BELARO on “Grateful”, navigating the music industry and living her best authentic life

I wanted to get started with your background for those just discovering you and your music. Can you tell me a little bit about your family and how did you end up on stage at such a young age?

I grew up in a traditional Spanish family and it’s very musical. My dad is a well-known guitarist. My whole family on my dad’s side is from Spain; he came to the US when he was ten years old, with his parents and his two brothers. They were fleeing from the Franco regime. They came here with not a penny; first, they went to Santa Barbara and then moved to Los Angeles, where they started doing guitar lessons, and a couple of years later they became the first classical guitar quartet. So, they went from nothing to performing at the Hollywood Bowl, Carnegie Hall and built this amazing thing for themselves out of nothing. My mom is a singer—she has a beautiful voice—and I think my voice definitely comes from her, and my dad can sing as well. At home, we listened to classical music, but I’d say my dad really is like a rebel in classical music. We grew up listening to Broadway, we grew up listening to pop. When he was a teenager, he grew up listening to the Supremes, you know, he would blast it in his convertible.

Was it your dad who was encouraging you to start singing?

I think it just started with my mom playing the current records that were out in the early 2000s. And I started finding my voice at a really young age. I grew up singing a lot of Broadway, a lot of musical theater and doing talent shows and little school theater productions. And my dad was never the type that wanted to force the guitar on me. He really wanted me to do what I wanted to do and wanted to support me in that. I don’t know how to play the guitar to this day.

I think this is the best way when you raise your kids and you let them find what they want to do. I’ve read that you started your professional career at 14!

I started taking meetings in LA at the age of 14 with a couple of big people in the industry, but they turned me away, because I was too young and I didn’t write my own music. And that was a big struggle for me because I didn’t have a thing for writing. It wasn’t something I did, so hearing that for the first time, at 14 years old, I wasn’t sure what to do. I tried to write songs—it was trial and error.

Do you remember the first song you’ve ever written?

Yes, but I was never proud of it. I’ve always been really hard on myself.

Do you think you would be proud of it right now looking back?

[Laughs] No, definitely not. I mean, it was an accomplishment that I did write a song, but I would want no one to hear that song to this day. At around 15 years old, I met Olivier Bassil and Clever, who is an amazing artist, now signed to Post Malone and Republic Records, and they were kind of doing a songwriting duo at the time. They started working with me and I had no clue in the world about writing. So Clever was actually writing the songs with Olivier for me at a certain point. I think we got one full song done before I said I wanted to try writing again. And Clever was honestly so cool, he was definitely a big step for me, creatively, a big part of me growing as a writer, he just sat down with me and was like, let’s write a song. And right then and there it clicked for me and I actually started to enjoy it. And I even started writing for a couple of other artists myself!

And you currently co-write your own songs? When I’m listening to them, I definitely can feel your personality!

Yeah, definitely! I’m very involved. I also co-write with my amazingly talented friend, Sophia Romano. We met when we were in high school and became best friends. And, she wrote “Scarlet” with me. She wrote “FGIRL” with me, which was the first one that I released. For “Forever”, I actually wrote the whole topline of, it was my first baby.

You released your first song under the name BELLA and then you changed it to BELARO. Can you tell me what inspired the change? And let me tell you, I absolutely love BELARO, it feels very strong!

Going into the music industry at first up until I turned 16, I would introduce myself with my real name Bella Romero. But then when I signed to management, the artist name BELLA was created. After we parted ways it just didn’t resonate with me, even though it is my first name, as I progressed, I felt more and more disconnected from it and from the past. So, BELARO is a mix of my first and last names, and it was a cool way to mix what I originally had with Bella Romero—this makes BELARO more of an artist name, as well as creative and unique. So, we put out “Forever” as the first song under that name.

And that’s your most-streamed song on Spotify so far?

Yes! That’s the one! that one I’m really proud of for sure.

You’ve had great success with all your music so far, you’ve got a lot of streams, media coverage and major playlist placements and it seems like a really amazing journey! How’s it been for you to hear that feedback and knowing that people are resonating with your music?

It feels amazing, honestly, because it’s been many years that I feel like people didn’t resonate with what I was doing. And I think the problem with that was that it wasn’t authentic, a lot of times it was what other people wanted me to be…which is why I think no one clicked with it. And it took me a while to figure out really who I was as an artist and as a person as well. And I think that growing up and getting older and learning the world, it’s going to change. You’re going to evolve as a human and as an artist. And that’s just how it is. And the fact that people are now resonating with it, I think it’s just because I strive to speak the truth and I strive to be vulnerable, be authentic with my audience now. So “Forever” was the first song that I feel really showed the true me.

