Music Review: Sophie’s posthumous, self-titled final album still sounds like the future of pop

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This article was published 26/09/2024 (435 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

NEW YORK (AP) — Where were you when you first heard the visionary producer and musician Sophie? Was it 2013’s minimalist “Bipp,” the club banger with pitched-up vocals that hit the Internet with such peculiar ferocity as if it crash-landed from outer space?

Or was it her Grammy-nominated debut, 2018’s “Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides”? Or her work on Madonna’s 2015 single “Bitch I’m Madonna”? Perhaps it was Charli XCX’s 2016 EP “Vroom Vroom,” where the popstar, forecasting a return to her club kid roots, began collaborating with the future-seeking PC Music collective, including her producer, Sophie? There’s a straight line to be drawn between that moment and the “BRAT” summer that took over 2024; in some ways Charli, like most pop savants, still seeks to enliven their work with even a fraction of Sophie’s talents.

Perhaps Sophie was your introduction to hyperpop, a dot-com neologism used as a catchall for avant-garde electronic music with digital aesthetics? Whatever the moment, the effects are always the same: Hearing Sophie’s big, bright songs feels like looking into the future. With each project, her work has always prophesied where pop music is headed. And on her final, posthumous album — lovingly curated by her brother and studio engineer Benny Long — she’s still practicing prescience.

Three years ago, Sophie slipped and fell from the balcony of an apartment where she was staying in Athens. She died. In a statement, her U.K. label Transgressive said she was simply trying to get a better view of a full moon. She was 34.

Before her death, she had nearly completed a new album — this album, even selecting the tracklist — and so Long chose to release it.

“Sophie,” the album, is full of shimmery, sugar-rush hyperpop, like the ebullient “Why Lies,” with BC Kingdom and LIZ, to the warp speed, cracking production of “Elegance” featuring Popstar, that increases its BPM with each dizzying passing second — and then slows, moving with incredible unpredictability. There are radio-ready pop hits here, too: like the Rhianna-channeling “Exhilarate” with Bibi Bourelly, the liquid trap “RAWWWWWW” with Jozzy.

And there’s a cohesive darkness, from the breathy “Intro (The Full Horror)” and “The Dome’s Protection” featuring Nina Kraviz to the industrial fever dream “Berlin Nightmare” with Evita Manji. At each corner, there is a satiating surprise — percussion punched up, a distorted vocal with unusual intensity, whatever metallic techno-trance-dance is happening on “Gallop,” also with Manji, punctuated with asymmetrical, inorganic sounds.

It’s likely that the love song “Always and Forever,” will be a source of conversation around the album; it features one of Sophie’s earliest collaborators, Hannah Diamond, and, following Sophie’s death, plays out like a tribute to her. Notably, it’s a softer moment on the album packed with a kind of intentional maximalism, mirroring its emotionality.

The challenge with posthumous releases — particularly those meticulously crafted by destiny-seeking innovators, gone much too soon and much too young — is grappling with the finality of the release. But across 16-tracks, Sophie’s “Sophie” still sounds like the future of pop music; there is nothing past tense here.

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