Photos by Jeremy Saffer
Millions of teens fantasize about becoming famous musicians, but without access to infinite funds or the connections that stem from nepotism, it’s nearly impossible to know how to even start the journey. Lyzzie Larosa, better known as babychaos, may have figured out the cheat code to making it on your own in 2022.
“When I was 14, I attended the Alternative Press Music Awards and was introduced to this new world of alternative bands. I was like, ‘Oh wow, this is absolutely what I want to do,’” Larosa says. “But I was 14 and was like, ‘I’m going to focus on eighth grade for now and when I’m 18, I’ll delve into this.’ By the time I turned 18, social media had begun its full takeover and I decided to go about [my career] the digital way. That way I would have a platform for my art and I wanted to do all of that before starting my journey publicly as a musician.”
Larosa didn’t know it at the time, but she’d made an extremely savvy marketing decision. Many of today’s biggest musicians started off as social media stars, and if you take a peek at any trending music chart, TikTok is driving popularity more than any other source. Larosa chose to make a name for herself on Instagram, garnering a presence through modeling and a love for alternative rock. “I only anticipated hitting 10,000 followers on Instagram and then dropping music,” Larosa says. “But then 10K came and went because there was one point where I kind of blew up. Then 90K came and I was like, ‘OK, now is the time.’”
By that time babychaos was a decade in the making. After falling in love with bands like Evanescence, Larosa taught herself how to play piano and write music of her own. Music was second nature and it became her way of coping with feelings of isolation. “I think the best way to describe my upbringing was lonely,” she says. “I was being bullied and I only knew how to channel that pain by writing music. I wasn’t really tying it to other things to create a picture, I was just stating how badly I was hurting and that was all I could do to escape. But over time, I think I’ve learned to take that pain, fear or anger and tie so many other things to it to create something beautiful. I think it’s a really incredible skill to take something that you fear or that has pained you, then make it into something you love.”
Photo by Jeremy Saffer
Over those 10 years writing music Larosa has learned a lot about herself and how she wants to be represented. She went through hundreds of songs, spending hours on end writing, re-writing, crumpling up her work and starting over again. She put in all the work so once she was ready to finally share her art, she knew the exact first impression she wanted to make.
“When I was 18 or 19, I went through such a tough time searching for love in an external manner from other people,” Larosa says. “I never found that power within myself and [her single ‘flesh’] is about finding that power. It’s finding power through destruction and things that almost take you. It’s about building up from the ashes, trying to find that love through other people, getting hurt by it, falling over and continuing to build yourself up.”
Larosa wrote from the heart and despite her trepidations, her fanbase showed her love and support. This encouraged her to continue making music and before long, she began dropping single after single. Now, Larosa is officially in EP mode and gearing up to release her first complete project.
“The catalog of songs I have right now is all over the place, but my goal wasn’t necessarily to refine, but create what I feel,” Larosa says. “A big theme for me will always be along the same lines as ‘flesh,’ which is [how] to take something that almost destroyed you and make it into something that fuels you. It sounds very cinematic so far and the songs come from things that would happen to me that I don’t really know how else to deal with.”
Like her earliest inspiration, Evanescence, visuals will play a large role in Larosa’s upcoming EP. One of the central symbolic and visual themes throughout the project is religion, which Larosa not only exhibits through her melodic lyrics and haunting photographs but her tattoo collection as well. “I don’t identify as Catholic, but I just got two crosses tattooed on my stomach and I already had a cathedral window on my hand,” Larosa says. “I grew up Roman Catholic and I had some scary experiences as a kid being so closely knit into that world. But it feels cathartic to go back and look at those church windows, the red rugs, the pews, and just be there.”
Lyzzie Larosa may not follow a specific religion, but there’s still something undeniably divine about her path to success. She was fated to find music, discovering her passion at such a young age. She chose to invest her energy into social media early on, which couldn’t have worked out better in her favor. Now with an EP on the way, it’s time for her to take an even greater leap of faith.
Source: www.inkedmag.com