History Music / Sophie

Sophie Xeon (17 September 1986 - 30 January 2021), mononymously known as SOPHIE, was a Scottish-born and Los Angeles-based [[ElectronicMusic electronic]] producer, songwriter and DJ known for being one of the key artists of the "bubblegum bass" subgenre of electronic dance music and a [[TropeMaker pioneer]] of the {{hyperpop}} microgenre.

Sophie died on January 30, 2021, as a result of an accidental fall in Athens, Greece. [[https://www.billboard.com/culture/pride/sophie-producer-posthumous-music-brother-interview-pride-2021-9580835/amp/?__twitter_impression=true Her family has confirmed]] that she had second studio album in the works, and have said that a posthumous release is a possibility.

-> ''"Despite that, and with a weird certainty, something tells me that the voice might now be more real than ever. Maybe it really is her suggesting that I try recreate that sound using a different oscillator or make that lyric a bit more fun. Maybe she's here right now, visiting from a place with no rules and no limitations. Maybe she's become a part of me, a part of everyone who loved her in their own way. It's indescribable, to have lost a friend who was so caring and so real, and whose presence was a constant affirmation of life itself. And it makes me feel just like we never said...''"
-->-- A.G. Cook, [[https://agcook.com/msmsmsm "Sophie"]]

On top of her own singles, she shared her unique style with other artists, with many producer credits working with Music/{{Madonna}}, Music/CharliXCX, Music/LadyGaga, Cashmere Cat, Vince Staples, Music/NamieAmuro, and others. She's also frequently associated with the London-based Music/PCMusic label, sharing a similar approach to electronic and pop music, and has frequently collaborated with founder A.G. Cook, as well as individual acts like GFOTY and Hannah Diamond.

Sophie died on January 30, 2021, as a result of an accidental fall in Athens, Greece.

[[YouAreBetterThanYouThinkYouAre but I think the inside is your best side.]]"'']]

* GenreRoulette: Looking past her signature sound, her individual songs vary in base genre influence. "BIPP" and "LEMONADE", at least structurally, are rather straightforward pop tunes, "MSMSMSM" takes inspiration from TrapMusic complete with rattling hi-hats, "HARD" and "Ponyboy" are aggressive, experimental bangers, "JUST LIKE WE NEVER SAID GOODBYE" and "It's Okay to Cry" are gentle pop ballads, etc. Her debut album toys with this heavily, with the hyper-poppy “Immaterial” being preluded by a solid 6 minutes of ambient droning.

** "Pretending" is six minutes of a very low pitched one, including a recording of a bassy voice singing "I was just pretending" that's then been [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_BW1JW85QM slowed down by several magnitudes of speed and pitch]].

* EverythingIsAnInstrument: A strange, rare non-comedic example which borders on being a DoubleSubversion. Sophie crafts individual sounds from scratch with simple waveforms as a base, which end up manipulated to sound similar to latex, balloons, bubbles, metal, plastic, and elastic. These are in turn incorporated rather effectively in her songs, such as with the synthetic, "bubbly" sounds making up much of "LEMONADE". [[https://pitchfork.com/features/rising/9237-sophie/ Sophie compares this creation process to molecular gastronomy.]]

* GenreMashup: "[[AvantGardeMusic Avant-garde pop]]" or the nascent "bubblegum bass" label are a good start in describing her style, but something more accurate would likely be an experimental, blatantly synthetic mixture of mainstream pop, TrapMusic, and industrial hip-hop. ''Oil of Every Pearl's Un-Insides'' [[NewSoundAlbum further complicates things]] by adding influences of IDM, drone, and {{Ambient}} music.

* MsFanservice: After she fully came out as a transgender woman in 2017, she also stopped being shy about showing off her body. Many of her videos feature her in highly sexualized outfits, and for promotional photos (sometimes even performances) she often went completely nude/topless.

