Who is Sophie Xeon and why is Google paying tribute to the icon today?

Pioneering producer Sophie Xeon (often known as SOPHIE) has been honoured as the topic of a Google Doodle in the present day on what would have been the icon’s thirty eighth birthday. 

The house web page of Google exhibits a cartoon depiction of the artist – full with the trademark crimson hair the producer grew to become identified for – and encompasses a video honouring Sophie.

The brief clip options Sophie’s music Immaterial, which incorporates lyrics like: ‘I used to be only a lonely lady / Within the eyes of my inside little one / However I may very well be something I need.’

The music performs over a shifting animation of the artist blasting off into the celebs. 

Thought of one of many founders of hyperpop and among the many most influential producers within the historical past of pop music, Sophie tragically died in 2021 after an unintended fall from a constructing in Athens however left behind a wealthy legacy. 

For these unfamiliar with Sophie’s lasting affect on music, the shut of Brat Summer time (an album upon which the producer had immeasurable affect) is an ideal time to study the fundamentals. 

Who was Sophie Xeon?

The producer – who was trans and most popular to not be referred to by any pronouns, in keeping with representatives – was an autodidactic musician who first started making music as a younger little one in Glasgow, Scotland.

Within the 2000s, Sophie moved to Berlin, helmed the dance-pop group Motherland, and have become immersed within the metropolis’s digital and dance music scenes. 

There, the innovator honed the futuristic, otherworldly sound that grew to become synonymous with the moniker SOPHIE. 

Following a string of collaborations and releases, Sophie’s single Bipp broke by way of the noise and earned the producer vital acclaim and a rapidly rising fanbase on unbiased websites like SoundCloud. 

Sophie first collaborated with Charli XCX in 2015, constructing the foundations of what would develop into a long-lasting and fruitful creative partnership that lived on past Sophie’s life. 

Sophie produced a lot of Charli’s songs, together with Vroom Vroom, After the Afterparty, Paradise, Trophy, Roll with Me, Lipgloss, Out of My Head, No Angel, and Ladies Evening Out.

The producer solely launched one studio album, Oil of Each Pearl’s Un-Insides, in June 2018, which earned a nomination for finest dance/digital album on the 2019 Grammy Awards and made huge waves within the pop world. Sophie was solely the third trans femme in historical past to be nominated for a Grammy. 

The album supplied a sound so model new and unfamiliar that many discovered it alienating, however for these capable of see the imaginative and prescient, Oil was an astounding accomplishment that blew the ceiling off the probabilities of pop music. 

Pitchfork remembers the album with applicable grandiosity: ‘By complicating the naturalness of the human voice and corrupting established pop buildings, SOPHIE additionally complicates the supposed naturalness of gender, which has at all times been inextricable from music. Her work is a sphere the place will and impulse take precedence over destiny and legacy.’

Sophie’s sound is unwaveringly self-aware, deliberately subverting and sometimes exploiting pop cliches and patterns to create a model new flavour of pop. The producer considered music as textural and architectural, usually likening initiatives to ‘latex, balloons, bubbles, metallic, plastic, [and] elastic.’

Following this success, Sophie continued to work with Charli XCX andcollaborated with artists like Nicki Minaj and Madonna as nicely, pushing the unmistakable sound of Sophie into mainstream pop.

In 2022, Charli XCX devoted her album Crash to their late collaborator, however Brat, the pop star’s hit 2024 album that launched her to a brand new degree of fame, stands because the truest monument to Sophie. 

Not solely is the digital, synth-heavy sound overtly referential to Sophie’s work, the music So I is in regards to the late producer. 

Within the music, Charli sings: ‘At all times on my thoughts (Each day, each evening) / Your star burns so vibrant (Why did I push you away?) / I used to be scared generally / You had an influence like a lightning strike.’

The lyrics proceed: ‘After I’m on stage, generally I lie / Say that I like singing these songs you left behind / And I do know you at all times stated, ‘It’s okay to cry’ / So I do know I can cry.’

Because the producer’s loss of life, few of Sophie’s musical works have been made public. Notable releases embody the Jlin collaboration ‘Jsloipnhie’ and productions for Hyd and Basside, however its lately been introduced followers can anticipate a posthumous SOPHIE album quickly.

The self-titled album from the artist was first hinted at with a cryptic video on the icon’s YouTube channel, inflicting many to take a position that new music was on the way in which.