Some girls want to be known, while others prefer to remain unknown. Scottish-born singer-producer SOPHIE is for the girls who want to hide behind a mixing desk while working their magic, and SOPHIE, her first posthumous record, attempts to reconcile these two ideals.
Known for her loud songs, SOPHIE was virtually unknown beyond her stage name before she came out as transgender in 2017. Loud, but above all she exudes angelic alienness. SOPHIE released only one studio album during her lifetime — the critically acclaimed, Grammy-nominated Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides (2018) — and one mixtape, both of which are entirely instrumental albums, with many songs being singles. Her early releases, like 2015’s “BIPP” and “Lemonade,” simply floated around in the air for a while, and no one could fully understand their context or creator. (In 2021, Vince Staples recalled that there was speculation that SOPHIE was just another A.G. Cook project.) The visuals for 2017’s It’s Okay to Cry — which was the first time most fans saw Sophie Phi’s face — are wildly tinkered with her looks. Harron Walker has previously written about the element of “separation” in Sufi music; the way it crystallises simultaneous presence and absence in the same body. Sophie channelled a more ethereal plane, with bodies moving in and out of visibility under flickering club lights.
Yet there’s nothing ephemeral or vague about her impact on electronic music. There was electronic music before SOPHIE, and there was electronic music after SOPHIE: Before working with Staples, Cook, Kim Petras, Arca, Lady Gaga, and FKA Twigs, she helped define Charli XCX and broader alt-pop. (On her most recent album, Brat, Charli subtly calls the late producer a “hero and a human being.”)
SOPHIE’s posthumous record, released September 27, reflects this layered legacy. The album was nearly complete when SOPHIE tragically collapsed and died in January 2021. The tracklist has been finalized and the groundwork for the songs is well underway. (SOPHIE’s brother and sister, Benny and Emily Long, ultimately completed the record over the past three years.) The final product included some previously released recordings, but unlike her first album, in which SOPHIE often manipulates her own voice, the film is composed almost entirely of outside voices: Petras, Juliana Huxtable, Nina Kravitz, Liz, Bibi Burley, Hannah Diamond, Doss and more all made appearances. The cult series wasn’t always as consistent as her concept debut, but SOPHIE left an indelible mark on everything she touched.
SOPHIE’s pop and experimental tendencies compete on the new record, pitting her against production that shimmers through trap, spoken word poetry, dirty hardcore beats and glossier, more direct pop melodies. Dense lyrics about transhumanism and the nature of the universe are repeated over ethereal synths on several songs, including “Plunging Asymptote” with Juliana Huxtable and the sweeping, seven-minute “The Dome’s Protection” with Nina Kraviz. Big Sister sings about “translucent infinity” and “unusual mythology” on “Do You Wanna Be Alive?”, her attitude cleverly matched by SOPHIE’s sardonic, mechanical production. SOPHIE’s crunchy club tracks dominate the record’s second half: Popstar’s hardcore anthem “Elegance” or SOPHIE’s partner Evita Manji swaying from beat to beat with the rhythmic “Berlin Nightmare”; The dramatic tone of “One More Time” is broken up by the Bibi Bourelly collaboration “Accelerate,” in which Bourelly’s voice glides over a glitchy, slightly irregular rhythm.
SOPHIE’s final three songs may be the most familiar to those familiar with her most popular collaborations, such as “1,2,3 Days Up” with Kim Petras. The melodic, exquisite “Always and Forever” is a collaboration with PC Music legend Hannah Diamond. Cecile Believe, who often writes and performs with SOPHIE, lending her voice to songs like “Immaterial” from Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides, returns to lend her voice to a slower version of “My Forever.” SOPHIE’s incredible “Hev3n Suspending” live stream featured a poignant message about time and love. Album closer “Love Me Off Earth”, sung by Doss and co-written with Thora Siemsen and Em Zavos-Kosteles, is one of the set’s strongest songs. “What is the significance of loving me beyond this planet?” Doss sings over a super-pop full of synth echo, before her voice becomes an instrument in Sophie’s hands. (“Originally, my songwriting process was inspired by personal heartbreak, which took on a whole new meaning after her death,” Simson told me via email. “I don’t think it was dark musically, but the dancing is cathartic.”)
In the years since Sophie’s death, photos of her have surfaced constantly: her red hair, her red lipstick, wearing down jackets in the studio, smoking cigarettes, walking on donkeys, bathing in neon lights on stage, the photo below. In life, however, she mostly preferred to stay out of the picture. She wrote more songs and then released her own, and while she appeared in her music videos, she also often released album art using bizarre AI-generated slideshows and coil images.
“Without my legs or my hair,” Cecile Bellevue sang in “Immaterial,” “Without my genes or my blood, without a name, without some kind of story, where do I live? Tell me, where do I exist?” SOPHIE didn’t give a direct answer, but did offer some speculation about her new project, Dancing on the Edge of the Earth.
