Arabella Latham is slowly but surely blowing up the charts with her unbelievably honest songs and if you don’t know her yet, just give it time.
Better known by her stage name Baby Queen, Bella is taking on the iconic Worthy Farm as she makes her Glastonbury debut with a Sunday slot on the Avalon Stage.
A certified one-to-watch, she is the go-to artist for hit Netflix show Heartstopper and peaked at number five in the UK charts with her first album, Quarter Life Crisis.
However, the 26-year-old singer confessed to Metro.co.uk that her bolshy stage persona and this newfound fame have given her a ‘massive identity crisis’.
Bella is aware of a clash between being so painfully honest in her music and performing as Baby Queen, who she feels is not quite herself.
‘It didn’t feel like my name matched the music,’ Bella considered. ‘I am such a performer when I do go on stage but I’m actually a very quiet person at home and I don’t speak very much.
‘I’m trying to bridge the gap. I want Baby Queen to be me. I think, in a lot of ways Baby Queen is who I’ve always wanted to be and maybe didn’t have the courage to be.
‘It’s exhausting. Sometimes when I get home, I just have to just be by myself for like a week straight because I’ve exerted so much energy.’
That being said, Bella shared: ‘I love honesty and there was a period of time where I felt like if I could say the most uncomfortable thing then that was the way to write the best song possible.’
She continued: ‘Raw Thoughts was the first song that I wrote where I said to myself, “There’s something really interesting in this”. I’d been writing for years and there was something so fresh about the way that I communicated.
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‘I love the word vomit in that song and I love that it felt like a stream of consciousness into words. What happened is over time, I liked the honest things I made more [than the rest].
‘I really thought they were some of the best, most interesting things that I created and they were different to what everyone else was doing. I believe that the only thing that you bring to the table as an artist is your unique way of seeing the world.’
The lyrics to the emotional ‘word vomit’ detail missing an unnamed girl so intensely that the singer spirals into drug use and being ‘unhinged’.
‘Girl, I really miss you, you were my best friend/ In the hours when it falls, I try to comprehend/ All the meaning in emotion, I’m emotionless,’ sings Baby Queen.
Throughout her career, Bella has been upfront about her attraction to women and the biphobia she has faced, although the Dover Beach singer opts not to label her sexuality publicly.
Her connection to Heartstopper has deepened her recognition within the community as a blossoming gay icon, which she acknowledges is all down to the fans.
Having always been close to her fanbase, the Buzzkill singer added: ‘It’s never really mattered where people have found my music, they’ve connected to Baby Queen and understood the character, the music, the messaging, and the honesty.
‘But ultimately, I just felt like with [Heartstopper] because it’s a such a young queer show and because of the kind of music that I make anyways, it was a really natural integration of the fan bases.’
While Bella claims she’s not as courageous as Baby Queen, her journey into the industry certainly wasn’t for the faint-hearted as she moved to London from South Africa at 19.
She brought with her 30 demo CDs which she joked were ‘horrific’ and only had ‘two terrible’ songs.
Success didn’t come easy to her as she knocked on every record label’s door only to be turned away time and time again — she has since opened for Olivia Rodrigo on tour.
Bella said: ‘The creative industry is impossible, I do think that the creative industry has been based on who you know for a really long time.’
Now she’s had her big break, the Dream Girl singer wants to pay her success forward and has invited fans to collaborate with her in a music video for her track, Colours of You.
Working with Converse as part of their Create Next series, fans can get in front of the camera or behind for a chance to build their portfolio (submissions for Baby Queen’s music video in collaboration with Converse have now closed.)
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Speaking of the collaboration, Bella said: ‘I think of myself when I was 19 years old and if I could have had an opportunity like this. All it takes for somebody to come along one day and meet one person that can change the trajectory of their life.
‘It’s such a difficult industry to navigate your way through that it has to come from a place of passion in the first place. The art and the creation has to be the ultimate thing that you that you are getting your satisfaction from.’
While it’s been a long time coming, she describes her newfound fame — and over 500k Spotify listeners — as ‘one of the most extraordinary, unexpected things to happen’.
‘It just it feels like a gift from the heavens,’ Bella beamed. ‘And it’s just been incredible.’
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