INTERVIEW: bella amor on debut EP 'this is where i'm at’: “Being a woman is hard, but it’s beautiful. We kill that stuff every single day that we leave the house, every single day that we're alive.”

Interview: Jett Tattersall
Image: Gus Pryde
Published: 1 August 2025

Rising Australian star bella amor today releases her debut EP this is where i’m at.

An enchanting, honest, quirky and endlessly engaging artist, this EP encapsulates exactly who amor is, and just why she has attracted both critical acclaim and an ever growing fan base since her debut release in 2022.

Featuring six tracks, the EP sees amor open up her diary and sing of her life experiences, both the good and bad, over the last few years, which have been some of the most transformative of her life. While there is a veneer of left of centre perkiness to her music on a first listen, amor demonstrates a deep emotional intelligence that makes her songs a deeply satisfying storytelling experience.

The soundscape across the EP leans into alt-indie-punk territory, but amor authentically moves outside the boundaries of any particular genre, blurring the lines with the addition of pop, rock and even soul elements to make her music a true melting pot.

The EP opens with ‘rocks in my pocket’, which if there is such a thing as a definitive bella amor sound, represents it the best. A indie-rock sound with the merest breath of an electronic shimmer, amor sings openly about struggling with mental health and feeling you are out of your mind: ‘Hoping that I'm fine, but I think that I've lost it.’

‘basement’ dials the tone down with a gentle guitar pop sound and a shuffling beat with a heartbreaking tale of realising your partner has been cheating on you. ‘You lied right to me / You said you were going to the goddamn movies with all your friends…you just didn’t want to see my face when you were deep buried in her basement.’ amor’s vocal perfectly toes a line of resigned sadness and frustrated anger.

‘daisyfields’ is perhaps the most poppy song on the album, with an infectious beat and jangly, psychedelic instrumentation, which is brilliantly contrasted with the following track ‘couch’ which leans more heavily into rock with a shouty, angry, guitar heavy chorus.

Recent single ‘simon says’, written with and produced by Chris Collins, is perhaps the most outwardly vulnerable track on the EP. A laid back guitar track that builds in intensity throughout the song, amor sings of self doubt and a fear of opening up to other people in what is arguably her finest vocal performance on the EP.

The album closes with ‘white rabbit’, produced by Alice Ivy. It begins with a stripped back, electronic sound before growing into a indie-pop sound. It celebrates loving someone more than life itself - ‘You are the answer to all / You are the best thing since sliced bread….It was true love when our eyes met’ - and has an addictive refrain ‘I just wanna butter you up’. It is the perfect end to the EP, after exploring hesrtbreak, pain, doubts and struggles, it closes on a moment of warmth, love and joy, making all the preceding trials worth it.

A debut EP is a defining moment in any artist’s career and with this is where i’m at bella amor has proven what a very special artist she is. It is music that is very much her own and representative of her generation, but is also infused with a wisdom and style which transcends age and is able to connect deeply with you no matter your stage of life. This EP is surely just the start of a significant career for amor, and we recently said down with her to chat more about its creation.

Hello Bella, how are you?
I am good. I am so good!

Your new EP this is where i’m at is out today and you have described it as an auditory journal, which I'm a huge fan of. What was the moment where you were like ‘I’m ready for the EP now’?
I don't think there was actually a particular point. I think it all came together pretty naturally. I was just making heaps of random little songs to the point where I was like, ‘You know what? I think I think I just need to put these as a collection’. it's was hard for me to tie them all together, but I realised at the end of the day, this is where i'm at is about my experiences and me, less than the actual music itself. Every experience that's on the EP happened and is real, so it's like, you know what? Let's just put it in a freaking track for everybody!

You've worked with some pretty cracking people on this collection, like Alice Ivy and Chris Collins. There’s very different energies coming off the both of them, what surprised you about your own energy as a songwriter shifting, depending on who you're working with?
Being with Alice Ivy brought up a lot of fun, and like, ‘hell yeah, I'm here’. It felt really powerful, and because she is such a firecracker, the energy between us when we first met was just unmatched. I was like, this person is so radiant of joy and love and light and everything that's good in the world, and she helped bring that out in me. That really came through in the sound and in the lyrics, particularly in ‘daisyfields’. I feel like that song really came from both of our energies, just being so connected and feeling so free. At the end of the session, we got sparklers and we sat outside and we were like, ‘yes, we did it’, and it was the most beautiful experience. I typically write sad songs, they're still poppy, but lyrically, they're really sad. So to shift out of that was a really big thing for me, and it felt really nice.