That’s amazing! You released “Scarlet” back in December last year, it was definitely my favorite release so far. Can you tell me a little bit about the creative process behind this?

My friend Sophia Romano was staying with my family and I at the beginning of lockdown. We were spending a lot of time together and we saw it as an opportunity to write. We FaceTimed our friend, Mike Hart, who is an amazing producer, and actually produced “Forever” along with Olivier Bassil, and that was the first song the three of us worked on. So, we wrote “Scarlet” in March right when lockdown started. We were talking about Dolly Parton and how much we love her and admire her work. She is just such a queen. And for Sophia and me, “Jolene” is one of our favorite songs. And we thought, “What if we did a modern take on this?” This is such an iconic story. And we came up with Scarlet and wrote out a story!

And of course, your brand new single just came out! Congratulations! I feel very lucky to have heard it so early on. This song is such a hit! Tell me about it.

The song’s called “Grateful”. I think this is my favorite song I’ve ever done. It has a little bit of a classic vibe, super-powerful vocals, which I’ve always wanted to do. I wrote this one with my other great friend, Vanessa Campagna, who is an incredible writer and artist out of Nashville. While we were planning the release, we noticed it wasn’t there yet, it didn’t have everything it needed in my mind, so we involved our amazing friend who is based out of Norway, his producer name is MakeTheNoises. He is beyond talented. I thought we just needed some of his extra spice on the song. I felt that he could make it hit so much harder and he really did! He brought magic to it and I’ve never ever wanted to cry when hearing any song that I’ve done. And when he added his production, did that final touch on it, I started to cry. It was so authentic. It was everything I really wanted it to be. So, I hope people will connect to this story as much as I did when I wrote it.

Written by: Bella Romero, Vanessa Campagna, Olivier Bassil & MakeTheNoises
Produced by: Olivier Bassil & MakeTheNoises
Mixed and Mastered by: Brian Sheil

That’s amazing! I’m so excited for everyone to hear it. I first met you on Clubhouse where you were hosting a room to help independent artists, it was absolutely amazing all the knowledge and experience you shared. And I was curious if it’s your goal right now to stay fully independent? Or do you see yourself being signed with a major label?

Keeping it independent is definitely a harder route. Everything falls on you financially and creatively. I think it’s a great thing to be independent, but it’s really about how long you can be independent. And if you can the whole way, that’s amazing. But I think that the labels can bring a lot. And so, for me, I think that for now, I will stay independent. But eventually, I would want to sign.

And speaking about your journey in the music industry so far, what are the hardest lessons you have learned or obstacles you had to overcome?

It was definitely working with the wrong people. When you’re a young artist starting out and people see that innocence, they take advantage of that sometimes. And that was a big thing for me, but also, I feel that being a young woman in the industry starting out was definitely hard. I feel like it’s harder for some female artists to make it.

100%! Just navigating this industry as a woman is really hard for both artists and music professionals!

It’s really hard. And you have to work about ten times harder for people to take you seriously. And that was a big thing I had to learn. And it was a big realization I had to make because I just had to come to terms that this was going to be what I was working with and how was I going to navigate through it. And, yeah, it was something that I actually dealt with firsthand dealing with female health issues and men telling me I shouldn’t work and shouldn’t continue a career because of those things when I was 16 years old. It was hard being told that I shouldn’t continue a career because of things that women deal with. And I think that being a young woman is really hard and involves learning how to protect yourself. It was definitely a hard thing for me, being young and being mistreated in the industry and not respected, not taken seriously, being compared to other female artists a lot. That was something I definitely had to overcome.

I’m glad you navigated through it and I’m so happy to see all the magic that’s happening for you these days! I have one last question for you. It’s something I always love to ask—and I hope the answers will inspire people reading it, especially if they are feeling lost—thinking of yourself as a soul on Earth, what do you think your purpose is?

I’m a very spiritual person, but I’ll be honest: I don’t know why we’re here, but I know that I’m doing what I’m doing to bring joy to other people’s lives, while hoping that other people on this earth will resonate and feel what I’m feeling. And all we can do is go through struggles together and try to come out of that. And so that’s really what I aim to do in my life and in my music.

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