Sofia Isella: "I’m very argumentative. You know those free Bible course people, who stand on the street? I’ll stop and debate them"

“I hate religion,” Sofia Isella tells me at one point during our interview. “I used to have a big tolerance for it, but I’ve slowly just not been able to take it anymore. They’ve chosen this aesthetic, of holiness and beauty – but the core of it is just so violent, and so dark.”

It’s a sentiment that’s echoed and explored across the 21-year-old’s new EP, Something Is A Shell, released independently this month. The project, which follows last year’s I’m Camera, marks Sofia as one of the most boundary-pushing forces in alternative pop – and an artist who can not only open for Taylor Swift on the Eras Tour, and build up a social media following in its millions, but wade boldly into thorny themes like the hypersexualisation of young girls, and the hypocrisy of religion.

The latter is the immediate focus of Something Is A Shell, with opening track ‘Numbers 31:17-18’ exploring one of the most disturbing verses in the Bible – when Moses commanded the Israelites to, as Sofia paraphrases, “Kill all the boys, and kill every woman who has had sex with a man. But save for yourselves the young girls who have not had sex with a man… Save for yourselves the virgins.”

“I’m very argumentative,” she tells me, speaking from her hometown of Los Angeles. “You know those free Bible course people, who stand on the street? I’ll stop and debate them. I’ve done it twice now. I just want to hear one of them give me a good explanation, about why this is justified, and what it means – or even hear one person tell me that they knew about this verse, without me having to teach them about it. And none of them can.”

The song goes on to mock a popular response she’s come up against: “Context! Context! There is context to the slaughter.”

“That word!” she remarks now. “That’s the first thing all of them will say: ‘Context’. That word has driven me crazy, because there is no ‘context’ that would justify child rape to me. So I don’t know what the point of using that word is.”

“One thing I’ve seen people say is that they think this verse isn’t about taking kids for marriage and sex – it’s more about taking them to be part of the culture,” she continues. “But if you want to talk about context, we can hop to a different part of the Bible, like Deuteronomy 21:10-14, where Moses says that, if you go to war, and you take captives, and among these captives are ‘beautiful women’, you can take them as your bride and shave their head. You let them mourn their father and mother – who you just killed – and then you can marry them. So those people saying that clearly do not understand the context of Numbers, and what Moses has said about what happens during war.”

This inherently inquisitive nature and probing intelligence has clearly shaped who Sofia is as a songwriter – as evidenced on ‘Above The Neck’, another highlight from the EP. It’s a cutting commentary on exploitation and hypersexualisation, delivered in an almost spoken-word style.

“With ‘Above The Neck’, I’m talking about how everything is sexualised – how kids are sexualised, and how women in porn are sexualised to behave like they’re a kid,” she explains. “And how everything’s normalising that. And that references back to ‘Numbers...’, because that verse is normalising it in a big way – because it is God’s word. That’s what really makes that verse crazy to me.”

‘Out In The Garden’, meanwhile, was inspired by Sofia – who revels in a dark, often unsettling aesthetic – being described online as “demonic”.

“It’s interesting, when I first heard that, it didn’t stir up any strong emotion besides laughter,” she recalls. “But I thought about it afterwards, and I just thought of how often religion is comfortable with demonising things, and making them evil.”

Whether she’s tackling religious or political issues (2023’s ‘Us And Pigs’ was inspired by the overturning of Roe v. Wade), Sofia has never been held back by fears that she might “divide [her] audience” or “make people uncomfortable.”

“Even before I was writing about it, I had all these topics I would discuss and argue,” she tells me. “I like to learn about the other side’s perspective as much as I can, and fully understand it. I like to feel, emotionally, why they are defending it.”

But Sylvia Plath’s tendency to bring “a sort of humour to darkness” is also something Sofia has tapped into in her work.

“I think I relate to her in that way,” she nods. “I became aware of her when I was around 16 or 17. I found her through her poetry – and The Bell Jar, which is phenomenal. I love her words. I’m a giant fan.”

This passion for poetry and music was also something Sofia explored at home from a young age. Raised in a creative household (her father, Claudio Miranda, is an Oscar-winning cinematographer), and homeschooled throughout her childhood, she’s been classically trained on the violin since the age of three.

“It was the first experience I had where I worked at something to smithereens,” she says of the violin. “I would practise for five hours a day – with one hour just reserved for scales. I would practice if I was sick – I’d play violin over the puke bowl. I’d cry if I couldn’t practice. And that kind of intensity has always followed me around since then – that devotion to something.”

At the same time, she admits that she still struggles to wrap her head around the fact that people are out there listening to her music – despite having clocked up over 150 million streams worldwide.

“With the numbers, it’s like there’s no weight to them,” she reflects. “They’re just floating around in time and space. So I have a hard time assigning personhood to the numbers until I’m at the shows. It’s the shows that have more weight for me.”

Before landing in Dublin for her eagerly awaited headline show in June, as part of the European leg of her own Her Desire, The Nemesis Tour, Sofia will also be heading off on a string of North American tour dates with Florence + The Machine this month.

“That’ll be so special,” she enthuses. “Florence is just a legend. I’ve been a fan of hers for years. I can’t speak highly enough of her – I think she’s the most talented thing since sliced bread.”

There’s been other established artists who have played a supportive role in Sofia’s journey too.

“Taylor was obviously one of the massive, massive ones,” she says of opening for Swift in London’s Wembley Stadium. “That whole experience was a very emotional one. She wrote me a handwritten letter, telling me what my music means to her, and I was just sobbing backstage.

“But there’s been so many. Tom Odell, Melanie [Martinez], Glass Animals – incredible. Very emotional, full-circle experiences. These people that I’ve opened for, they’re just great people.”

Between that busy touring itinerary, and a steady run of EP releases over these past few years, Sofia has yet to unveil plans for a debut album – but she remains as creative as ever.

“I’m constantly writing new music,” she tells me. “And I’m constantly in a tornado of water. That’s kind of my life experience right now – a tornado of water...”

• Something Is A Shell is out now. Sofia Isella plays the National Stadium in Dublin on June 1.