Old Hollywood, R&B, and an Alter Ego - An Interview with Scarlet Fiorella

In an era where anyone and everyone is releasing music, it’s rare to come across an artist that has built an entire world around the music that they create. Building a sustainable music career from the ground up is difficult, and it is always a treat to find someone who is holistically pursuing all aspects of artistry — from live performances, to visuals and collaborators, Scarlet Fiorella is one to watch.

Her world is cinematic; Amy Winehouse meets Lana Del Rey, complete with stunning visuals, witty writing, and an electricity that is all her own. Scarlet experiments with fusing Pop, R&B, and Jazz to create music that is vintage and vivid.

Hailing from Philly and Dallas, Scarlet is a recent grad from New York University’s Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music, joining alumni like Maggie Rogers and Fletcher. Drawing inspiration from the world around her, Scarlet treats her career like a collage. Combining inspiration from Old Hollywood, iconic musicians, and personal experiences, Scarlet’s knack for storytelling is at the core of her artistry. I sat down with Scarlet to hear more about her journey as an artist, and her latest release, “Money Tree”.


LS: Let's jump right in. You recently changed your artist name to Scarlet Fiorella. What brought about the change, and how has it impacted the music that you're creating?

SF: Fiorella is my middle name. Growing up, my mom had a store in Philadelphia called Scarlet Fiorella that I would go to every day after school. Both of my parents were self employed at the time, so she would slap a note on the door that was like, be back in 30 minutes and go and get me from school. She’d bring me back to the boutique, and I spent all my time there singing whatever songs my mom played – it was a lot of early 2000s R&B, Beyonce, Anita Baker, the Four Seasons, Frank Sinatra, all these different jazz and soul sounds. Scarlet Cimillo just felt like a very different person from Scarlet Fiorella. Scarlet Fiorella is the person behind my music, she’s very honest and vulnerable and cathartic. But there's also this drama and this character that I'm building up, and it almost felt like using my real name that I'm signing on emails or when I'm speaking to professors was limiting that. The transition from “What I Did” to “Money Tree” really is like, I'm building out this character. And once I realized that, it just felt like using my first and last name would have just kind of been breaking this facade, it wouldn't have kept the drama and the mystique that Scarlet Fiorella now has.

I love that you've got that separation. So you just released a song on Friday. Congratulations. I love it.

Thanks!

What inspired the song and the song, and what did the songwriting process for “Money Tree” look like?

Yeah, so “Money Tree” is really crazy, very similar to “What I Did,” they are both extreme dramatizations of real life situations. “Money Tree” started with me and one of my co-producers, Nick Belvis. We had started creating together in the heat of the pandemic so summer of 2020. I had just put out “What I Did” and we were on a zoom session. It was literally our first session together and we just started working on this instrumental. We started with the muted trumpet, the stand up bass, and then the hip-hop drums. And the moment we started that instrumental, the whole first verse came to me very quickly and same with the hook. It was very story driven, it was very scene by scene, play by play. And I pulled in my other co-writer, Charis Tsuei and asked her to finish the song with me because I knew that we would just like, bang it out. 

“Money Tree” is based off of a now estranged family member. When I lived in Dallas, he was having an affair with a young girl who lives in my apartment building. As it all played out, I had to watch other people in my family process that he was just like a shitty person. It felt like a story that was unfolding in front of us. So when I started writing the verse, I was like, okay, this kind of feels like me narrating this story, because all I really was doing was observing everything happening. There was no way for me to be involved, and I was just this third party watching it all go down. So that very much inspired this. 

Very cool. And how did the visuals for Money Tree come about? What was your inspiration for the music video, and how does that branding tie in with your altar ego? 

So I think I always had kind of like a vintage feel to my songs since my first release, “Angel Face.” The title track very much had this old timey feel to it.  My grandfather was a jazz bassist, so it kind of feels like everything lives in that realm. I love that nostalgia, and that was just naturally a part of my songwriting and my brand from the beginning. Nothing that I ever really consciously thought about, but once I figured out that's what it was, I started building upon it. And for “What I Did,” that video was an at home quarantine video, but very much was trying to emulate like old Hollywood stars, and the campiness of like, I Love Lucy, Thelma and Louise – all that stuff.

Once I heard the Money Tree instrumental, it reminded me of a darker version of that, very much like Mulholland Drive, Double Indemnity, Twin Peaks, like all those films. I think Scarlet Fiorella always has a dark sense of humor in her songs, so it felt correct to kind of pull from those references. But I just think the aesthetic of the video matches the song so well. The moment I started writing it, I was like, this is a movie. I'm writing this like a movie. So I was like, this needs to come with a movie, and it needs to come with characters and it needs to come with a narrator. And even in the video, Scarlet is very removed from Bill and Sharon until the end because she is the narrator. So I think what's fun about Fiorella is being able to kind of, like, come into that character and express that to the fullest. But that's what it needed to look like. If it had looked any other way it just wouldn't have made any sense to me.

Now that you've graduated, what are you currently working on and what are your upcoming goals?

“What I Did” never really got its time to shine amongst a project so even though it was released a bit ago, “What I Did” and “Money Tree” will be a part of a 3-song EP to be released in the fall entitled “It’s My Show Now,” which is a lyric from the last song on the record. The three songs really capture women taking control and rewriting their own narrative. Each song to me was very much written from the perspective of “okay if I had full control of this situation with no consequences, what would I do?” And sometimes, you feel some really crazy shit. Emotions are super overpowering, especially as a woman when we’re getting told all the time that we have no autonomy over ourselves. This EP and this character that I’ve created feels like “alright you want a fucking show? You think we all have too much to say and that we’re crazy? Bet, let me give you something better.” I think using vintage aesthetics also is like taking those old values and really spinning them on its head. It’s been a blast, feels like there’s no boundaries and I hope this record is really fun and chaotic for people, it was cathartic for me that’s for sure. It’s sad to think that even as I’m saying this people will read what I’m saying and be like “oh please” but there’s no way of being wrong when I’m making a statement that feels important to me and other people in my life. So I just have to remind myself of that when people don’t wanna take my music seriously, because many people won’t. Scarlet Cimillo would give a fuck, but not Scarlet Fiorella. 


Images by Cassandra Briskman

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