How Rising Artist Izzy Escobar Landed Synchs on ‘Hacks’ and ‘Devil Wears Prada 2’: ‘I’m Still Trying To Wrap My Head Around It’
Categoria: Musica
The singer-songwriter shares how she ended up contributing an original song to each project.
Por Billboard | 01/05/2026
When Izzy Escobar was just four years old, she started playing classical violin and studying the Suzuki Method of learning music. “My mom was definitely a proponent of learning an instrument,” she says. “On the other hand, my dad is from Cuba and was a DJ. I would sit with him at the dining room table and we would go over his setlists for the night…Top 40 hits, Cuban music, jazz.” Escobar believes that upbringing ultimately inspired her own sound, a blend of classical and modern elements that result in her blues-inspired pop. She counts Celine Dion and Whitney Houston among her favorites (“I love powerhouse vocalists”) and says pursuing a career in music always felt natural: “Music immediately gave me this grounding sense of belonging… so I ran with that and never looked back.” Yet, growing up in a small town in Massachusetts, Escobar admits that signing a record deal felt a bit “like a lottery system” — especially given her lack of industry connections. She decided to study theater at The University of California, Los Angeles to help network and immerse herself into the music business, working through school at Angeles Academy of Music and earning a full-time role after graduation. At the same time, she was self-funding her music and taking advice from friends who had landed label jobs. “I was posting three times a day and it was so cringey,” she recalls. “Nothing was picking up, and I got really down on myself.” Her last straw was when a student didn’t show up for their music lesson: “I literally had a breakdown.” She took to the piano, where she often improvises her songwriting, and decided to record and post the emotional release. “I woke up the next day and had gotten 13 million views on that video,” she recalls. “My whole inbox was about what I had been trying to get people to hear for so long.” (She later signed to independent label, publisher and management firm Artist House.) Fast forward to this April, when things crystallized for Escobar with two major back-to-back synchs: She contributed an original song both to the final season of acclaimed TV comedy Hacks and to the highly anticipated film sequel Devil Wears Prada 2 . For Hacks , she recalls being connected with Diane Warren to work on “ something …but I didn’t fully know what yet.” Escobar had just a few hours to cut her vocals for what became the sassy and sultry kiss-off, “Hate to Be the One,” before catching a flight out of L.A. For Devil , music supervisor Julia Michels personally requested that Escobar write a song for the sequel after hearing her track “Sunny in London” (off her 2025 EP of the same name), saying it was similar to “the sonic landscape” for the film. After her original submission didn’t ultimately fit the scene, she wrote a new song, “Evergreen Avenue,” in a day — and secured her place on the soundtrack. After watching the film at its New York premiere, Escobar was assured the song she landed on was “the perfect choice… it’s this beautif