With Chris, he just cut all the bullshit and got to the bottom of who I was. I felt like I was so vulnerable, and so myself, and I don't think I have ever really felt that bare before. And that was also a really cool aspect to have, particularly with ‘simon says’, that song is really sad, and it also feels sad, which is something I'm not really used to. So those two polarities are so beautiful, and it was really cool to see myself being stretched and expanded in both of those ways.

That was so beautifully answered! The way you pinpointed that polarity is great, because your music, it always screams joy, even when you're hitting quite hard subjects, and so I love that Alice Ivy was able to able to unshackle that even further. I think it's actually really hard to write from a place of joy, because as much as we have a good time in it, our joy doesn't always inspire us, whereas you wallow in the sadness. So that's when the pen and the guitar comes out!
100%. I'm typically a very chirpy person. I'm very happy, I love my life, I think it's cool. But I also face a lot, and I go through a lot, and I think it's really hard to feel that sometimes. You can get really stuck in just being happy, but it's not necessarily the happy moments that stick with you. When you're happy, you just feel that in the moment, and that's you being present. But whereas when you're sad, you tend to relive that moment over and over again, because pain just sticks more, for some reason.

You did touch on it before, but let’s talk about the sugar high of ‘daisyfields’. Break down this gorgeous track for me and its creation, and possibly even the trepidation you had of just letting yourself go into those fields!
I totally forgot about this until I was going through my old phone from snaps of that day, but I actually had a panic attack in that morning going to the studio. I was just not really feeling it, I was a little bit down, I didn’t really know how I was feeling. When I got into the room with Alice Ivy and [co-writer] Demi Louise, I was like, these guys are so beautiful, and they're really just reminding me that life is actually not that deep. Sometimes it's okay just to have fun. We were trialling some stuff, seeing how things felt and we were so in each other's energy that we just wanted to create something that was fun, because they make me feel fun, and they made me feel so much better than I did initially going into the session. It was so beautiful to experience that anxiety and then just go to the complete other end.

So ‘daisyfields’ came from that moment of being like, it's actually not that bad and life is really, really cool, and it's really fun. Then it played into talking a little bit more about the self and how we can bring this greatness into reality. Sometimes we just feel a little bit shit, and that's fine, but other times, we are the boss bitch, we are so cool. I think this song just captures that perfectly, and they helped bring that out, which was everything I needed on that day.

In your music, you're singing exactly who you are and where you're at. What has been the reaction from your listeners to your deliciously fun but quite brutal lyricism and songwriting?
The feedback has been so good. Good is not even a word that I can use to describe it. Everyone has been so real, I think that's probably the word. People have been talking to me and sharing their experiences with the world, especially in relation to ‘simon says’, feeling like they're not good enough for other people, feeling like sometimes they're really small or don't really know who they are. Everyone’s just found a really nice space and community with that, and it's also really nice for me to know that I'm not alone, which is why I also make music. I don't want anyone to be alone, because sometimes I feel like that. The feedback has just been so bloody beautiful, and everyone is loving it, which is just so insane to me. I can't even fathom that the response was that good.

It's really interesting, because I feel like a few years before you started making music, everyone was forcing this notion of we need integrity and everything has to be real, but it was still falsified. Whereas I feel like the music you're making in your generation, everyone genuinely is living it, and that's what you want to consume. You want to consume reality, but without the horror story. The reality with the tongue in cheek and laughing at yourself and still feeling for each other. There's a kindness to it.
Yeah, 100%. I genuinely think that just comes from also being a human. I'm not trying to pretend that I'm some god that everybody should bow down to. I'm simply just a person that creates stuff that I'm feeling. We're just humans at the end of the day, it's just what we do. And my way of trying to contribute to society is by creating something that's real to me and that is probably real to other people as well.

