Isabella Kensington appreciates the science of a good, sad pop song—neuroscience, specifically.
I meet the British-American singer-songwriter at East Village institution Veselka, the legendary Ukrainian restaurant that’s not far from where she’s completing her studies at NYU’s Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music. She sits across from me wearing a jean jacket, summery magenta dress, and a gold necklace that reads “bissou,” and only orders a passionately red raspberry iced tea. She sparingly sips her drink as she describes the music she writes—crystalline, diaristic songs she’s dubbed as “healing girl pop.” Which, from her perspective, is a reframing of the sad girl pop genre led by Billie Eilish, Gracie Abrams, and Olivia Rodrigo.
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A few years ago, Kensington had a brush with TikTok virality after posting a cover of Daisy the Great’s “The Record Player Song.” Since then, she’s grown her TikTok following to over a million by turning her page into a safe, healing space that showcases her cherubic tones: “I do panning videos that are more centered and targeted towards the neurodivergent community.” Across her profile, there are covers of Swift, Sabrina Carpenter, Dua Lipa, and Charli XCX. If you have headphones on or turn your phone sideways, you can hear her silvery vocals oscillate as if they’re bouncing off the walls. It’s called 8D audio, which stimulates both the right and left side of the brain. The bilateral stimulation can create a sense of balance, a clearheadedness, relaxation, or mental focus.
(Credit: Ben Chory)
For Kensington, songwriting is more than a cathartic vessel to unpack relationships and cozy up to sorrow. It’s an art form that has the capacity to inform brain chemistry. She explains that before she committed to her studies in New York, she was close to studying neuroscience at UCLA. The two choices feel like an analogy for the right brain warring with the left brain. In the end, the former won out, although she’s still able to dabble in some science classes.
“Neuroscience is still a big part of how I approach everything,” she explains. After studying music and its neurological impact during her senior year in high school, she realized it was an important element she wanted to highlight with her music. “In the same way that crying is a form of self-soothing, music is doing the same thing. Especially when you’re sad and you’re listening to sad music, there are some really healing properties about that.”
Her latest project, not in a dollhouse anymore (released on September 20), symbolizes her last four years, which began with a major breakup during peak pandemic in the middle of her gap year. The heartache further motivated her to pursue songwriting as a remedy. “Everything was very lonely, and the only thing I had was music. So a lot of the songs, lots of really sad songs, came from that period of time.” One example is “Glasses,” the EP’s somber penultimate track, which she describes as “the saddest song I’ve ever written by far.”
(Credit: Ben Chory)
Each new song represents an important aspect of the past four years, whether it’s succumbing to missing someone or accepting a stalemate relationship that would only work if she was a past version of herself. “I hope that there’s another me / Who you don’t give up on and leave,” she sings over blunted guitar plucks on highlight “In Another Life.” Her vocals fall in the same lane as Shawn Mendes—pure and pointed while still maintaining a plush vulnerability.
Kensington had musical education growing up but, she clarifies, not a very musical family. She wrote her first song the day her parents surprised her with tickets to Taylor Swift’s “Red” tour. “I was raised by Taylor Swift,” she says with a laugh. “It’s definitely something I was drawn to as a listener. I have always used it as an outlet for my own experience and for my feelings and working through things. I like to think that the music was always going to be created; it was just a matter of whether I shared it or not.” She sips on her drink, so red it feels like a fated nod to the pop titan. Swift—along with Abrams, Kelsea Ballerini, and Amy Allen—inspired her to tap into that personal perspective that was a safe haven for her growing up.
“It’s funny using the term, like, ‘raised’ by Taylor Swift,” she says. ”I think from the time I was around 12, I really wanted to do that for specifically the younger generation in the same way that I felt like I was cared for in that way. So I think most of my inspiration to write from such a personal space is just to make people feel less alone, especially in those adolescent years, because they’re tough. I remember those feelings so vividly because I have these songs to capture those moments. I want people to feel less alone and to feel like those feelings are valid, even if you only feel them for a split second.”
(Credit: Ben Chory)
I ask her about the intersection of social media and her creativity. She describes how she has minimized using TikTok for posting and interacting with fans, avoiding the scrolling rabbit hole that leads to creative comparison. She continues, expressing her thoughts on virality. “In the pop space, it’s very easy to just think, ‘I want to be Taylor Swift or Sabrina Carpenter or whoever is massive now.’ I’ve been putting a lot of thought into it because, in the past, that was kind of my approach, especially with social media and instant virality. And now I’m trying to take a step back and approach it a bit more like a slow burn.
“I think a lot of one-hit wonders are happening now because people find the song before they find the artist. And it’s tricky when that happens because you have to build your fanbase after the fact and chase the momentum rather than build it. I’m trying, over the next 5 to 10 years, to have that slow burn and build my fanbase ground up rather than having that one moment go viral.”
not in a dollhouse anymore is just the spark towards a bigger fire.
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