* OnlyOneName: As an artist, she's just named "Sophie". Prior to "It's Okay to Cry", "Sophie" was only a moniker because "[[https://pitchfork.com/features/rising/9237-sophie/ It tastes good and it's like moisturizer,]]" but after coming out in 2017, it became her preferred first name.

Gaining critical attention and popularity since 2013-2014 with singles like "BIPP" and "LEMONADE", Sophie's music -- and the wider bubblegum bass formula she helped solidify -- took the conventions of pop music and wildly exaggerated them to UncannyValley-like levels, with cutesy, heavily synthesized and "plastic"-sounding instrumentals, pitched-up vocals with repetitive lyrics, and often frenzied, chaotic, but detailed beats. The result is music that's equal parts surreal, blatantly artificial, parodic, and ridiculously catchy.

Sophie released several singles throughout 2013 to 2015, which were all then released in a 2015 compilation titled ''Product''. Near the end of 2017, she emerged from secrecy and premiered her newest single "It's Okay to Cry". Later in the month, she made her debut live performance, released her next single, "Ponyboy", and announced her first major studio album, ''Oil of Every Pearl's Un-Insides'', released in June 2018.

Sophie Xeon (17 September 1986 - 30 January 2021), mononymously known as SOPHIE, was an enigmatic, idiosyncratic Scottish-born and Los Angeles-based [[ElectronicMusic electronic]] producer, known for being one of the TropeMakers of the "bubblegum bass" subgenre of electronic dance music.

Sophie released several singles throughout 2013 to 2015, which were all then released in a compilation in 2015, titled ''Product''. Near the end of 2017, she emerged from secrecy and premiered her newest single "It's Okay to Cry". Later in the month, she made her debut live performance, released her next single, "Ponyboy", and announced her first major studio album, ''Oil of Every Pearl's Un-Insides'', released in June 2018.

* TakeThat: "[[https://www.instagram.com/p/BhHhofYlRwn/?taken-by=sophie_msmsmsm P.s. stfu the @guardian you whiny biches have a nice day bye!]]"

* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: Much of her earlier pre-"BIPP" music, including "NOTHING MORE TO SAY / EEEHHH", is a lot more straightforward than her later work, taking more of a general [[HouseMusic house-inspired sound]], with vocals left un-pitched. It wasn't until "BIPP" where Sophie decided to crank the artificiality UpToEleven and became more experimental where she gained her signature sound.

** ''Oil of Every Pearl's Un-Insides'' [[UpToEleven has a wild love affair with this trope]], not only containing her trademark sound jolts within songs, but the entire tracklist flips between being ethereal and uplifting to aggressive and cacophonous. To boot, the intro track "It's Okay to Cry", one of Sophie's most personal and gentle tracks to date, is immediately followed by "Ponyboy", which is among one of her most harsh and experimental, and things only escalate from there.

* NeoclassicalPunkZydecoRockabilly: "[[AvantGardeMusic Avant-garde pop]]" or the nascent "bubblegum bass" label are a good start in describing her style, but something more accurate would likely be an experimental, blatantly synthetic mixture of mainstream pop, TrapMusic, and industrial hip-hop. ''Oil of Every Pearl's Un-Insides'' [[NewSoundAlbum further complicates things]] by adding influences of IDM, drone, and {{Ambient}} music.
-->'''[[https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/chart-beat/6221915/sophie-producer-interview Billboard]]''': What genre do you coin yourself?\\
'''Sophie''': Advertising.

* SomethingCompletelyDifferent:
** "It's Okay to Cry" is an unequivocally sincere pop ballad, [[StepUpToTheMicrophone complete with providing her own vocals]] and appearing in the song's music video, with only hints of her signature sound.
** Within the context of ''Oil of Every Pearl's Un-Insides'', an album full of distorted bangers, {{Surprisingly Gentle Song}}s, or surreal [[DroneOfDread droning soundscapes]], the penultimate track "Immaterial" stands out by being a perfectly straightforward and fun dance pop song.

