With Queen of Mirrors as a reflection of their talent, Ilaria Argento stepped into the A&R Factory spotlight with an album shaped by heartbreak, self-reclamation and the hard-won beauty of transformation. In this interview, she opens up about the emotional architecture behind the record, the feminine lens through which its story unfolds, and the soulful pull of blues as a vessel for pain, release and renewal. She also reflects on the realities of releasing music across YouTube and Spotify, the healing force behind her prolific output, and the way AI tools have given her a route to translate deeply human feeling into song. What follows is a thoughtful, revealing conversation about identity, authorship, emotion and the many mirrored selves we meet while learning how to begin again.
Ilaria Argento, welcome to A&R Factory, we’re thrilled to have you here to talk about Queen of Mirrors and the world around it.
Queen of Mirrors tells the story of a woman breaking away from a relationship that has drained the life out of her, then finding herself again through the wreckage. What first sparked that narrative, and how close did you need to stay to its emotional truth while writing it?
Unlike my previous albums this one wasn’t born from a precise and clear plan right from the start. I just felt this desire to give shape to emotions that materialized in the first songs, in a disorderly way. At some point I stopped, took the classic “bird’s-eye view”, and I realized that I was painting exactly the picture of a woman moving from an unhappy relationship into a lonelier life. One where she’s finally more in control of herself and more self-aware.
At that point I asked myself: “Am I this woman?” Perhaps. Not entirely. But it’s still a journey that represents me in multiple ways, or my subconscious wouldn’t have explored it.
The title I chose tries to reflect this too: transformation, the refusal to stay still. By looking at ourselves in different mirrors: a metaphor for different situations that allow us to see different aspects of who we are. My nature as a transgender woman has also always led me to come to terms with many different sides of myself, and that’s a meaning I was happy to include in this title and in this album.
There’s something timeless about using slow, soulful blues to tell a story of heartbreak and rebirth. What was it about that pace and mood that felt right for Queen of Mirrors, rather than telling it through something more immediate or polished?
I love how blues, and especially slow and soulful blues, can carry deep messages and emotions using a simple and immediate language built on rhythm and meter. Blues is above all an emotional music, and in my view the lyrics should serve that emotion. What matters to me is taking my listeners on an emotional journey, for each individual song and then in a broader sense across the entire album. This album in particular has many roller-coaster moments, emotional highs and lows, and I believe that’s what gives depth and richness to what listeners can receive from my songs.
As Queen of Mirrors is rolling out track by track on Spotify while already existing in full on YouTube, how has that shaped the way listeners are connecting with the album’s story? Has the staggered release changed the emotional arc for you at all?
When I first started releasing my songs, I wasn’t yet on Spotify and I was publishing exclusively on YouTube. Over time that became my “method,” not very organized and very much subject to my own timing and needs of the moment. I do everything myself, from lyrics to production to mastering to videos to publishing and promotion. The simplest thing for me after creating a song is to make the video, and at that point to publish it right away on YouTube, which is still my main and most up-to-date channel.
Publishing on Spotify requires longer lead times, which is why it always comes later. I simply can’t make a song and distribute it on Spotify the very next day. Obviously this difference in distribution has an impact on the audience, but simply because those who listen only on Spotify stay a little “behind.”
That said, the distribution process has absolutely no influence on my creative process.
Across Midnight Lies, Fallen, Unhearded, and now Queen of Mirrors, you’ve released an impressive amount of work in a short space of time. What have those records taught you about your own voice, both as a songwriter and as someone unafraid to sit with difficult feelings?
It’s been incredibly satisfying, and also healing. I pour my emotions into my songs. Frustrations, pain, joy, everything I feel. That’s exactly how I started: to give my emotions a concrete form, a shape that would engage me and help me understand them, overcome them. And to share them. Blues has allowed me to draw from those emotions messages that everyone can understand, and perhaps see themselves in.
