The Faceshopping Approach — Remembering SOPHIE And Her Legacy
I am not a “Day One” fan of SOPHIE, the way many of my friends were. I came to the PC Music label a little late, only when Charli XCX’s “Vroom Vroom” came out. That EP completely wrecked my brain when it came out. That intense bassline, the crunky drums on the verses giving way to Charli’s sticky vocals and finger snaps on the hook, everything about that beat seemed so new and wonderful to me. A few weeks later I would find out she was one of the producers in “Bitch I’m Madonna,” and my curiosity would only deepen. Who was this producer, clearly informed by intense distorted experimentation but that was able to work with so many straight up popstars. And not by accident, not some freak of lucky connections, but by being able to synthesize into pop hooks with said experimentation.
SOPHIE was a bit of a role model, one of the only artists whose art I could not only relate to, but embrace wholeheartedly.
A few months later I would come out to myself as a trans woman, and find a lot of solace in SOPHIE’s intense and sexy beats. There was just something about them that just connected with me, displaying femininity in a way that was at one hand self indulgent and accessible, but played at a darker intense drift from traditional femininity. That kind of sentiment would be something I’d come to slowly embrace later, and finally explode with the release of “It’s Ok To Cry,” SOPHIE’s more somewhat official coming out as trans herself. The song itself sounds like a great friend, who knows you inside and out, bringing you down from an emotionally intense break. The lyrics are connective, they are platonic, and over the mostly drumless, ethereal beat, feel like a self help new age tape in the best of ways. The song was not on heavy rotation in its single format (mostly just due to the way I consume music) but it was a very welcomed helping hand in that period.
And then “Ponyboy” came out, in my opinion still one of the sexiest songs ever made. This time a lot of the track is dominated by an interplay of Cecile Believe’s intense and orgasmic hooks, SOPHIE’s distorted and submissive lyrics and the menacing, pummeling beat (eventually changing up just by adding some sweet candid keys on the ending). With the music video, featuring SOPHIE and the duo FlucT dancing on all fours, mimicking horses (SOPHIE herself wearing a My Little Pony jacket) intensifies all of those aspects of the music. It is for sure intensely erotic, but in a very (trans)gressive way. SOPHIE’s lyrics push the pony metaphor into such an extreme that it’s like they are not even metaphoric anymore. It is liberating in its driving towards the edges of sexual liberation, in a way I think few songs do. To a trans woman, that song was important in trying to wrestle with complicated feelings relating to sexuality, power dynamics and such. At that point, SOPHIE was a bit of a role model, one of the only artists whose art I could not only relate to, but embrace wholeheartedly.
“Faceshopping” completed the singles rollout for that album, making up also the first three tracks of the record. Giving us again that pummeling sound we all crave for when coming to SOPHIE for music, this song is more about the idea of merging the fake with the real. It is a song described by the scattered lyrics with “Synthesize the real/Plastic surgery/Social dialect/Positive results/Documents of life”. It is not a serious, nuanced take on the beauty industry in the way that Beyonce’s “Beauty Hurts” is, it is a far more complicated relationship. There is obviously the restrictive aspect of beauty, but it approaches it from the point of view of wanting to achieve something that has been societally denied to you on principle. It is a contradictory relationship with the concept of “passing,” seeing the way it imprisons you but also the way it is something so many of us want to achieve to feel a bit better. The music video showcases various CG models of SOPHIE’s face being mangled, cut up, scrunched up. Once again, we see a very forward thinking and extremely specific model of self expression, not trying to flaunt her beauty (for let’s admit it, SOPHIE was a very very beautiful woman) but by achieving alien-ness. Again, very relatable to my experience coming out.
By the time the album came out, I had worked through a lot of the mental hardships I still had and came out to many people (including a few people IRL). My online friends took it well (dare I say it, they expected me to figure out I’m trans and were just unsure of when), but the situation with my family was… trickier. And, in a very cruel trick of faith, this aspect could be related to the album rollout hype/post-hype process. On one hand, many people were singing the album’s praises, but on the other, a very nasty wave of hate came in. And I wanna point out how hard it was to call out said hate, in the sense that it was made through vague language and dog whistles. My experience talking to other trans people was that a lot of the hate hurt as being transphobic without really saying stuff that was outright transphobic. There were a lot of complaints of the fanbase being annoying, privileged, pretentious, creepy, awkward, etc. Upon further critique, things very conveniently came around to how it’s just taste and opinion, but the want to damage was very clear. And it’s a kind of hate that wouldn’t stop there, with artists like 100 gecs and later Dorian Electra becoming targets of the same kind of criticism (as with the general field of Hyperpop, that was just rising in a post-Oil Of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides world).
Call it the “Faceshopping” approach, wrestling with complex topics of pain and pleasure by facing it with honesty and sincerity.
