Playful, maximalist, and flirtatious to the core, Isabella Lovestory’s debut album is a defiant celebration of sexual agency.
Isabella Lovestory doesn’t care for subtlety. She moans all over “Golosa,” her electrifying 2020 single about fucking. Amid talk of leather and expensive fragrances, she throws in a line about her butterfly tattoo. Her lover’s into it, she sings, but what may seem like a tossed-off lyric becomes fully realized in “Mariposa,” a hypnotic reggaeton track where she demands a guy spread his legs like the titular insect. The Honduran-born, Montreal-based artist has always been this coy, knowing how to wield reggaeton’s swerving grooves as pure sex appeal. She’s likened the genre to a mating call, and on her debut album, Amor Hardcore, she domineers every track to deliver 30 minutes of seductive excess.
Such hedonistic indulgence is prismatic in Lovestory’s hands. That’s been obvious even in her short career, which includes the trance-y hyperpop romp “Tranki,” a kaleidoscopic reggaeton track on Mura Masa’s last album, and songwriting credits for K-pop girl group LE SSERAFIM. Lovestory opts for stylistic cohesion on Amor Hardcore, wasting no time delivering heightened feelings. “Cherry Bomb,” for example, is a cunninlingus anthem that’s all whirring synths and booming dembow riddims. “Fashion Freak” is more runway ready, and its glossy synth melodies capture the unimpeachable thrill of looking glamorous. “It’s fun to make a character out of yourself and exaggerate your obsessions,” she told The FADER two years ago. The sinister laugh that appears mid-track is a wink and an invitation.
Sex-focused lyrics have always been central to reggaeton, but Lovestory cranks up the drama. Take “Exibisionista,” where she repeatedly declares her exhibisionist kinks over blaring synths. As she whispers and taunts, the track’s murky atmosphere becomes intoxicating, like a delirious night spent entertaining one’s vices. She lives out her fantasies on “Colocho,” too, where she sings about being eaten out by a curly-haired cowboy. Album closer “Keratina,” which is an ode to both keratin hair treatments and ketamine, has gunshots and a swaggering hip-hop beat that conclude the album with a consummate thesis: “La vida es más divertida si eres pervertida” (“Life is more fun if you’re perverted”).
These playful, maximalist caricatures of sex are half the fun here, and one of the major reasons Lovestory stands out among her peers in neoperreo, the club-minded underground reggaeton subgenre that has become a haven for queers and femmes of all genders. “Gateo,” which features one of the scene’s foundational artists, Ms Nina, is perhaps the album’s best expression of the movement. The two don’t simply exchange verses—they hype each other up, flaunting their assets and asserting their excellence atop a thrashing beat. More than anything, the collaboration serves as a reminder that despite the genre’s male-centered narratives, women have always been present in this movement, and will continue to thrive.
The eclectic influences that inform Lovestory’s music make her right at home in the expanding world of reggaeton. She grew up listening to Y2K pop stars like Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, but also loved the Cure, Crystal Castles, and iconic reggaeton duo Plan B. In her love for brash 2000s pop is a trace of electroclash artists like Maria Daniela y Su Sonido Lasser, but then a track like “Sexo Amor Dinero” arrives and has its eyes set on the future. Co-produced by her boyfriend, the Chilean experimentalist Kamixlo, it features chugging metal guitars and pounding industrial beats. Even when she invites others to play, like on the posse cut “Tacón” or the tempo-shifting highlight “Hit,” Lovestory remains the star. It’s not just the candor of her lyrics that makes her unforgettable, but the magnetic fearlessness. Amor Hardcore is a testament to the power in knowing what you want.
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