I’ve always loved writing and shaping images, worlds, and sensations that people could immerse themselves in. With songwriting I discovered the joy in this creative act. As a writer I’m extremely conditioned by perfectionism, searching for the right words for every single sentence to make the reader’s experience as immersive as possible. It’s exhausting, and it’s the reason I don’t write for a living.
But with music everything is simpler, while remaining extremely effective. I can limit myself to a few phrases, a few images linked together, and the power of the music weaves them into a potent emotional form that needs nothing more.
Your listenership has grown organically, which says a lot in a climate where so much music gets buried under noise and self-promotion. What do you think people are hearing in your songs that keeps them coming back?
I believe it’s the emotions that capture people and bring them back to listen to my songs and rewatch my videos. Emotion strikes us deeply and always leaves a mark: if you can move your audience, they’ll come back for more.
I’m very happy with this result, especially considering that my music is AI-generated, at a time when this kind of music is largely dismissed as “slop” and garbage. People don’t reward or listen to songs that can’t communicate with them on an emotional level, and that means my goal is being reached.
Queen of Mirrors centres on separation, pain, and rebirth, which are huge emotional states to inhabit. Did writing this album leave you feeling changed in any way, or did it reveal something about yourself that you hadn’t fully faced before?
I love how this album tells a fairly common story, but in a very feminine form. The narrative isn’t a straight line from beginning to end. It follows emotional highs and lows as the protagonist faces the situation and comes to terms with her own heart.
I rarely decide on an album title before I’ve created a good portion of the songs. When I found the name “Queen of Mirrors,” something clicked inside me immediately and I knew it was the right one. It perfectly represented the woman going through this journey: someone who at every point in the narrative shows the world, and herself, a different version of her shaped by the transformation she’s going through. The image of her reflected in a multitude of mirrors, one for each moment, was the perfect visual synthesis of the album.
That image resonated powerfully within me too, because it perfectly describes my own life. I’m a transgender woman, and throughout my life I’ve been many different people, both because of my journey of discovering and accepting my femininity, and in other family, personal, and professional matters. We all play a life full of masks (a concept I enjoyed exploring in “Midnight Lies”), but how many of us are truly aware of it?
“Queen of Mirrors” is the woman who is aware of all those mirrors around her. She knows they reflect only one of her many sides, and that none of them can fully describe her true essence. The album stops at that awareness. What I discovered while making it is that I myself am the queen of mirrors, but on an even deeper level: I’m the woman who not only knows those mirrors exist but enjoys playing with them, and who uses them to observe herself and to express who she is.
You’ve spoken about AI music tools opening doors for people with something real to say but without access to traditional production routes. What has that access meant for you personally, and why do you think some people still struggle to accept that truth can come through newer methods?
Almost everyone sees AI as an easy, fast way to “cheat.” And they do, producing mostly background noise. But some of us “new creators” have managed to understand that AI can instead bridge the skills gap that was preventing us from expressing something truly genuine and human.
I learned long ago to play guitar and piano, and picked up some music theory, but I never had the time or the discipline to become a real musician. My true playground is emotions through words. The arrival of AI music allowed me to take what I already knew how to do and channel it through music, enormously amplifying the final impact on the listener. Without AI music generation I could never have done this, and what I had to convey would never have reached so many people.
I don’t feel like fully blaming those who are critical of generative AI, because the excessive and careless use of it is undeniable. But I wish people could understand that there are also creators who aren’t looking for “the easy way out” with AI, and who are trying to use it to refine their creative message.
When people hear Queen of Mirrors in full, what do you hope stays with them most — the sorrow, the survival, or the sense that starting again can still carry dignity even after everything has cracked open?
I absolutely want the message of rebirth to be what stays with listeners after hearing the album. The two most powerful messages I want to leave with those who listen are rebirth and transformation.
We should never be afraid of the changes life puts in front of us.
And even when change seems to have knocked us to the ground, stripped of everything, tomorrow will always bring a rebirth.
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Find all of Ilaria Argento’s music on Spotify. and connect with the artist via Instagram.
Interview by Amelia Vandergast