It seems cruel to spend time in artistic grieving remembering the bad things, but that’s the thing: the bad things intruded into said grieving. I and many other people were very comfortable just praising SOPHIE’s legacy, but all over the internet we saw people not noticing that the “jokes” had run their course. From people calling the way she died “cringy,” to people misgendering her in tweets celebrating her life (I saw someone even joking around on Vince Staples’s tweet on how working with SOPHIE was like, during his Big Fish Theory era. Vince, a rapper who has a few times openly declared his love and support for the LGBT community, had so called “fans” thinking it would be called for to joke around with trans death). The day SOPHIE’s passing came out I posted a quote of hers in an interview for Pitchfork where she denounces the idea that PC Music is a parody of pop music. She says:
“Why would you bother investing so much of your time and energy in something that’s basically laughing at something and not contributing anything? I don’t think that’s a worthwhile use of your time.”
Lablehead AG Cook follows up with:
“One of our intentions is to try and push pop music and make it experimental and accessible, and put an interesting noise or personality as well as a good melody. Sometimes people just don’t like how it sounds, and they’re like, ‘Oh, well, I can’t justify this. It must be a joke.’ But we’re really just trying to see if we can make something stick culturally.”
This is a sentiment I try to carry with me with every music I listen to, no matter how seemingly ironic and jokey it may be. From Talking Heads to DEVO, a lot of my favorite artists embrace a very genuine lens of expression throughout aspects that may seem sarcastic. Call it the “Faceshopping” approach, wrestling with complex topics of pain and pleasure by facing it with honesty and sincerity. I think these are statements to live by.
SOPHIE’s music did not feel happy playing those games. It made up its own rules on the spot.
Not a day later, someone would come to my post, claiming SOPHIE was wrong, that the pop and hip hop industry are so poisoned that the only form to approach them is through post-ironic critique. The claim was not only that her statement was incorrect, but her statement on her own music was incorrect. And I think that is an aspect of the trans experience. Seeing as gender is a social game, a performance, a form of expression, the traveling between genders seems to imply a loss of control. And that loss of control is imprinted on by society, assuming what trans people are: weirdos, cringy, freaks, just in general people who don’t understand society and the world.
And yet, SOPHIE’s music did not feel happy playing those games. It made up its own rules on the spot.
If at first the tracks that had an impact on me were the first three of the album, now it’s the last two songs that are the one to impact me the most. “Immaterial” is an anthemic pop jam that bursts head on into what other people may think of you. By calling herself Immaterial, SOPHIE asserts that she can be anything she wants. “Any form, any shape, anyway”, from ponies to CGI aliens, it is embracing the weird and the self indulgent in a way that feels powerful and liberating.
I was just a lonely girl
In the eyes of my inner child
But I could be anything I want
And no matter where I go
You’ll always be here in my heart
Here in my heart, here in my heart
It does not ignore pain, but it bulldozes right through it. It doesn’t guarantee you you are totally free, but it admits it is not wrong to feel happy about being you. Again, sentiments that can come across as very new age-y, but in the trans context, completely feel at home as important. And with its dancefloor beat, slinky bassline and sticky hook, it dispels any defenses (read irony) one could have while engaging with it. It is a statement to the potential of poptimism as filtered through gender.
And speaking of potential, that’s something the closer “Whole New World/Pretend World” has in spades. It is a final exclamation point on the album and it is a bridge between musings and the reality of the outside. In that same previously cited interview, SOPHIE says that truth is stranger than fiction, therefore filtering reality through hallucinations and daydreams makes a lot of sense. The hook of “I looked into your eyes/I thought that I could see a whole new world” reveals this bridge, the possibility of creating a better world through love (since at the end of the day, it is also a song of yearning and love, no matter what the dark synths and intense ambient breaks tell you). Working backwards from the dichotomy of “pop+experimentation” and the tried and true tradition of “happy instrumental+dark lyrics”, this song flexes its industrial photoshopped muscles into a love letter to someone extremely special, turning them into the gates for a better tomorrow. It is a confusing, jarring tune that confuses as much as it inspires.
That is, I think the final message we should leave with SOPHIE. Not just working through the pain, but looking through pain from all possible angles. Be comfortable with saying you feel pain. Don’t feel discouraged from seeking help from others, nor from turning that pain into something more productive and positive. In the hands of most other people that kind of message would be passive and unhelpful, but in the hands of someone as creative, such a lover of sound and music, and most of all someone as loving of other someones, it rings genuine, it reveals our potential in coming to Whole New Worlds. SOPHIE’s sonic fiction is one of extreme spiritual potential that can be reached through the meeting of the organic with the electronic, ritualistic rain dances on the bustling city nights, looking for love in all its nooks and crannies. It is a rhizomatic love of hyperconnection (it is no coincidence that the age of hyperpop is one that both looks backwards into yesternow’s pop history while being connected to the internet at all times) that is not satisfied in calling it quits. It asks if it’s cold in the water and drowns along with us, turning the deep freeze into a snowy kiss.
