sofia coppola birthed a sofia coppola character
romy mars is the internet's fav nepo baby – and her new single is a banger
There are a few different ways of being a nepo baby. You can pretend you aren’t one, claiming that you’ve done it all yourself and haven’t had to rely on a famous surname or influential parent. You can hide from the spotlight completely, enjoying the benefits your famous lineage has provided for you. You can release a questionable photobook and a line of hot sauces. Or, you can get on TikTok and talk about how you once got grounded for attempting to charter a helicopter on daddy’s credit card.
This is the approach of one Romy Mars, 18-year-old daughter of Sofia Coppola and Phoenix frontman Thomas Mars (not to mention granddaughter of Francis Ford Coppola, cousin of Gia Coppola, first cousin once removed from Nicolas Cage… you get the idea).
Mars, like anyone born around the time Britney was wielding umbrellas at paparazzi, has an active TikTok account. On it, she begs to be cast in the next season of The White Lotus, drags her mum into dancing videos and, as of last week, promotes her new single A-Lister.
Let me say right now: it’s a bop. The lyrics tell of a tale as old as Elvis and Priscilla – a love affair between a famous man and a (presumably younger) girl. He tells her she’s a star and then disappears, despite the ways she contorts herself into becoming what he wants. It’s diaristic and confessional, peppered with knowing clichés and vivid imagery – “I want you to see my songs, almost like they are little movies,” Mars previously told W magazine.
The song brilliantly straddles the line between flippant and poignant, superficial and deep. “Said he hates the spotlight, I hate his big red car” Mars intones on the chorus, pointing out the hypocrisy of fame: wanting both to be noticed and then disliking it – or at least saying you do – once it happens.
She writes about the ways in which a love affair with someone like that makes you collapse and on yourself, forgetting who you are in service of their own ego. “Neglect my life, attach myself to yours. Change my looks until I'm a blonde bore”. Here love, like fame, is addictive: “I'll be miserable after chasing what I don't want, You'll draw the line there, I’ll sniff it up.”
Whether the A-Lister in question is real or a metaphorical remains to be seen, but Mars has flirted with the idea he’s very much a person – prompting commenters to seize upon the idea it could be heartthrob to end all heartthrobs (and her mother’s Elvis), Jacob Elordi. (The 27-year-old Elordi, you may recall, has been in a long-term relationship with YouTuber-turned-college-admissions-scandal-rower, Olivia Jade Giannulli, so this feels safely unlikely).
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A popular refrain online is that Sofia Coppola gave birth to a Sofia Coppola character, and while that may have some truth, Mars feels decidedly more Bling Ring than Virgin Suicides. Maybe it’s the sense of growing up knowing that fame is waiting for you as soon as you get online and reach for it, but Mars is precocious and uninhibited in the way only an 18-year-old girl can be, not only fun to watch but extremely likeable. She feels like someone destined to be in front of a camera: you can easily picture her as a four year old, stealing the spotlight at a dance recital.
Perhaps it’s her honesty: whether on her TikTok or in her lyrics, you get the feeling that Mars knows exactly who she is – including a knowing sense of her own unrelatability. “Get out of fancy clothes right after they get the shot,” she sings, “Recreate scenes from Titanic on a flying bridge yacht”.
But there is something in the lyrics of A-lister that every girl can relate to. It is, after all, a coming of age story, one about how your first love – and in this case, the poisoned chalice of of fame – pushes you off the precipice of adolescence into adulthood.
I love this golden sunny West Coast
Scenеy plastic world
I miss being a real girl, sure
But I'm not a rеal girl anymore
On an Instagram post marking Coppola’s birthday this week, Mars wrote a tribute to her mother that also serves as a declaration of her own artistic intent. “Even when no one gets me, you find the art in me crying in my bedroom whilst in a bikini in the middle of winter. Because I was doing a try-on haul,” she wrote. “Seeing you care about teenage girls’ stories so much made me feel like I could put myself out into the world as an authentic teenage girl, not trying to be anything else.”
Sure, Mars may be the next generation of a Hollywood dynasty – but if the rest of her songs are anything like A-Lister, I have a feeling she’s going to make a name for herself. Chanel campaign when?
Live laugh love Romy Mars
kind of...absolutely love this song....