BELLA HABIB | INTERVIEW + TRACK REVIEW
- 5 days ago
- 7 min read
Bella Habib doesn’t pick a lane, she picks all of them at once. The 22 year old Sydney alt-pop artist writes from the exact spot where confidence and insecurity, glamour and mess, power and vulnerability sit on top of each other and refuse to separate. Her debut single “Royal Blue” is a study in that push and pull. The colour itself is the mood, expensive and regal on the surface, riptide and treasure underneath, and the song lives in the space between wanting something that feels wrong on paper and knowing it feels right anyway.
What makes Bella’s world compelling is that none of it feels performed. The theatre kid instincts are there in the way she commands a room, but the writing goes somewhere less polished and more honest. She talks about music as the thing that literally keeps her functioning, about identity as something she’s still figuring out in real time, and about the quiet violence of trying to fit yourself into places that were never built for you. In the interview below she opens up about the colour that unlocked the song, what modern femininity feels like from the inside, and why the messy version of confidence is the only kind worth writing about.
TRACK REVIEW - “Royal Blue”
Royal Blue sets itself up the way early Rihanna singles used to, ominous underneath but with pop reflexes at the surface, and a bit of feistiness holding it together. The 808 is smooth and huge, sitting deep in the mix and pulsing through the whole track. There's a pitchy shift in the strings that keeps catching my ear, a small unsettling colour that gives the song its edge.
The "caught in the riptide" section is the moment. The pulse changes, the pace shifts, and then the big 808 rolls back in and it lands somewhere physical. Production is on point across the board, progressing through call and response between vocal and instrumental, and Bella's syncopated delivery locks into the groove without ever settling. The whole thing is a vibe.
Underneath the production there's a real emotional tension holding it together. Royal Blue lives in that in-between place where wanting something feels out of reach and unmistakably right at the same time. That push and pull is built into the track itself, sitting between the poppy hooks and the heavier bass, keeping the whole thing suspended without ever letting go.
“Royal Blue” feels like a colour, a mood and a personality all at once. What was it about that shade specifically that captured the emotional world you were trying to build around the song?
I gravitated towards the shade Royal Blue because of its expensive, majestic, almost regal associations. The song is ultimately about something that feels out of reach but also so incredibly right, so I wanted a specific word that expresses the power and intensity of that conflicting instinctual push and pull. I also mention the words ‘riptide’ and ‘treasure’ in the song, so when the colour ‘Royal Blue’ popped into my head, it perfectly captured the literal, and metaphorical world I was building.
Your artistry seems built around contradiction, confidence and insecurity, glamour and emotional chaos. Do you think people become more magnetic when they stop trying to hide those opposing sides of themselves?
100%. Humans are so fascinating, so complex, and so contradictory. We are deeply flawed in beautiful ways and I think allowing yourself to feel such contrasts is so important and quite brave. I feel like it’s easier to put on this badass persona and act unbothered, same way it’s easier to let insecurity and doubt win, which is why the purpose of my artistry is to not ignore certain sides of how I feel, instead, emphasise them and creatively express how multifaceted and layered humans are.
A lot of pop music sells empowerment as perfection, but your music feels more interested in power through vulnerability. Was it important for you to make confidence feel messy and human rather than polished?
Oh absolutely. Don’t get me wrong, I love how a lot of pop music evokes undeniable confidence through a more ‘straight to the point’, clean cut, polished way, however, I really want to avoid that to an extent with my music. I don’t think it’s honest with the way that I am as a person. I care about things so much and think about things over and over again until I drive myself mad. It’s very rarely an ‘everything’s perfect, whatever’ vibe…sometimes it is in a facetious way…but I would say my confidence comes from being able to sit with uncomfortable feelings instead of just avoiding them which definitely comes across in my music.
Growing up feeling visibly different in a predominantly white environment must shape the way you see identity forever. Do you think music became a place where you could finally stop translating yourself for other people?
