SOPHIE Shattered The Boundaries Of Pop Music, And It Will Take Us Years To Catch Up
SOPHIE created bold, artistic worlds from scratch - and by doing so, changed the way we thought about music forever.
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Infinite Pop is a Music Junkee column about the past, present, and possibilities of pop music.
SOPHIE, the Grammy-nominated Scottish pop and avant-garde electronic producer, died on at 4am January 30, in Athens, Greece, where the artist resided. According to Transgressive Records, SOPHIE had climbed up to see the full moon, and accidentally fell. SOPHIE was 34.
SOPHIE, your music helped me to find a kind of sanctuary. Thank you
The acclaimed musician and LGBTQ+ icon tragically died at the weekend. Here, a fan eulogises an artist who was revolutionary both in and out of music
Credit: Getty
I’ll always remember how lucky I was to see SOPHIE perform. It was on a school night of my first year of university. My best friend’s orange hair glowed under the hazy Brooklyn sky with his hand in mine, the fingerless fishnet gloves scratching my palm as we ran for the doors.
SOPHIE was performing and, in the best way, it was the queerest I’ve ever felt. The strobe lights illuminated the ecstatic faces of the crowd, with SOPHIE looking on from the stage in a skintight dress and stiletto pumps. Each song warped into the next, chopped and spat back out into new, almost unrecognisable forms. People twerked and caressed each other in cages behind SOPHIE as the artist smashed buttons on a DJ set-up that erupted into deep, rumbly bass and high-pitc
Credit: Getty
An icon who changed the worlds of both pop and electronic music forever, SOPHIE â who has tragically died at the age of 34 â was nothing short of a musical visionary. Constantly pushing the boundaries of sonic experimentation, the musician and producerâs futurist creations, decades ahead of their time, are without parallel.
Announcing this morning that the Glasgow-born artist had suffered a tragic accident in Athens, SOPHIEâs team hailed âa pioneer of a new soundâ and an âicon of liberationâ. In a tribute, Christine and the Queens called SOPHIE âa stellar producer, a visionary, a reference, adding that the artist ârebelled against the narrow, normative societyâ. Bring Me the Horizon frontman Oli Sykes, meanwhile, described SOPHIEâs work as âincredibly stimulatingâ and âpure proof that any genre can still be pushed in untapped waysâ, concluding: âIt was impossible not to be stimulat