Speaking of reality, your song ‘couch’. We've all had a couch, right? But on the EP, it's equal parts intimacy and steel toe Blundstone kicks to the face! Talk to me about the creation of this one and where it came from.
It’s a really funny story. I was in the studio with Chris, the day before we’d written ‘simon says’, and I came in and I was like, ‘damn, ‘simon says’ is such a cool song, I [now] don't know what I want to write about, I don't know how I'm feeling’. So I opened my laptop and I started getting ready to write some lyrics down, and there was a message from one of my ex partners ‘Hey, I'm thinking of coming to your show’. And I was like, no, I don't want that to happen, and then naturally, that sparked something in me that was like, I'm really not cool with that. I don't really like that energy from you. So I'm going to write a song that's about why are you trying to follow me everywhere I’m going? Chris started playing some stuff, and I was really feeling it. I had a a little voice note of a melody, and as he was playing I was singing that melody and I came up with ‘life has got so much better now that you're not around’ and we built it off that, which I think was pretty cool. So I'm really thankful for that message! It created a really cool song.

When we spoke last time, we talked about your artistry and those big voices, big divas, big sounds that inspired you. How have your heroes influenced the approach to this EP?
I feel like Raye is a really beautiful example of this. She is so uniquely herself, and she never strives to be anything bigger than and to me, that is just the most pure form of being a human. That really, really spoke to me, and she really inspired me to be real with myself and genuinely put down everything that I'm feeling. Just seeing all these other women be so powerful in their voices really helped me find my own. They were like, ‘I'm here and I'm loud and I'm going to be loud’. So I was like, hell yeah, then me too. I'm going to be loud, I'm going to say what I want to say, because I've got a lot to say. Just them being themselves really inspired me to be myself a little bit more.

It's that combination which you do, this soaring voice, but with these pop sensibilities. The evening gown is gone, and you're actually just sitting on the couch in a pair of jeans, and there's something about this sense of the many facets of what it means to be a woman. You can be all those things, and in doing so the sound is just even bigger because there's no constraints.
Yes, I totally agree with that statement. Being a woman is hard, but it is so beautiful, and there are so many different layers that I think we all take on, and we do it with such grace. We kill that stuff every single day that we leave the house, every single day that we're alive. We kill it.

You have played some pretty huge stages, which is really exciting. How has your relationship to performance changed? Do you still feel like when you're on stage, you're singing in your bedroom? Or have you become the ultimate show pony?
I definitely have found the sweet spot of putting a little something on for the people, but also still being able to show up as much as I can myself. I feel like between the time we've spoken last, I've had to create another version of myself to go up on stage and to be seen by everybody because I used to find it really hard to get on stage. Performing is fine, performing is chill, I love it, it's so fun. It's the most present I have ever been, and I will ever be. But it's always the anticipation before the show. I tend to get really nervous, sometimes a little bit anxious. I have to do my meditations, I have to breathe a little bit more. But now that I know that's kind of the way that I am, I'm able to work with that a lot more. I definitely feel that I have stepped into a sustainable way of performing for me, which is cool. It took me a minute to get there, but I think I've done it, or I am on the path to doing it.

Speaking of performing, you are about to tour the EP, which is also very exciting. What is it you hope your audience feel when they get to shout back this is where you're at live?
I hope they feel liberated, and I hope they feel free, just because the world is so hectic. I think it has been hectic for a very long time, but with everything going on in the world right now, it's really hard to find peace, and really hard to find that freedom and liberation. So I hope, at least for the hours that they're there, they can be present and not worry and think about anything else. Just have a sliver of time for themselves where they are fully and uniquely just allowed to be themselves and just chill for a minute. That's what I want everyone to do, and to take away.

I love that. Where do you feel you might be headed next?
You know, I haven't really thought about what's next. I think more fun. I want to have fun, you know, I want to live a life that's worth telling stories and writing songs about. That's where I want to be. That's where I want to go. Sonically, I want to go a little bit more down the route of being acoustic and being able to really sing. Pop is singing, but pop is sometimes a little bit hard because there's a specific way that it's sung. It's very repetitive, which I love, pop music is so sick, but I would just love to expand the idea of pop a little bit more and bring a little bit more soulfulness into it and a bit more feeling, which I think it could use a little bit more of. So that's probably where I'm headed!

this is where i’m at is out now via Sony Music Australia. You can download and stream here
Follow bella amor on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok .

BELLA AMOR TOUR DATES. TICKET INFO HERE

8 August – Mo’s Desert Clubhouse, Gold Coast (18+)
9 August – 38 Berwick St (MIC), Brisbane (under 18)
16 August – Blute’s Bar, Brisbane (18+)
22 August – Low 302, Sydney (18+)
23 August – Bergy Bandroom, Melbourne (18+)