SOPHIE

SOPHIE, the mononymous project of Sophie Xeon, emerged as one of the defining producers behind the 2010s hyperpop movement. Her music fused experimental sound design with sugary synthesised textures and the physical force of underground dance music, bringing abrasive, plastic-sounding percussion and pitched-up vocals into pop structures. She first broke through with the 2013 single “Bipp,” a track whose sharp synthetic surfaces and elastic bass became a blueprint for much of her early work.

A run of singles followed, later collected on 2015’s Product. During this period, Sophie initially concealed her identity while developing a close association with PC Music artists including A. G. Cook and GFOTY. Her production work also reached far beyond her solo catalogue: she worked with Charli XCX, Vince Staples, Kim Petras, Madonna, Hyd, Itzy, Gaika and Namie Amuro, applying her detailed electronic approach across pop, rap and club music.

In 2017, Sophie publicly came out as transgender. The same year, she released “It’s Okay to Cry,” a comparatively direct and intimate song that introduced a new phase of her public-facing work. Her debut studio album, Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides, arrived in 2018 and received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Dance/Electronic Album. The record expanded the scale of her production, moving between harsh digital impacts, dancefloor pressure and vulnerable vocal performances.

Sophie died in January 2021 after a fall in Athens, Greece. A second studio album, SOPHIE, was released posthumously in 2024. It had reportedly been nearly finished at the time of her death and was completed by her brother, Benny Long. In tributes following her death, AllMusic described her as a “fearless trailblazer in electronic music,” while Rolling Stone credited her work with revolutionising the sound of underground dance and pop music.