#moving his hands around like he's singing an authentic italian aria

[abrandnewshadow]

interview with zuke smith 2016

[itwouldhityoulikeasledgehammer]

　　　　　　　　　　　　　 ❋ 𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐚 𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐜𝐨 ❋ 　　　　　　　　　　　　　🗞️ 　 𝗆𝖺𝗋𝗂𝖾𝖼𝗅𝖺𝗂𝗋𝖾 　　　　　　　　　　　　　 📅 　𝗁𝗈𝗅𝗂𝖽𝖺𝗒 𝟤𝟢𝟣𝟪 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐎𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑 𝐒𝐈𝐃𝐄 𝐎𝐅 𝐀𝐑𝐈𝐀 𝐕𝐄𝐋𝐀𝐒𝐂𝐎 𝐒𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐜𝐨𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐛𝐢𝐠 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐕𝐌𝐀𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐀𝐌𝐀𝐬, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐦𝐚𝐝𝐞 𝐡𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐚 𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐨𝐧-𝐩𝐥𝐮𝐬 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐦𝐬 𝐨𝐧 𝐒𝐩𝐨𝐭𝐢𝐟𝐲, 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐬𝐮𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐬 𝐛𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐭 𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞. Aria Velasco loves to explore. Whenever she visits a new city (which is always a lot), she likes to run out and check out all the cool restaurants and shops, ride all the rides at the nearest theme park, and “go on, like, a crazy mountain adventure.” However, exploring new cities like a maniac while you’re also in the middle of a tour can present problems. For example, back in May, Velasco had to cancel some performances due to her pregnancy. Now, in September, at her doctor’s insistence, she is trying very hard to chill. Stay at home and watch movies. Do a face mask. Relax. “I realized if I don’t take months off, I will actually die,” says Velasco, 21. “Or collapse, so I’m trying not to go too crazy for the rest of the year.” Fresh from the shower and dressed in a hoodie and sweats, her long dark hair combed over her shoulders, Velasco curls up on the couch, tucks her white-socked feet beneath her, and continues: “It’s hard, though. I’m at this point in my life when I’m so happy—it’s hard to say no.” Anyone who’s heard Velasco’s sultry monster hit “Havana” (which, let’s face it, is everyone) knows she’s had a heck of a year. Aria won Velasco the Artist of the Year award at MTV’s Video Music Awards, and she also won for Video of the Year (for “Havana”). She picked up four American Music Awards in October, including New Artist of the Year. She had a beautiful and healthy baby in July. She’s in love with her boyfriend, actor, model and musician Samuel Morgan. Oh yeah, and “Havana” is now Spotify’s most-streamed song by a solo female artist in its history, with more than a billion streams. As Taylor Swift recently told, “She’s killing it right now, and she will continue to kill it. But beyond that, she’s one of the most wonderful people I’ve ever met in my entire life....She’s such a wonderful, incredible, honest, generous, graceful, hilarious, enthusiastic, childlike, and yet mature person, and I’m so happy to have her in my life.” It’s enough to make you hate her—except Velasco is not really someone it’s possible to hate. The child of Italian-Mexican, she grew up basically around the world, dreaming of auditioning for the Disney Channel. She hugs everyone she meets. She spends much of her free time hanging out with her son her friends and with her brothers. Up until some months ago, she shared a house with Lorenzo and his girlfriend, and Aria’s best friend, Daisy Raymond. When she was growing up, Disney World was not so much a place for Velasco as her personal North Star. It’s, in fact, the place that made Velasco want to perform.“My friends and I all wanted to be on the Disney Channel growing up,” she says. “We all wanted to be singers.” The fact that Velasco actually grew up to be a singer, however, still seems pretty miraculous because, for most of her childhood, Velasco suffered from intense stage fright. In order to understand Velasco properly, you have to understand, first of all, that she is very shy—and also that she is a natural exhibitionist. Velasco loves nothing more than the idea of baring her soul, of sharing her deepest secrets with the world, but she also hates the idea of doing it in front of anyone she actually knows. “I had intense performance anxiety as a kid,” says Velasco. But she also really needed to sing. So she practiced by doing karaoke to Britney Spears and Hilary Duff albums in the basement. Sometimes Velasco sang to a friend over the phone. Sometimes she sang through the closet door to her grandmother, but if that door opened, forget it. It was over. “I’m an introvert,” explains Velasco, who once turned down an offer to star in her middle school’s musical because the thought of singing in front of her whole school froze her heart. “I love any activity where I can observe and not necessarily be a part of it.” Except, of course, when she’s in the middle of the spotlight in a tiny shimmery dress, dancing in front of thousands of people. “Basically, there’s the me that I really am, on