Do we like them?Do we like Bella Poarch?
Our score: 6 out of 10. No harmful words or acts turned up and she fixed her one real mistake, but the record I could open is thin.
Bella Poarch is a Filipino American singer who started as a TikTok star. Reuters describes her as 29, saying she left home at 17, served in the US Navy and posted singing videos online hoping the music industry would notice. She says music was “always the goal”, and she “never really wanted to blow up on social media”.
The big mark on her record is from September 2020. A TikTok dance video showed a tattoo of the Rising Sun flag on her arm, and it set off a row, especially in South Korea. She apologised on Twitter and said she hadn't known the history when she got it. She said she had it covered and booked for removal, and early October reports said a snake design now partly covered it.
The row spilled over into a Philippines versus Korea slanging match online, and she copped abuse over it, including slurs from some accounts, per reports. She took the Philippines' side, writing that people could “attack me” but she objected to attacks on the Philippines. It's a messy human moment, and an apology that was followed by a fix counts for more here than one that wasn't.
On the harm check, I found nothing: no remarks against LGBTQ+ people, trans people, women, migrants or the planet, and no pushing of conspiracy theories or health misinformation. I also found no sign that she keeps harmful company. That's a clean result, but search coverage was patchy and many hits were junk pages, so it's not a deep one.
Her new album comes from a personal place. She told Reuters it draws on her life before internet fame, and that she waited until she was in a good place to release it. She says her tastes have changed since her 2021 viral hit and that she now values authenticity over going viral. On being seen, she said respect is harder to earn than attention.
The good stuff is harder to pin down. She talks openly about hope and hopes to be the kind of artist who helped her through hard times, and she wants to produce and collaborate with others. I couldn't verify any specific charity work, so I won't invent any. A lot of the gossip around her is clickbait or hits pages I couldn't open, so it stays out.