Isabella Lovestory Spins the Bottle in 'Vuelta'
Music

Isabella Lovestory Spins the Bottle in 'Vuelta'

Isabella Lovestory recorded her new single the day after a "scary earthquake" trembled across Los Angeles. "I guess the earthquake energy shook something inside of us all to create this crazy love song," she says of "Vuelta," created alongside her frequent collaborators Lecx Stacy and Chicken. "We drank lots of coffee and had fun."

"Vuelta," which means "to return" or "a spin" in Spanish, fittingly captures the inevitable chaos of a natural disaster mixed with the frenetic energy of too much caffeine. "I wanted this song to have that manic, ecstatic feeling," Lovestory says of her "dark, but sweet" release. "When I'm in love, which is often, I feel like I'm in an intense spiraling vortex of pleasure and pain."

For the Honduras-born pop princess, romance immediately brings to mind a list of visual references that are at once unhinged and bewitching — much like the act of falling for someone: "A ribbon twirling in circles violently in the air," she says. "Spinning in front of someone while my hair touches their face, spinning the bottle, spinning a car."

Inspired by a range of influences from Crystal Castles to K-pop acts like STAYC and ITZY, Lovestory wanted to write a pop song that combined harsh sounds with sweeter melodies and lyrics. So while the track itself could live happily on Britney Spears' Blackout — with bitchy spoken verses and experimental electro production — its message is quite vulnerable.

"Baby I'm lonely/ Why don't you hold me/ All I wanna do tonight is dance," Lovestory opens the single, before later dropping threats to grab a taxi, go to a party and dance with another boy. "You didn't pick me up/ I'm gonna complain/ You are an idiot/ And I'm going to leave you," she warns.

The "Vuelta" music video, which Lovestory directed, edited and produced herself, brings this vision to life almost entirely through her own personal lens. "I wish I could've shot it, as well, but I had a random skater filming in the street," she says of the "colorful, fun and sexy" clip. "I wanted it to have the same thrill and lightheartedness as skate videos."

In it, Lovestory drives around at night with LED Pleasers kicked up onto the dashboard (looks like she's retired her "Kitten Heel"). She dances with ribbons, whips around her purple-colored pigtails, blows bubbles at the camera and crawls around a few empty bottles, presumably for waiting for someone to play a game of "Spin the Bottle" with her.

"I want to show I can and will do anything I want," Lovestory says, comparing her discography thus far to a necklace of many different diamonds. "I don't like to do the same thing twice. I'm not afraid of being inconsistent when making music — it's freeing to have fun. I hate stagnancy and I wanna try it all. I don't wanna fit in any box."

Ultimately though, Lovestory says, "I'm giving people exactly what they didn't know they so badly wanted" — and "Vuelta" accomplishes exactly that, as the second of three summer singles all laddering up to a project out this fall. Watch the PAPER premiere, below, and check out "Alo" off Lovestory's forthcoming effort, as well.

Photo courtesy of Isabella Lovestory