the inside, which is the nerdy one—the kind of introverted, shy one—and then there’s the sexy, overly confident one, doing great dance moves and being super sassy.” Velasco’s irresistible video for “Havana” nicely showcases these two sides of her personality. With her enormous liquid-brown eyes and voice that swings effortlessly from a deep, smoky growl to a breathy high pitch, Velasco is a temptress with a sense of humor, a geek unafraid to make fun of herself. The girl comes alive in front of the camera or when she’s up on stage in a packed stadium. She has what Simon Cowell calls the X factor, which is why, in 2012, when she was 15, Velasco convinced her parents to spend the money for her quinceañera celebration to drive her and the rest of the family to audition for Cowell’s show – and her brother did it too! “There’s way less risk performing or exposing yourself to strangers than there is in your own town or home,” says Cabello, who felt trapped and miserable inside the inhibited persona she’d created for herself. “On The X Factor, I kind of became the person that I wanted to be. In interviews, I was super goofy and confident. I look at videos of myself from the first performance, and I’m winking and pointing. I was dying inside—literally, my hands were shaky, my voice would be flat allover—but I was like, I just have to just go for it.” Cowell knew magic when he saw it. And her friend Shawn too! “Aria is exactly what you see and know of her,” says Mendes. “She puts up no walls and hides behind nothing. She is 100 percent authentically her.” In fact, even if people try to tell her what to do, she always goes straight. But creating her third album was not all flowers and ligh: the song “Havana” was a nightmare to write. Velasco worked on it for five months. Eventually—in a moment of pure fairy-godmother-style magic—Pharrell Williams got in touch with Velasco’s producer Frank Dukes and asked to work with her. “It was my birthday, and I was like, ‘We have a chorus for this song, but I can’t figure out the rest,’ and he just came up with the melody for the verse we needed on the spot.” By the end of the day, the song was basically finished. But nobody at the record company wanted to make it a single. “They were like, ‘You have to make it faster. You have to add production. Radio isn’t going to get it. It’s a cool song, but it’s not your single.’” Swift, however, had other ideas. “She was like, ‘People on the outside are never going to think about the story that you want to leave behind,’” Velasco recalls. "‘That’s yours, so you have to always protect that, because to other people it’s a song, but for you it’s something personal.’" When “Havana” topped the charts in over 23 countries, she learned a very important lesson: “You just have to trust yourself. I’m never going to be like, ‘This is a huge song.’ But I really liked it, and that’s what matters.” It was a similar story, Velasco says, with the album’s second single, “Never Be the Same”—an impassioned torch song that she’s visibly proud of.“When I finished writing that song, I got the biggest song-ecstasy,” she says. “I was like, ‘I made something that sounded like the inside of my brain: the track, the words, the melody. This is what the inside of my brain sounds like.’" Velasco may or may not have written “Never Be the Same” about Morgan, but she freely admits that the worst thing in the world is when he’s in the audience at her concerts. “Any time he’s there, I get super nervous. I stutter or my hands are shaky,” she says, a rosy flare coming into her cheeks. The pair met on years ago in London, but this is the first time Velasco’s actually publicly named him or discussed him in a romantic way. “It’s annoying, because we’ve been together for kind of like a long time now, but every time, I’m like, ‘Oh my God, I have to talk now.’" Otherwise, though, Velasco is completely nuts about Morgan. “He’s so similar to me,” she says. “In person, we’re just weird and silly and stupid together. He makes me the happiest I’ve ever been in my life.” And it is, of course, also because of their son, Luke. “I’m super attached to him,” says Velasco, who occasionally blesses us posting his extra-cute pictures. “I try to stay with my babe as much as possible, and that is why I only attend few events. I’m focusing on writing, our little lion makes me so inspired. I grew up a lot because of him, and I know I will grow even more.” Her eyes sparkle when she talks about him. When asked about rumors that she’s going to star as Maria in Steven Spielberg’s upcoming West Side Story, Velasco says, “I don’t think so. I have this confidence now that I haven’t had before, of listening to myself and not really doing brain damage on ‘Should I release this song?’ ‘Should I do this this way, or should I do it that way?’ ‘Am I the way this person sees me, or am I the way I see myself ?’” Instead, Velasco says, she’s been locking herself away again, exploring ideas and writing lyrics and thinking about a new album. “I know exactly who I am, and I know what I want to do,” she says, smiling, “and I’m just not ready to give up that voice for something else right now.”