Well I like how music is just sound. There’s something special about being able to hear what someone has to say through just their words and musicality rather than knowing what they look like. It’s also cool seeing artists of all cultures and ethnicities share their own stories and be unapologetically loud and powerful. That’s definitely something that inspires me. So many artists like Doechii, Doja Cat, and Beyonce really have that energy which I love. As a little kid, not understanding too much about culture differences etc. definitely made music even more special because it had nothing to do with anything beyond words.
There’s something theatrical about your world, but not in a fake way, more like heightened emotional reality. Do you think your theatre background taught you how to emotionally command a room before you ever stepped into music?
Yesss! Theatre one million percent shaped the way I view performance. I loveee a choreographed show, with production and dancing and blocking etc. I appreciate the artists who do the most when performing! I remember seeing Doechii at Spilt Milk last year and my jaw was literally underground with the way she commanded the stage, she hit every single beat, and the production world around her. That’s a performance I remember. Stage presence is definitely something theatre and dance taught me growing up, and because I was on stage quite a bit, it feels pretty natural and comfortable now.
Artists like Rihanna and Lorde mastered the art of sounding emotionally untouchable while secretly revealing everything underneath. Do you think mystery can sometimes reveal more truth than direct honesty?
Oooh I think elusiveness and mystery can potentially tell you what things you’re avoiding…or maybe what you’re trying to make sense of. Part of the writing process at least for me is really exploring a situation in depth, viewing it from different perspectives, and trying to land on just one. But I’ve always been drawn to a bit of mystery and songs that make you read between the lines a little. Straight honesty is great but sometimes it’s too easy. I like songs that make you think. Mystery forces more questions to be asked and more ideas to be had so I do think it can reveal more truth because it’s nuanced. I use to write lyrics that were way too metaphorical and mysterious that I look back on now and have zero idea what I was trying to say so it’s a fine line!
You describe music as something that literally kept you functioning. Was there a moment where songwriting stopped being a hobby or dream and became emotional survival?
Everyday to be honest. I feel like it’s always been my safety net and if all hell breaks loose, at least I have my thing that makes me feel most like me. Specifically when I’ve gone through heartbreak, grief, and when I feel lost or like I'm self-sabotaging, it’s literally the only thing that gets me through it and allows me to understand my feelings as much as I can. It’s quite beautiful how trauma can somehow be turned into something pretty decent, because lots of my favourite songs I’ve written have stemmed from the most difficult times.
A lot of young artists chase aesthetics before identity. Your world already feels visually and emotionally very specific. Did that clarity come naturally, or did it take years of figuring out who Bella Habib actually was underneath everything else?
Oh it’s taken every day since I could talk to fully figure out what my true identity is. I think getting older and experiencing different relationships with people, as well as general life circumstances has made me learn more about myself and what kind of emotional and visual world I enjoy expressing in an authentic way. I’ve gone through many different stages of identity and personalities in a way while figuring out ‘who I am’. I think the main things I see sticking with me now that haven't always been there is I'm now a lot less of a people pleaser, I try not to put people on pedestals too much, i’ve got a lot more genuine confidence, and I love being unapologetically myself and letting people go while having the right people stick.
Your music feels designed for late-night confidence spirals, the kind where someone feels invincible one minute and emotionally destroyed the next. Do you think modern femininity naturally exists inside that emotional duality now?
A million percent. There’s so much to think about as a woman especially in the music industry…how you’ll be perceived, how confidence can be misconstrued as arrogance, how to be vulnerable without seeming like you’re pity-seeking, how being passionate can feel dramatic, and just the general sexualisation of women. Feeling powerful and powerless go hand in hand a lot of the time but at the end of the day I think the most important thing is to feel that contrast but stay in your lane and aim to succeed despite the outside noise.
If someone discovers Bella Habib alone in their headphones after feeling insecure, invisible or emotionally misunderstood all day, what do you hope they feel about themselves by the time the song ends?
That they’re never alone, everything passes and it will be okay. AND it’s okay to bitch and moan, call people out, feel misunderstood and complain about it, or make fun of it. Basically, whatever someone feels about a situation is valid.
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