Nobody’s Buying Camila Cabello’s Rebrand

One week, the internet loathes Camila Cabello. The next, she’s It Girl of the Year. No one can decide if Cabello is cool or drool—although Cabello herself is dedicated to this edgier hyperpop reinvention heading into her upcoming fourth studio album C,XOXO, set to release June 28.

The first change was the hair. Cabello, who had sported a brunette look for her entire career thus far, unveiled her new blonde ’do in February, signaling the beginning of a vibe shift—not at all unlike Taylor Swift lopping off her hair for the 1989 era. With the blonde hair, Cabello’s visuals changed—she’s now sensually licking a blue lollipop on her album cover instead of showing off a vibrant dress like she did with her last three albums.

How she talks about her music has changed. In interviews, instead of speaking passionately about her work, Cabello now playfully jests that she doesn’t really care about the charts. Instead of being the dedicated, most successful ex-member of Fifth Harmony—sorry, Normani—she’s now trying to position herself as an effortlessly cool singer. Her sound reflects that, too: Putting behind ballads and swoony pop songs, Cabello has now gone totally hyperpop.

Cabello and new collaborator Lil Nas X just came out with a new single from the album. Titled “HE KNOWS,” the single performed poorly on Spotify when it was released on May 10, earning under 700,000 streams on Saturday, only its second day on the platform. Even Cabello’s fan accounts were not pleased: “Guys,” one account shared on X, “we need to stream.”

By contrast, Cabello’s lead single on the album—“I LUV IT” (feat. Playboi Carti), released March 27—has earned a whopping 60 million streams, although the hype surrounding that tune is perhaps more noteworthy. After Cabello spent almost an entire month teasing the hyperpop sensation, the song went viral online. Even Lana Del Rey invited Cabello to perform the hit with her on stage at Coachella. That, to me, reads bona fide superstar.

Still, the lackluster performance of “HE KNOWS” says otherwise. Fans go back and forth—is her music “SO lame,” or is she actually “devouring”? (If you ask me, “I LUV IT” is a banger; “HE KNOWS” is very meh. That said, I’m hyped for C,XOXO, although I think she could’ve tried a little harder to distance herself from the allegations that she’s copying Charli XCX’s vibe; C,XOXO sounds like a Charli album title.)

Then, there’s the world outside of her songs. Cabello’s new public image has been at the forefront of pop culture discourse, perhaps even more than her actual music. At the 2024 Met Gala, held last week, Cabello made a bit of a splash thanks to both a dazzling accessory and an offhand comment about Doja Cat’s dress. Everything is up and down with her: She does something to impress the world, and then something else to immediately negate that.

Cabello brought a stunning, melting block of ice as her purse to the Met Gala, eloquently following the “Garden of Time” dress code. “I feel like it is impermanence and things decaying over time and the beauty in that,” Cabello told Extra on the red carpet of her clutch. Her ponytail, too, was given a “wet” look to hammer home the “beauty of impermanence.”

While Met Gala fans scoffed at many other celebrities’ outfits, Cabello actually won a lot of positive attention for what they believed to be a $22,000 glacial handbag. “She was the ONE person to actually nail the theme,” one X user shared. “I give 10s when 10s are due.”

But the internet went icy on Cabello when she made a surprisingly sexual comment during the event. When Variety pointed out that Doja Cat was also wearing a similarly melting, dripping outfit, Cabello exclaimed, “Oh! Look. The girls are wet tonight.” While the interviewer took a beat to collect himself, Cabello bit her fingernail, waiting for laughs that never came. “Sorry,” she added, after an awkward silence.

Praise this clip as you will—like that it’s edgy, it’s funny, it’s giving A-lister—but you’ll never convince me that it’s not hard to watch more than once. Cabello earned both praise and criticism for this comment: Was she being “endearing” and “authentic,” or “basic” and “painfully awkward”?

The big question is: Is this new era really working for her? Every day, the answer is different. Today, I say “No”—she’s trying too hard to come off as careless and candid. Tomorrow, my mood will change; I will wake up as one of the biggest Cabello fans on earth. The internet echoes that mentality. On any given day, fans will rush to tweet about why Cabello is a genius, pointing to her banging songs and her daring outfits—and on that same day, critics will wag their fingers at Cabello for something silly that she said. Her following is consistently inconsistent.

There’s a possibility that Cabello could turn the hate around. Other pop girls have dug themselves out of the laughingstock dumpster—look at Addison Rae. Rae was a joke after going viral for stealing TikTok dances and botching her acting debut in the Netflix movie He’s All That. But after releasing her EP AR last summer, Rae immediately changed her public image. She went from being a cringe TikTok-lebrity to releasing a fairly popular album. Now, she works with Charli XCX. She’s a certified Cool Girl.

But Cabello remains in Cool Girl purgatory, giving everything she can—collabs with huge names in the industry; a music video ripped straight out of the Euphoria set; the girl even bleached her hair to prove how effortlessly beach-chic she can be—to try to earn the title. It is my belief that, although her star power goes up and down, she deserves to earn a bit of worldwide acclaim after giving so much to her fans. Unfortunately, I fear that the more effort Cabello puts into this reinvention, the more the world will turn against her—in trying too hard to be cool, she becomes uncool.

Which brings me to my final thought: The coolest person Cabello could ever be is herself. This “new era” is so bewildering, because she is oscillating between her quirky, hyper, true self (which I adore!) and this carefree Cool Girl which, frankly, we need less of in the world. Again: We already have Charli XCX.

Cabello needs to spend less time trying to change herself with edgy interviews and sun-bleached visuals and more time embracing the aspects of this era that feel uniquely her. Lean into the fast-paced songs, spending time with fans in clubs, and creating signature dance moves and debuting them at Coachella—then, the fans will really be screaming, “I LUV IT!”

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