How are you Is it possible to honor the legacy of an artist as brilliant and distinctive as Sophie? In her lifetime, the Scottish producer reshaped pop music by prioritizing the search for “the loudest, brightest thing” above all else. Her legendary run of powerful singles in the early 2000s, followed by her incredibly stylish work with acts like Charli XCX and Vince Staples, set a standard that the rest of the world is still catching up to. She was the kind of artist who could outdo everyone else in the industry. Exit studio session If a collaborator is too emotional. Then she set our circuits on fire again by combining violent noise and raw emotion on her first full-length album in 2018. If you had any expectations for her, she enjoyed burning them.
Now, nearly four years after her accidental death at the age of 34, Sophie’s brother has set about completing her second album, working through the nearly completed music and sequencing the songs she left behind. Like other posthumous releases by pioneers from Jimi Hendrix to J Dilla, this one is haunted by unanswerable questions. We can’t know what kind of mind-melting beats Sophie would have crafted a decade after “Lemonade,” or what kind of escape she might have imagined from the harsh realities of the year. We’ll have to settle for a snapshot of where she was headed when her story was tragically cut short.
Sufi The album begins like a sci-fi thriller, with the chilling synth beats of “Intro (The Full Horror).” From there, it’s a quick trip into psychedelic trap on “RAWWWWW,” where guest vocalist Josie’s vocals twist and stretch like metallic candy over jazz keys. The album slows down with spoken-word interludes that alternately resemble cold dreams (“The Dome’s Protection,” featuring Siberian producer Nina Kraviz) or feverish nightmares (“Plunging Asymptote,” featuring avant-garde musicologist Juliana Huxtable).
These opening tracks are edgy and challenging, and they’re sure to work with the first DJ brave enough to drop any of them in a real-life set. But Sophie has never ignored the liberating power of pop music pushed to its limits, and this album works best when it remembers that. “Live in My Truth” (featuring Los Angeles musicians BC Kingdom and Liz) is a chrome-plated confection; “Exhilarate” (featuring Rihanna collaborator Bibi Bourelly) is an unrealistically gorgeous Top 40 hit waiting to be released.
When it comes to pop music in 2024, Sophie’s status as an influential figure couldn’t be clearer. Charli XCX, an artist who has memorably matched Sophie on collaborations like 2016’s “From From,” has finally stepped up, with an album that draws much of its emotional appeal from a song dedicated to her memory. Other acts either replicate Sophie’s beats in a nutshell, or are criticized for paying homage to her in good faith. It’s hard to blame anyone here (though that hasn’t stopped the internet’s harshest critics). The world only gets an artist like Sophie once in a very long time, and it’s only natural that her work will continue to resonate.
Sufi The album has hints of melancholy in songs like “Always and Forever,” sung by her former PC Music bandmate Hannah Diamond. It’s a tender, late-night romance that may have been written as a love song, but now feels like a heartbreaking meditation on absence. Yet this album is more interested in moving at warp speed into the future than mourning the past. The tracklisting culminates with the club-smashing beats of “Gallop” (featuring Evita Manji) and “Elegance” (featuring Popstar)—old Sophie songs, where every cymbal hit and synth patch feels like it’s been engineered in a lab to mislead your senses and maximize your pleasure. For the last time, she’s set a new standard for other musicians to surpass if they dare.
