6 minute read
Aleksandra Bieniewska | After Silence, There Is Music
from Issue 11
Aleksandra Bieniewska | After Silence, There Is Music: Revisiting SOPHIE’s Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides
I was fifteen when I first stumbled upon her music.
It was the fall of 2020, and the COVID-19 blues were at an all-time low. At that time, I developed an awful pattern of not sleeping and mindlessly browsing the internet until the sun rose outside my window. To make matters worse, the silence became physically unbearable; I had to have background noise running at all times. Being a creature of habit, I was up one random night doomscrolling the YouTube explore page into oblivion. I was trying to find a thumbnail that looked appealing when I came across a music video titled “It’s Okay to Cry.” I caved in and clicked. From the other side of the computer screen, an orange-haired person was dancing and smiling at me. She was bright and mesmerizing, and I couldn’t look away. From that moment on, I was hooked. I spent the following three months doing a deep-dive into the rest of her discography, examining all the nooks and crannies. The end of January came around, I lost track of time, and the next thing I knew, she was gone.
SOPHIE, or rather Sophie Xeon, was an English producer and songwriter. Above all, she was a visionary. Her work was a sugary, experimental take on pop music, pioneering a genre later classified as hyperpop. Considering her humble beginnings, it must have been her immense creativity and strong work ethic that earned her a place in the music industry. She started her journey as a wedding and party DJ, first releasing music in 2013 under a stage-name alias. Early in her career, Sophie’s true identity remained a subject of press speculation. Her debut studio album, Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides, secured a GRAMMY nomination six years later. Its title is a smartly crafted reverse mondegreen of the phrase “I love every person’s insides” pronounced with a British accent. Apart from her personal projects, she worked with musicians such as Madonna, Vince Staples, and Charli xcx. Her influence extends even further than that, as numerous celebrities have since quoted her as an inspiration for their work. She kept producing music for several artists up until her untimely death in 2021.
What initially drew me to Sophie’s songs was the way she played with electronic music and made it her own entity. She was a sound design master, and her ability to perfectly transcribe a desired texture to sound through synthesizers was ahead of its time. Imagine two bumper plates grinding against each other, pots and pans being hit with metal spoons, or balloons rubbing against a hard surface. Where most people heard a rather annoying, agitating sound, Sophie saw potential for music. She used simple waves (sine, square) and panning effects, stacking them on top of each other. I couldn’t retrace her steps even if I desperately tried to. It takes an immense ability to innovate to manipulate sound the way she did. Many aspects of Sophie’s work are noteworthy, as her discography is a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle that never truly fits together without taking a second look. She traversed through genres, unafraid to merge them together. The beats she produced made dance-pop meet ambient, or even EDM trap styles. In a 2018 interview with Arte TRACKS, Sophie posed a question: “Why would any musicians want to limit themselves?” It shows that she practiced what she preached.
Sophie’s first full-length studio project opens with a stream of self-affirming lyrics: “Just know whatever hurts, it’s all mine/It’s okay to cry.” The ballad is a tearjerking beacon of queer joy and liberation. Its music video was the first time the artist appeared publicly, simultaneously revealing her identity as a transgender woman. The second track, “Ponyboy”, stands in opposition to the opener, both in sound and topic matter. The project is full of pitch-shifting, which complements the ever-changing concepts between the songs. With its loudness and radicalness, it still manages to be versatile. “Faceshopping” presents an interesting commentary on cosmetic procedures becoming increasingly common and socially acceptable. It also happens to be incredibly catchy and may lead listeners to repeat “my face is the front of shop” for the rest of the day. On the other hand, “Infatuation” is a soft and somber piece that sounds like a confession. Subtle aquatic chimes occur in the background and become gradually more audible as the track goes on. The lyrics are filled with yearning for another person. What connects the songs in the seemingly random tracklist are the themes. At its very core, Xeon’s music is everything that has to do with the human experience.
My favorite song of hers remains “Is It Cold in the Water?” – a three-and-ahalf-minute-long electronic monster that merges the syrupy vocals of Cecile Believe with muffled ambient sounds. It is reminiscent of long-lost recordings from Björk’s Vespertine album. The speaker in the song is restless in their search for peace: “I’m freezing/I’m burning/I’ve left my home.” Synthesizer chords cycle and grow in volume throughout the track, building tension that doesn’t find a resolution until the very end of the song. The lyricism is simple in form, yet cathartic in matter. There is a wave of hope, a light waiting on the horizon. The singer cries out, “I’m swimming, I’m breathing.” During early 2018 live shows, Xeon performed the song with a backdrop mostly consisting of Shutterstock videos of the sea surface. The mix of rich imagery present in the lyrics, as well as the haunting singing of Believe, makes for an incredible listening experience. One singular track can completely pull the listener out of mundane, everyday life and transport them somewhere else. I would strongly recommend it to anyone wanting to explore Sophie’s discography, as it shows a trailblazing change in the way a musician perceives and interacts with their art.
Seasons change, grim memories fade, and the ability to sleep can be restored. Despite the time that has passed, Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides remains a highly relevant work. I would venture to say a lot of us have dreamt about a “Whole New World” or becoming “Immaterial” in recent months. It’s albums like these that leave an intangible mark with their ability to make a person feel so much in a span of a little under forty minutes. My thoughts are only a speck amongst all the well-deserved praise. Her peers (Caroline Polachek and St. Vincent, to name a few) have since paid their respects by releasing homages dedicated to the singer. A posthumous album, SOPHIE, was released in September 2024. It includes features from her past collaborators. To my pleasant surprise, Sophie’s community remains anything but quiet. Silence isn’t the only thing transcending space and time, music is. After all, we are just “immaterial girls, immaterial boys.”
