The algorithm gets a stare-down on Arabella Lucia’s ‘Unpretty’. Her alt-rock take on TLC’s 1999 classic comes with crashing drums, thumping bass, burning guitar work and a vocal edge that turns self-doubt into a live wire.

The subject remains painfully recognisable: beauty standards, internalised judgement and pressure to resemble somebody else’s preferred image.

For anyone who has watched a filter make a familiar face feel insufficient, this single review finds Lucia taking an old question and making it hit with current force.

Lucia is a multilingual Armenian-Canadian singer, guitarist and songwriter based in London.

Her work pairs punk attitude with alternative rock and a pop instinct for big hooks, a combination that makes her a fitting voice for a song that needs bite as well as empathy.

Her songwriting is guitar-led, emotionally direct and willing to let darker undercurrents sit beside catchier moments.

In ‘Unpretty,’ that identity drives the interpretation, pushing the track toward frustration, self-examination and a harder-won idea of confidence.

The arrangement earns its intensity through movement. The drums crash, the bass lands with heft, and the guitars climb in layers rather than settling for a single loud gesture.

At the burning core are soulful, soaring solos, including an expressive middle-eight passage that releases pressure. Lucia’s voice is gritty and edgy, yet it keeps the song connected to its emotional centre.

She can move between vulnerability and full-throttle force, so the performance does not flatten the song into anger alone.

There is a contemporary sting to a song about appearance arriving amid FaceTune and algorithmic approval. Apps can turn an ordinary glance into a rapid series of corrections, and Lucia’s reading treats that cycle as real tension rather than a passing reference.

Her choice to retain the original’s emotion and nostalgia while framing it with rock force gives ‘Unpretty’ a useful dual pull.

It remembers where the song came from, but it also makes space for listeners who know beauty pressure through a front-facing screen and a feed that never stops asking for a better version.

Lucia avoids the easy route of presenting self-worth as a finished achievement. The performance keeps returning to the friction between the confidence a person wants and the judgement she has learned to carry.

That is a smart fit for the song, because the record’s power rests on uncomfortable intimacy. Here, the guitars do not drown that intimacy out.

They amplify the feeling of resisting a demand repeated too often. The middle-eight solo gives the song a charged pause, like an argument finally being spoken at full volume.

The cover also opens a clear door into Lucia’s upcoming five-track debut EP, due in November. That project includes ‘Hostage You Call Baby,’ a dark, cinematic alt-pop-meets-rock piece about a controlling relationship, power, survival and agency, plus an acoustic reworking that brings voice and guitar forward.

Two songs have yet to be heard. The focus on identity, vulnerability and pushing back against diminishment gives ‘Unpretty’ a place in a wider creative direction without making the single feel like a trailer.

For new-music listeners seeking emerging alternative rock with hooks, grit and something to say about filter culture, Arabella Lucia’s ‘Unpretty’ has a strong reason to be in the queue.

The track does not tidy up its discomfort. It turns that discomfort into momentum, putting a long-running question about appearance back into motion with a guitar in hand.

Lucia is currently recording her debut album at London’s Eastcote Studios with a team headed by Oskar Winberg, and this cover makes the next chapter worth following.

Press play for the drums, stay with the record for the resistance.