Princess Cyberspace, or Rebecca L’amore, is a low-key music star with a big-time resume. Judging by her Soundcloud page, which has just under 400 followers and averages 5,000 listens a song, you might pass off Princess Cyberspace as just another talented, trend-hopping basement artist, tragically lost in an oversaturated sea of musical talent.
But Princess Cyberspace is special.
In addition to being a singer-songwriter, she is a music video director and fashion model for publications as big as VogueIn line with her role in the pop culture world, Princess Cyberspace’s music is a tongue-and-cheek play on the “shallow” matters that millennial preoccupy themselves with—gaining social media likes, laughing at memes, blocking annoying people on the internet. While seemingly vapid, Princess Cyberspace’s lyrics are surprisingly sophisticated for someone singing about how many likes they have on Instagram.
My favorite track by Princess Cyberspace is also her most popular: “So Relatable.” The song has a carefree and cheery vibe to it, but the lyrics are surprisingly thought provoking—”So Relatable / These memes are so relatable / they make me think I need to be cool IRL / So relatable / these tweets make him so hate-able / but that’s okay because he’s cool IRL.” There’s a dark and introspective nature to Princess Cyberspace’s songs, as she highlights the discrepancy in how people present themselves digitally versus how they really act in the modern world. Another track that hits deep is “Alone, By Myself,” in which Princess Cyberspace laments over an individual who tries to look cool online but is really just scared of themselves. Over a dancehall beat the pop star sings, “All you care about is your Snapchat / And everyone thinks you’re all that / But I know that you’re sad all alone and it’s bad but you joke around in the group chat.” Even though Princess Cyberspace is attributing these qualities to another guy, in the chorus of the song she cries, “So I sit here alone, by myself / sit here alone by myself / I hate it when you can’t be yourself.” The lyrics, juxtaposed by the cheery and bright production, make a convincing case for how alienated the millennial generation truly is in the modern age.
I like Princess Cyberspace because she’s not afraid to seize the zeitgeist in a way that other artists shy away from in fear of seeming too shallow. Princess Cyberspace embraces the Valley-Girl-Fembot aesthetic completely and leaves the listener questioning his own sanity in the digital age and re-evaluating the stereotype of the modern girly girl who’s vapid and obsessed with social media. The effect of the music is not unlike the way I felt after I watched “Clueless” for the first time and found the rich-girl protagonist to be more similar to me then different. If you’re looking for thought-provoking, modern and catchy music, look no further than Princess Cyberspace.
