Influenced by the bright, bubble gum pop culture of the noughties, but determined to update the genre and splice it with her own reality - one that acknowledges that life isn’t always shiny and perfect, and that sometimes a good, strong dash of honesty can be a far healthier thing - Londoner Izzi De-Rosa is a pop star with an ear in tune with the past but a mindset firmly rooted in the present.
Izzi’s early world, like most young girls growing up in the UK at the turn of the century, was one ruled by the celebrity obsessed cultural landscape of the time. She recalls setting up Twilight fan pages on Myspace and idolising the Sugababes and ‘Girlfriend’-era Avril Lavigne, “being glued to MTV and Vevo watching music videos after school, and reading gossip & music magazines like Smash Hits and Bliss”. Yet, though none of these pastimes sound particularly unusual, for the singer, their impact would continue to repeatedly show itself.
Parallel to this, a strange twist of fate had sparked an early interest in songwriting. “My younger sister was meant to have a guitar lesson one day, but when the music teacher arrived she threw her toys out the pram and didn’t want to do it because she had a phobia of beards and he had a beard,” she laughs. “My mum came up the stairs panicking and asked me to do the lesson; straight away I loved it, and soon I just found myself writing song after song. I guess that’s the thing for me… I always loved writing and telling stories. From a very young age I would often lock myself in my room, drawing up screen plays, writing poems and starting novels (that inevitably I’d never finish), so once I’d learnt guitar it was a natural progression to start writing lyrics. I think I just loved the idea that I was able to create a time-capsule of a moment or memory, and keep it forever in a song.”
By aged 12, Izzi would fill diaries with wide-eyed flights of romantic fancy, writing songs packed with fantastical daydreams and the first swooning young steps towards love. “The smallest thing would inspire me; I’d catch eyes with a stranger on the street and write three songs about it,” she remembers. Two years later, after a performance at a school talent show, a friend’s mum told her she should meet a songwriter friend of the family. That songwriter turned out to be award-winning Robbie Williams collaborator, Guy Chambers, who invited Izzi into the studio and encouraged her to keep pursuing her talents. But as the classic pitfalls of being a teenager in a big city (too many distractions, too much partying and an undeniable urge to ‘grow up’ far too quickly) took hold, it would take several more years before she really began to harness this potential.
Though she describes the time around the beginning of her twenties as slightly lost, today those experiences stand as integral learning blocks to build Izzi’s outlook. Having put on club nights and raves throughout her university years, that sense of hedonism and community is still vital for the singer. “I’m not making that sort of music but it’s influenced me in how I want to make people dance, and make people happy and alive in the moment, especially when it comes to my live performances,” she enthuses. Even the experience of having temporarily lost sight of her path feels crucial in creating the specific balance of aspiration and realism that sits at the heart of her music: an irrepressible take on pop that blends the unashamedly big sugary hooks that populated her youth with splashes of party-starting sass and a lyrical knack for telling it how it is.
The turning point came just before the Covid pandemic, when a sudden realisation partly sparked by watching Lady Gaga’s seminal turn in ‘A Star Is Born’ pushed the singer to switch Masters courses and go to music school. Then lockdown struck, sending Izzi back home to a quieter, more focussed life where she began knuckling down and prolifically writing. During one of Izzi’s first sessions, having previously been penning Amy Winehouse-esque, jazz-influenced early tracks, her collaborator questioned what she spent most of her time listening to. “I was like, to be honest, I still listen to a lot of the same stuff I used to when I was really young - Sugababes and those influences - and she was like, ‘Why don’t we try something like that?’” Izzi explains. “In that session we wrote ‘Love & Roulette’, which went on to be my first single. That track went viral and I took it as a sign from the universe that maybe I’m just meant to be doing that kind of thing; a lot of my fanbase is quite young, and I’d felt so lost at that age that I’d love to be someone who inspires a little version of me.”
In the time since that first 2021 single - a sparkling mix of cheeky, conversational lyrics and giddy chorus hooks - the universe has evidently cemented its approval. Izzi’s series of TikTok videos, in which she writes an off-the-cuff song based on the first four things in her eye-line, have frequently gone viral, nodding to her playful way with words and knack for an earworm; meanwhile, her forthcoming material acts as a step even further towards a truly signature sound, one that she describes on next single ‘love u in the morning’ as “like Kate Nash meets the Sex Pistols”.
Still somewhat indebted to the Y2K nostalgia that she loves, Izzi notes however that she “realised that my fascination with that era was something I didn’t want to and couldn’t ever replicate because it reflects the zeitgeist of another time”. Instead, on ‘love u in the morning’ she’s allowing those ideas to blend with something bigger - brilliantly bratty, punk-spirited riffs and a narrative that takes off the rose-tinted glasses often found with pop songs about love. “Growing up, I romanticised everything, and now I think there’s not enough stories in books or movies that just tell it like it really is,” she says.
Coming full circle, cherry-picking the bits worth keeping from throughout her life and fusing them together into a vision that’s as infectiously fun and inviting as it is impressively honest, Izzi De-Rosa is learning who she’s going to become and making nuggets of pop gold whilst she’s doing it. “I want to be unapologetic,” she decides. “This is who I am, so if you don’t like me then no hard feelings, but if you do like me then great, come join the party because it’s only just beginning.”
