Fit Check, Food Check: GIULIA BE on Brigadeiro and Brazilian Style
GIULIA BE is a triple threat. The Brazilian musician just released the third of three self-titled EPs, and on each one, she sings in a different language: First Portuguese, then Spanish, and now, English. Together, the EPs form a trilingual mega album of 21 songs. The 26-year-old has already conquered Brazil’s pop music scene, with over a million monthly listeners on Spotify. On GIULIA BE, she’s expanding her reach to a global audience who’s bound to fall in love with her singular vocals, raw lyricism, and a stage presence that transcends language. Did we mention she’s also a movie star? Her newest film, As Dez Vantagens de Morrer Depois de Você (The Ten Advantages of Dying After You), is set for release later this year.
We joined GIULIA BE for breakfast at Café Brasil, a longstanding classic in Los Angeles’s Culver City. We sipped Brazilian coffee and discussed her evolving fashion sense, the art of language translation, and what it means to call Rio de Janeiro home.
Below, learn more about GIULIA BE’s songwriting process, her Rio food recs, and everything in between.
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Fit Check: How has your style evolved since the start of your career?
When you start, you have your everyday clothes and your everyday style, but you have to create a persona of what the artist version of you is going to be, and what she prioritizes. For me, in the beginning, it was a lot of sparkles and short stuff. My second music video, I even took it down from YouTube because it was so different from how I’m used to seeing myself. I was in a full wig with a braid, I had long, acrylic nails and a latex outfit. I just couldn’t see myself in it.
In music, when you first start, you really want to be this ideal popstar version of yourself. Slowly, you figure out what works. A look that I would wear for an interview is different from a look I would wear for a performance. And that’s different from a look for many other things.
Food Check: Pretend I’m visiting Rio for the first time. What do I need to eat and drink?
Feijoada is like a Brazilian bean and meat stew. Pão de queijo, for sure. It’s going to be better in Brazil. A caipirinha to drink. And also, at the beach, you’ll hear a guy yelling, “Mate com limão!” It’s a type of tea, but I don’t even want to describe it as that because it’s so much better. It’s an iced tea, and it’s so good. And then biscoito globo, which is a classic Brazilian cookie situation that they sell on the beach, too.
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What’s an unexpected lesson you learned from recording in three languages?
Some songs don’t work in other languages. A lot of times, I write in one language and then I translate it to see if it works in another language. I tried to do that for a couple songs on this project, and two of them worked. I originally wrote them in English, but I ended up translating them to Spanish and they became even better songs, in my opinion. But also, the opposite is true, where I tried to translate a few songs and was like, “This does not work in Portuguese,” or “This does not work in Spanish.” Some songs just don’t translate. That’s definitely something I learned from this project.
I always spoke the three languages, but for many, many years, I was just focused on releasing music in Portuguese. It was nice to take a little step back because I had so many songs in English and Spanish that I hadn’t put out yet. It was really selecting from, like, 100 songs to 21. That was a definite process, but a fun one, too. Prioritizing what makes sense in each language and what fountains I’m going to drink from, musically, in every lane I’m pursuing.
How does your sound differ between the English, Portuguese, and Spanish sections of the album?
In the English part of the album, I explore disco and more traditional singer-songwriter pop music elements, which ring true to pop music in the United States. In the Portuguese one, I think I used more real instruments and made it a little more acoustic, a little closer to my original EP. I made sure that was very authentic to my roots. And for the Spanish, we explored reggaetón and dancehall and sounds like that for more upbeat music. What I tried to do was, we would start out with the songs that felt more upbeat and radio-friendly, to introduce each language’s character at the maximum potency of its personality. Then as the songs come out, they get more vulnerable, and in the end, all three languages meet in this common ground, which is that we’re very similar after all.
What lies inside doesn’t change whenever I speak a different language. It’s just the exterior.
What’s next for GIULIA BE?
I’m really happy to be moving forward with so many dreams of mine. I have amazing shows planned for next year. I’m going to be everything everywhere all at once, in Brazil, the U.S., different Latin American countries. I’m so excited for all the future holds.