SOPHIE’s best production credits, songs inspired by: LISTEN

SOPHIE’s sudden death at 34 this past weekend sheds light on the producer’s wide catalog, with even longtime fans receiving new credits from the groundbreaking pop artist. While SOPHIE entered the pop with a unique vision on songs like ‘BIPP’ in 2013, and the producer became prominent by working with everyone from Charli XCX and the PC Music collective to Madonna and Vince Staples. SOPHIE has released the single track compilation PRODUCT in 2015 and the revealing solo album OIL OF EACH PEARL’S ON-INSIDE in 2018, but this tells only a partial story of the producer’s wide, influential career. This list of songs therefore focuses on a few that do not bear SOPHIE’s name, but would not exist without the musician – either because SOPHIE produced them or influenced the artists who performed them.

‘Shark QT,’ QT

PC Music has hit the subway scene as troublemakers, reinterpreting the formalist rules of pop to the point where some critics mistakenly viewed music as a parody. SOPHIE was never officially part of the label, but has worked with AG Cook and his acolytes over the years. It started with this easy piece of bubblegum doll. The song itself is a theme song for PC artist QT, named after her energy drink of the same name – released shortly after SOPHIE chose ‘advertising’ as a comprehensive musical genre in an interview, followed by a loud concert in 2015 ‘ became a product promotion stunt at SXSW.

‘Bitch I’m Madonna’, Madonna with Nicki Minaj

The best Madonna song of the last ten years would not exist without SOPHIE, who shares production credits with Diplo on Madonna’s 2015 album, Rebel Hart. SOPHIE’s touches come through the details, like that caffeinated, brutal chorus. By the time SOPHIE referred years later to a Madonna hit on the producer’s own overbearing pop banger “Immaterial”, it was more than deserved.

“Pious Pious,” Charli XCX

Pious Pious, an EP of four songs in 2016, changed Charli XCX’s entire career. Previously, she was a DIY spirit trying to fit a top-40 shape; thereafter she slowly becomes the leading experimental doll. SOPHIE produced the entire EP, and the title track stands as Charli’s brutal, playful re-launch. “Bitches know they can not catch me,” Charli says of SOPHIE’s synths, more dissonant than anything she’s sung about before. She continued to work with SOPHIE on songs such as ‘Roll With Me’, ‘Lipgloss’ and ‘Out of My Head’.

‘Yeah Right,’ Vince Staples, with Kendrick Lamar

Vince Staples has his adventurous second album, Great Fish Theory, was not a rap recording – it was an electronic recording. The credits backed him up, including two beats produced by SOPHIE. Other Great Fish Theory songs glitter and groove, while a track like “Yeah Right” Staples contrasts, heavy and industrial. “At that point in my career, I was about to reconsider how you feel about yourself, what your purpose is, what your sonics are,” Staples said. Rolling clip. “SOPHIE had something we were looking for.”

“Hot Pink,” Let’s Eat Grandma

‘Hot Pink’ begins as a modest pop song before crashing into a wall of synthesizers. SOPHIE had the talent to make electronic music feel complicated, and few songs do it better than ‘Hot Pink’, the first of many bursting moments for the English avant-pop duo Let’s Eat Grandma. As impenetrable as the chorus sounds, the duo cuts through. But this song still has pop legs, and that flickering outro is an equally classic SOPHIE onslaught.

“745 tough,” 100 gecs

In the wake of SOPHIE’s death, no one has touched more than 100 gecs, the frenetic experimental-electronic duo that erupted in 2019. Critics have compared it to everything from 3OH! 3 to Sleigh Bells, but their reverent mishap with genres would not have been possible without SOPHIE challenging concepts of pop years before. While 1000 gecs single “money machine” offered gecs on their most tasty album opener “745 sticky” was a much more assertive announcement, from the vocal manipulation (especially for Laura Les, herself a trans woman) to that all-encompassing drop.

“Non-Binary,” Arca

SOPHIE appears elsewhere on Arca’s latest album, The Dance Floor KiCk i. But the album, which marked the publication of Arca as a trance, sits on the shoulders of what SOPHIE accomplished a few years earlier with “It’s Okay to Cry”, which for the first time properly introduced the producer’s raw voice and transidentity . . “What a delight it is to be non-binary, ma chérie,” Arca declares on the opening track, “Non-Binary,” about a jumble of bells, bangs, and zaps. Arca said she wants to explore ‘gender euphoria’ on the album, and that is how many critics have described SOPHIE songs like ‘It’s Okay to Cry’.

‘SLYM,’ Shygirl

The last SOPHIE-produced song released before the producer’s death was this glamorous track from London rapper Shygirl. “SLIME” is more dangerous than many SOPHIE productions, but no less confident, with the pulsating beat that underlines the explicit images of Shygirl’s bars. The song returned after violating SOPHIE’s early music – the 2015 compilation, PRODUCT, along with a sex toy – while SOPHIE led the use of new artists from Quay Dash to Banoffee to Shygirl.

Untitled, Lady Gaga
Rumors of a collaboration between SOPHIE and Lady Gaga swirled for years, but although the producer was ultimately not attributed Chromatica, Gaga’s collaborator, BloodPop, confirmed that the three were in the studio together. SOPHIE was one of the first to work on the album, BloodPop said Entertainment weekly, to cut the sound of Gaga’s sports car into monsters. And, he added, ‘We’re still planning to finish the songs and do something special in the Chromatica universe. ”