It’s a sunny May afternoon in Miami’s lush Coral Gables neighborhood, and Camila Cabello greets me at her family’s one-story home accompanied by a small menagerie: four dogs — including her golden retriever, Tarzan, and German shepherd, Thunder — along with her rescued cockatoo, Percy.
Cabello is home “to recharge” amid a hectic few days that included time in California and will soon take her to New York for the Met Gala. But today, with her messy pigtails, Daisy Duke shorts and silver flip-flops, Cabello looks more like a college girl on break than a major pop star about to release her fourth solo album — a fearless artistic statement coming June 28 titled C,XOXO. Her father washes the driveway, her mother offers me cafecito, and her aunt plays with the dogs.
“Let’s go to lunch — I’ll drive!” Cabello exclaims as she grabs her tote. The 27-year-old got her license just two years ago and learned to drive during the pandemic; as we hop into her white Tesla — nicknamed “Tessie” — she admits that getting behind the wheel (with a good album or podcast on the stereo) is her favorite form of stress relief. She takes us to Pura Vida, one of her favorite local health spots, where we sit down outside with summer chicken bowls. “Girl, it’s this Met Gala coming up… I can’t wait to stuff my face after,” she jokes.
With her still fairly new platinum blonde tresses (a fresh ’do she debuted on social media in February), Cabello largely goes incognito; some passersby seem to recognize her but are perhaps too shy to approach. Just one screams, “Camila, I love you!” — a reminder that while Cabello might periodically crash at her parents’ house, she’s still a global superstar. But while she jokes that her new look has the side benefit of granting her some anonymity in public, she explains that it has a deeper meaning.
Read the full Billboard cover story here.
