A posthumous Sophie album is coming. On Monday, the producer’s family announced they will be releasing some of the late, avant-pop artist’s unreleased music on an album named Sophie, out Sept. 27, more than three years after her tragic death. Alongside news of the album, they also released the project’s first single “Reason Why” with Kim Petras and BC Kingdom.
“When we, Sophie’s family, took our first steps towards bringing this project to fruition we contacted the dear friends with whom she envisioned the album,” read a statement from her family. “We wrote, ‘We have been finding comfort in the music Sophie left us, it is a gift that we truly cherish as we try to find a way forward, with Sophie forever at the center of our worlds.’”
“Sophie didn’t often speak publicly of her private life, preferring to put everything she wanted to articulate in her music,” they added. “It feels only right to share with the world the music she hoped to release, in the belief that we can all connect with her in this, the form she loved most.”
The album, arriving via Future Classic and Transgressive, will tell her life story “from mysterious unknown, through wild clublands, to euphoric materiality,” and capture her musical journey.
“Her unique sound world moves at an emotional level, encouraging the listener to intuitively embrace the ever-evolving landscape of light and dark, soft and hard, to the end of self-love and joyful self-acceptance,” the statement continued. “Emphasizing contradictions of sound and material, Sophie’s work supersedes the pure aural to create the dimension she dreamed of.”
On Friday, Sophie’s YouTube account shared a cryptic and silent, hour-long video on YouTube, titled @MSMSMSM_FOREVER, linking to accounts with that handle on different social media sites. It also teased an announcement at 1:30 p.m. ET on Monday. Her Spotify page and several accounts were also updated to include the font used on her 2013 song “Nothing More to Say.”
The trans icon used the “MSMSMSM” moniker in her own Instagram handle, website, and on a song from 2015. It’s unclear what exactly it means.
The Scottish-born star died tragically in January 2021 after accidentally slipping and falling while watching the full moon in Athens, Greece. Several months after her death, her brother Ben Long told Billboard that there were “literally hundreds of tracks” in the vault, but that he wanted to “do right by Sophie” in releasing what she would have wanted.
“I don’t want to be like, ‘We’re going to put everything out,’ because sometimes Sophie didn’t want it to or it wasn’t finished,” he told the outlet at the time. “But it was quite clear with a lot of songs, just from the fact that we had been working on them and mixing the album, that I know the direction a lot of things were supposed to be going.”
The announcement of new music from Sophie comes just days after Charli XCX released her album Brat, which included “So I,” a tribute to the producer. “Always on my mind/Your star burns so bright… You had a power like a lightning strike,” Charli sings on the powerful track, which samples Sophie’s own “It’s Okay to Cry.”
Sophie was behind many of Charli’s early and most experimental hits, including “Vroom, Vroom,” “Lipgloss,” and several songs from Pop 2 and Number 1 Angel. She also co-wrote and co-produced songs such as Madonna’s “Bitch, I’m Madonna,” Cashmere Cat and Camila Cabello’s “Love Incredible,” and K-pop group Itzy’s “24HRS.”
“I think all pop music should be about who can make the loudest, brightest thing,” Sophie told Rolling Stone in 2015. “That, to me, is an interesting challenge, musically and artistically. And I think it’s a very valid challenge — just as valid as who can be the most raw emotionally.”
“I don’t know why that is prioritized by a lot of people as something that’s more valuable,” she added at the time. “The challenge I’m interested in being part of is who can use current technology, current images and people, to make the brightest, most intense, engaging thing.”
From Rolling Stone US
