Oh, to be 22, recently off tour with Benson Boone, and on the precipice of huge success with a debut EP released just days ago – as Bella Amor would say, “This is where I’m at.”

Don’t be fooled, though – she may be young, but this success hasn’t come overnight.

“Everything I’ve ever done has led me to this moment,” Amor says, reflecting on a childhood spent listening to her mother sing around the house, playing ukulele and writing her first songs.

In year 12, while her classmates were preparing for final exams and pondering futures, Amor was plotting a path forward on the back of her first releases, which were picked up by Sony Music.

“It was really random. I put out a song, and it came up in a Spotify playlist, and Katie from Sony messaged me on Instagram like, “I'd like to have a chat”, and I was like, “This is spam.” I didn't really believe it, so I just let it go, but then I thought maybe I should just reply.”

Four years later, Amor finds herself in the Sony office, armed with a cheeky grin and pithy answers to all the questions her fans would love to ask.

“Every opportunity has just come from really wanting to do it. I always tried to find a way to do it – and I think the world has been a really great help as well.”

The way things have aligned for this young star, it’s little wonder she believes in the magic of manifestation, attributing her success to a mindset shift and a new sense of self-belief.

Even amidst all of the wins, the mental health challenges that so often plague performing artists are all too familiar, inspiring several tracks on the debut release.

“I personally struggle a lot with anxiety. That's like my rock in my pocket, if you will,” Amor muses, referencing her single.

“It’s been a bit of a battle the past couple of years to be social and extroverted when sometimes that's not necessarily who I am, or when the anxiety is like, ‘Hey, I exist, focus on me,’” she adds. “It's been really, really hard to navigate it, but I think I'm slowly getting there.”

Like so many twentysomethings growing up in the age of social media, Amor also feels the weight of body image issues acutely. 

“I think, apart from anxiety, body dysmorphia is the biggest thing I face,” she explains. “I think as women, we don't talk about the transition from teenager into womanhood. 

“I'm 22, and in the past year, my body has just changed so much. And I'm like, ‘Where have these curves come from? Where has my stomach come from?’ I was really fit when I was younger, and then you get so in your head, like, ‘Oh, I'm fat.’ No, you're just turning into a woman, your body is changing. 

“I don't think there's a guideline on how we navigate that, and that is really fucking hard.”

Of course, the harsh judgement we direct towards ourselves is often most clearly illuminated in relationship with others. Amor has much to say about the love and acceptance she receives from her partner, a theme that shows up in several places on the EP.

Romantic love is also a strong theme in simon says, a track about being afraid to be yourself in case it scares away someone close to you.

“I think being with someone who brings out the best in you is really hard,” Amor muses. “When you're with someone that's genuinely healthy and doesn't have a bad bone in their body, you have to relearn how to communicate. 

“I've been with my partner for three years now, and the other week, I had a breakdown because I was like, ‘Do you even love me?’ I bloody well know he does. It's past patterns of communication that I have to unlearn, and I'm relearning how to love and how to show up for my partner, as well as for myself.”

As much as this is an EP about love, it’s also about being independent, learning to love your own company, and bouldering – a wonderful if somewhat unexpected combination. 

All of these themes come through in daisy fields, Amor’s answer to the codependency trap and an ode to the life-changing magic of learning to love your own company.

“I think being in a relationship where you genuinely just love the person so much that you want to be around them, and also probably a little bit of codependency from other patterns that have been in my life – abandonment issues, if you will – is really hard,” she explains. 

“But I just know that I can't show up in the way that I want to – I can’t be the best version of myself – if I don't get my alone time, so I should have that. I really love rock climbing, bouldering, so I'm like, ‘Oh, maybe I'll just go for a boulder with my friends and we'll just go hang out at the beach or whatever.’”

The way these tracks have come together on Amor’s debut EP is the result of trial and error – of throwing lyrical spaghetti at the wall – and fortunately, there’s plenty that sticks.

“My mentality has been, ‘I'm gonna write what I'm going through and what I'm experiencing, and hope that it works’, and it all kind of worked together,” she explains.

“Positioning the songs to make it make sense was really fun, and seeing how it all played into a sequence. It makes you think about things a lot deeper.”

A self-professed over-thinker, Amor admits that getting out of her own head is just as important as getting in touch with her thoughts, if not more so.

“Making videos with friends is one of the best ways for me to do that,” she says. “I love my friends and I love to include them in my content.”

In the past few years, Amor has also had several opportunities to make friends in high places, including during her recent supporting role on tour with Benson Boone.

“The tour was wonderful,” she reflects. “It was such an eye opener for me. Being a little emotional artist is really fun, but then seeing how it can get to a bigger scale like that is really insane. His fans are so supportive and we’ve grown a great community now around the Bella Amor project, which is really awesome.

“I thought I would have been nervous with these shows because they were on such a large scale, but the feedback from Benson and his dad was just so nice, so that gave me a little boost of confidence.

“In the end, I wasn't nervous when I got out there – I was just excited. It felt like, ‘Okay, I know that I'm home.’ I know that this is where I'm at, if you will.”

If you missed her opening for Benson Boone, you can catch the self-proclaimed little 5’2’’ Bella Amor running around on headline stages along the east coast this month.

Her mantra for her headline shows? “I just want everyone to have fun and just be free of the world for a while,” she explains. “If, for a couple of hours, we can just be present and just enjoy what we have in front of us, that's my goal.”

Bella Amor’s this is where i’m at EP is out now.