[[YouAreBetterThanYouThinkYouAre but I think the inside is your best side."]]'']]

!! ''My tropes are the front of [[Administrivia/TropeRepairShop shop]]''

** This is implicitly the entire theme and arc of ''Oil Of Every Pearl's Un-Insides'', with many lyrics alluding to Sophie's personal journey as a transgender woman and her struggling with existential feelings of personal irrelevance. This culminates in the penultimate track "Immaterial", which seemingly represents [[IAmWhatIAm her overcoming her insecurities and truly accepting herself for who she really is, i.e. anything she wants]].
* BookEnds: ''Oil of Every Pearl's Un-Insides'' begins with "It's Okay to Cry", which contains the phrase [[YouAreBetterThanYouThinkYouAre "There's a world inside you,"]] and it concludes with "Whole New World", itself containing the phrase "I looked into your eyes, I thought that I could see a whole new world."

** "It's Okay to Cry" is an unequivocally sincere pop ballad, [[StepUpToTheMic complete with providing her own vocals]] and appearing in the song's music video, with only hints of her signature sound.

* StepUpToTheMic: After years of releasing singles with female vocalists, most of which are still unidentified, Sophie made her own vocal debut on the track "It's Okay to Cry". She's also believed to have vocals in tracks such as "Faceshopping" and "Whole New World", [[DownplayedTrope but are hidden behind incredibly garbled and distorted filters]].
* StylisticSuck: At least in the ''Product'' era, some of the vocal tracks have hints of this, with lyrics that sound derivative of bubblegum pop clichés and vocalists being slightly pitch-bent to imply a sense of artificiality. Possibly the most evident case of this is "JUST LIKE WE NEVER SAID GOODBYE", which [[PoesLaw almost sounds like a parody of 2000's-era pop ballads]] in its vague, romantic lyrics and overly-synthetic instrumental (which, in a surreal twist, is almost completely devoid of percussion).

[[caption-width-right:350:''"I hope you don't take this the wrong way / \\

* MsFanservice: Was never shy about showing off her body. Many of her videos feature her in highly sexualized outfits. For promotional photos (sometimes even performances) she often went completely nude/topless.

* {{Mondegreen}}: ''Oil of Every Pearl's Un-Insides'' has been theorized to be an abstraction of the phrase "I love every person's insides".

* ComingOutStory: ''Oil of Every Pearl's Un-Insides'' is widely considered one, as not only did it (and more specifically, its first single "It's Okay to Cry") feature Sophie coming out as a transgender woman, much of the lyrical content is directed around concepts of the anxieties and pains of inhabiting the physical body, as well as the cathartic liberation of [[BeYourself being yourself]].

* OnlyOneName: As an artist, she's just named "Sophie". Prior to "It's Okay to Cry", "Sophie" was only a moniker because "[[https://pitchfork.com/features/rising/9237-sophie/ It tastes good and it's like moisturizer,]]" but after coming out in 2017, it's became her preferred first name.

* VirtualCelebrity: In 2014, Sophie collaborated with Hayden Dunham and A.G. Cook to produce "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QT_(musician) QT]]", a performance art project of a semi-satirical popstar played by Dunham who "promotes and is the living embodiment of the semi-fictitious [=DrinkQT=] energy drink." She's only released one single, "Hey QT", produced by Sophie and Cook, but she's continued making live appearances for affiliated acts including Sophie and Music/CharliXCX to lipsync her song.

Gaining critical attention and popularity since 2013-2014 with singles like "BIPP" and "LEMONADE", Sophie's music -- and the wider bubblegum bass formula she helped solidify -- took the conventions of pop music and wildly exaggerates them to UncannyValley-like levels, with cutesy, heavily synthesized and "plastic"-sounding instrumentals, pitched-up vocals with repetitive lyrics, and often frenzied, chaotic, but detailed beats. The result is music that's equal parts surreal, blatantly artificial, parodic, and ridiculously catchy.