Google Doodle honoured Sophie Xeon on September 17 (Picture: Youtube)
Pioneering producer Sophie Xeon (known as SOPHIE) has been honoured as the subject of a Google Doodle today on what would have been the icon’s 38th birthday.
The home page of Google shows a cartoon depiction of the artist – complete with the trademark red hair the producer became known for – and features a video honouring Sophie.
The short clip features Sophie’s song Immaterial, which includes lyrics like: ‘I was just a lonely girl / In the eyes of my inner child / But I could be anything I want.’
The song plays over a moving animation of the artist blasting off into the stars.
Considered one of the founders of hyperpop and among the most influential producers in the history of pop music, Sophie tragically died in 2021 after an accidental fall from a building in Athens but left behind a rich legacy.
For those unfamiliar with Sophie’s lasting influence on music, the close of Brat Summer (an album upon which the producer had immeasurable influence) is a perfect time to learn the basics.
The icon would have been 38 today (Picture: Google)
Who was Sophie Xeon?
The producer – who was trans and preferred not to be referred to by any pronouns, according to representatives – was an autodidactic musician who first began making music as a young child in Glasgow, Scotland.
In the 2000s, Sophie moved to Berlin, helmed the dance-pop group Motherland, and became immersed in the city’s electronic and dance music scenes.
There, the innovator honed the futuristic, otherworldly sound that became synonymous with the moniker SOPHIE.
Following a string of collaborations and releases, Sophie’s single Bipp broke through the noise and earned the producer critical acclaim and a quickly growing fanbase on independent sites like SoundCloud.
Sophie was a frequent collaborator with Charli XCX (Picture: Getty Images)
Sophie first collaborated with Charli XCX in 2015, building the foundations of what would become a long-lasting and fruitful artistic partnership that lived on beyond Sophie’s life.
Sophie produced many of Charli’s songs, including Vroom Vroom, After the Afterparty, Paradise, Trophy, Roll with Me, Lipgloss, Out of My Head, No Angel, and Girls Night Out.
The producer only released one studio album, Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides, in June 2018, which earned a nomination for best dance/electronic album at the 2019 Grammy Awards and made enormous waves in the pop world. Sophie was only the third trans femme in history to be nominated for a Grammy.
The album offered a sound so brand new and unfamiliar that many found it alienating, but for those able to see the vision, Oil was an astounding accomplishment that blew the ceiling off the possibilities of pop music.
The artist is often credited with redefining the limits of pop music (Picture: Getty Images)
Pitchfork remembers the album with appropriate grandiosity: ‘By complicating the naturalness of the human voice and corrupting established pop structures, SOPHIE also complicates the supposed naturalness of gender, which has always been inextricable from music. Her work is a sphere …read more
Source:: Metro
