On SOPHIE
A look back at the uncompromising producer, who died in a tragic accident on January 30 in Athens, Greece.
Some night in 2012, the last of the blog era’s salad days, I was taken over by something I’d heard via XLR8R, an at-once minimalist invocation of the house diva-led music that dominated some of my adolescence inverted into super-gloss. The track was “Nothing More to Say” by SOPHIE, an artist I had never heard of before. It was essentially, to my baby critic mind, taking everything I loved about the music I grew up with and marrying it with the ultra-joy of Rustie’s Glass Swords through an ultra-refined lens. (Like I said: baby critic!!) What she delivered over the next near-decade was also just as much of a surprise.
On Saturday, SOPHIE died at age 34 in Athens, Greece. It was accident. She had tried to get to a better vantage to see the full moon. I watched well-composed remembrances (and super-rote ones, too) populate my social media feeds but I didn’t know what to think. I walked to Ralph’s listening to Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides and thought about the direct line between “Nothing More to Say” and “Ponyboy”.
In the ad for Beyoncé’s Ivy Park Fall 2020 line, she asks “Where is your beast mode?” before SOPHIE’s “Ponyboy” plays.
At Ralph’s, I thought about how we’ll never ever know what it means to lose an artist with her personal desire for joyous extremities, as you can read in the obits and older articles about her below, and how we actually will never know what a lifetime of SOPHIE’s work would sound like, how it would shape other music — or, maybe, how other music would limp on in comparison. At home, I read so many tweets that talked about SOPHIE as having changed pop music and I thought a lot about what exactly that means. Pop music-qua-pop music, right now, has nothing to do with what SOPHIE brought to the table. If anything, SOPHIE took the grist of pop music and liberated it from the factory where it’s currently being flattened into mush. “Her work was not some sci-fi experiment in cool conceptual provocation — but rather, necessary, vibrant music full of life and exploding in beautifully messy emotions all fueled by the urgent possibilities of the moment,” writes Kyle Munzenrieder in W Mag. “The label of ‘avant-garde,’ while more than earned, tends to rob her music of the fact that it was the soundtrack to not only so many sweaty nights out, fitful nights spent alone in, but even a McDonald’s commercial.”
I’m not an expert on SOPHIE or her music. I couldn’t even find the notes I took during her talk at Pop Montréal in 2018 to write something actually specific to my experience of SOPHIE AFK. But it felt too crucial to the work I’ve been doing not to acknowledge it here.
My friend John and I texted about it briefly after the news had finally settled. They said SOPHIE would have appreciated the symbolism in how she died. And I think they’re right. SOPHIE died as she lived: seeking wonder on a higher level.
Obits
The Moon is SOPHIE’s Now by Morgan M. Page (Harper’s Bazaar)
SOPHIE Transcended Everything by Craig Jenkins (Vulture/New York Magazine)
12 Essential SOPHIE Songs That Changed Music Forever by Steffanee Wang (NYLON)
Vince Staples Remembers SOPHIE: ‘She Was Never Afraid’ as told to Simon Vozick-Levinson (Rolling Stone)
SOPHIE Made You Feel by Harron Walker (Jezebel)
More context
SOPHIE in conversation with Legacy Russell (BOMB, 2012)
PC Music Are for Real: A. G. Cook and SOPHIE Talk Twisted Pop by Simon Vozick-Levinson (Rolling Stone, 2015)
The Weird, Wonderful World Of PC Music’s POP CUBE by James Rettig (Stereogum, 2015)
SOPHIE Can Show You the World by Sasha Geffen (Vulture/New York Magazine, 2017)
SOPHIE On Criticism, Collaborating and Childhood by Thora Siemsen (Lenny Letter, 2018)