time and relationships, and in the end, it really isn’t a good thing.
Sofia has said and compared the internet to alcohol in an interview with Radio Macabre. She even acknowledges that she is addicted to the internet saying, “If the internet was alcohol, I would be a raging alcoholic.” She also says that when she scrolls on the internet she loses her creativity and thoughts. This song is very relevant to our generation and our creepy attachment to our phones and the internet.
The second song I am going to highlight is her song, “Everybody Supports Women.” This is a song that she wrote about the contradictions of being a woman. The song opens up with the lines, “Everybody supports women, until a woman’s doing better than you. Everybody wants you to love yourself, until you actually do.”
In our society, there are a lot of people that say to love yourself, and “be who you are.” The problem though, is that as soon as a woman is confident and proud of herself, she is seen as self centered, selfish, or attention seeking. These lines also talk about how as soon as a woman is successful, there will always be people, men AND other women alike who will look for reasons to not like her, and reasons that she shouldn’t be famous or successful.
Sofia opened for Taylor Swift in August during her Eras tour, and Sofia said in a tiktok post in 2022 that this song was partially inspired by the way people would unnecessarily hate on Taylor for no reason. Just because she is a successful AND genius woman at that, people STILL hate her, without any justification. So, what Sofia is saying is that society kind of pushes women to say that they hate themselves so they aren’t criticized for having confidence in themselves. But, later in the song, Sofia has some lines that contradict what she said earlier in the song. “I would like it to be known that I’m not like her, I’m mocking her ’cause I’m not like her.” This line is a reference to the “not like other girls” trend, where women would say they weren’t like one kind of woman, or another. They were “unique”. “I’m not like those girls who are not like those girls. I love doing makeup, I don’t mock women like her, I’m not like her!” While the line before this one talks about the “not like other girls” trend, this line goes on the OTHER swing of the pendulum. This highlights the people that call other women these names because of their own personal choices, like whether or not they should wear makeup.
Women that wear makeup are attacked by the coined “pick me” girls, and are accused of trying to be more attractive to men. Women who DON’T wear makeup are attacked for the same thing. No matter which way you go, society has made it out to be that women’s choices exist solely for the male gaze, whereas realistically at the end of the day, it’s purely a personal choice. Sofia talks about both sides. How no side is better than the other because at the end of the day, they both mock women under the cover of “supporting women.”
In her second verse, she has the lines, “And I love to place two of ’em in the arena of the public’s eye, and try and get ’em to fight about something dumb and we pick sides.” This line is referring to how society just LOVES to pit two women against each other to see what will happen. For example, Taylor Swift and Katy Perry, or Sabrina Carpenter and Olivia Rodrigo. The song ends with the line, “It was something about her hair.” This line probably goes to show that the reason society will choose to completely hate someone is something stupid, and we can’t actually think of a valid reason to hate a woman so much.
But to wrap this all up, Sofia Isella is an amazing artist. With her classically trained vocals, INSANE instrumental talents, she manages to write and sing about issues that are otherwise slept on and ignored. I can definitely see her gaining more traction within the next year, as she is going on a tour, which will open her up to more people.