In the summer of 2013, the Scottish label Numbers released a strange little song called “Bipp.” “I can make you feel better,” promised the pitch-shifted chipmunk vocals on the hook, atop colorful, sharp production—an effervescent collision of dubstep, hardcore techno, and house, credited to an artist named Sophie.
Soon, this mysterious Sophie became affiliated with PC Music, an emerging London experimental label who similarly used computer-manipulated vocals and eerily glossy imagery to blur the lines between authenticity and digital artifice. Working alongside the label’s ringleader A.G. Cook and artist Hayden Dunham, Sophie winked at pop’s instant-gratification consumerism by launching an energy drink called QT, which arrived with its own catchy theme song.
Sophie and PC Music’s conceptual cheekiness could be polarizing, but all involved parties were clearly brimming with ideas, and soon enough, more people wanted to play. In 2016, Sophie flirted with the mainstream by producing Charli XCX’s Vroom Vroom EP, a project representing a return to Charli’s club-kid roots. Other high-profile co-signs came from the likes of rapper Vince Staples, Norwegian producer Cashmere Cat, and the Queen of Pop herself, Madonna. For those who understood the potential, Sophie’s vision of the future was thrilling.
While Sophie’s sonic personality was evident from the jump, her identity was largely a mystery to her audience during those early years. She refrained from releasing traditional press images, conducted rare interviews exclusively over email, and once sent a friend to stand-in as “Sophie” for her Boiler Room set (where the real Sophie was in attendance, disguised as a security guard). But in late 2017, Sophie emerged with her first solo music in two years, a ballad called “It’s Okay to Cry.” The song’s cherubic self-directed video marked the first time that Sophie intentionally appeared on camera and announced that she was a transgender woman. “It’s Okay to Cry” would become the opening track on Sophie’s Grammy-nominated debut, 2018’s Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides. In between industrial-strength abrasions, the album reveled in lush grandeur, with lyrics touching on themes of identity, longing, and immateriality.
After the release of Oil, Sophie focused on her next record. A serial song-starter, she had a vast archive to pull from, and intended to cycle between experimental and pop releases. A full-circle moment arrived in January 2021: six years after Sophie proclaimed that she had no patience for remixes of her own music “unless it’s Autechre,” the English electronic legends delivered a remix of “Bipp.” Two days later, she was gone. The 34-year-old died in Athens after an accidental fall. A statement from her labels said that she had been trying to get a better view of a full moon.
It is easy to be effusive when recalling a life cut tragically short. But it is no exaggeration to say that by the time of her death, Sophie had left her mark on modern pop. Most recently, the success of Charli XCX’s Brat proved Vroom Vroom’s chromatic bubblegum to be forward-thinking, even if critics at the time had rolled their eyes. But Sophie’s trailblazing went beyond technical ingenuity. She saw music as molecular gastronomy, an opportunity to please and startle the synapses in curious configurations.
