After the sunshine often comes the storm and the rain, and for Leicester-born, London-based SOFY, that couldn’t be truer when it comes to her career. One that began with vibrant indie pop sensibilities, infectious lyricism, and a colourful visual identity, and has since shifted to a cool-toned, honestly vulnerable sound over the past year. Ahead of the release of her debut album ‘How To Perform Magic’, out on the 25th of September, we sat down with SOFY to find out how her music has changed over the last year and what is in store for her most raw musical era yet.
Who is to blame for your artist name and its inception?
I'm to blame, or my mum and dad are to blame - it's just my name, but spelled differently. Outside of music, I'm Sophie with a ‘ph’, but there was already an artist called Sophie, so I changed it, which feels like a long time ago now; it was around six years ago when I was just starting the project.
I've maybe lost a bit of the person I was before, which is something I explore a lot in the new album. It's quite an untethering feeling to make something else out of yourself, and you don't really know where the persona ends, and your personality ends.
Who would you say is to blame for your music career?
It's me again, because I'm just like, very, very, very determined, and I don't come from a musical background; I don't come from a creative family at all. They didn't really know what to do with me when I was this eight-year-old little kid, saying, “I'm gonna sing Busted with my brother, and put on all these shows”, and they were like, “Oh my God, what the hell? Who is this? And how has she been sort of produced by this non-creative family?”. I have always had something in me that wanted to just be loud and make music and make noise and write.
Who would you say are kind of your biggest musical inspirations for that sound you've curated?
For the new record, I would say, it was very heavily influenced by Radiohead's ‘OK Computer’ - it's always been an album that I love and really held my hand through a period of existential crisis.
It sounded exactly how I was feeling, and I think that Thom Yorke was the same age as I am now, or was the same age as I was when I was making ‘How To Perform Magic’, and ‘OK, Computer’ came out the week I was born, so I feel a sort of affinity with it.
There's something to be said about entering your late 20s and then being like,” Right, what have I done with my life? Am I ruining my life with my decisions? Do I like what I'm doing here?”. It's so transient, especially because all of my friends are getting engaged and buying houses and progressing in their careers, while I was doing music and not always enjoying it. There was a sense of “what am I doing this for then if I'm not enjoying it?” and so I wanted to lean into that feeling and try to make a record about it.
With ‘How to Perform Magic’, there is a more heart-wrenching raw style compared to ‘Another Day in Paradise’. What's to blame for that musical shift?
I didn't really have anything to lose. I felt, then, that I wasn’t really enjoying being an artist anymore. I was also feeling so uninspired before I started actually tuning into my feelings and writing about them - I was trying to just pretend that everything was fine still, and on the edge of it, I could literally just pack this all in, because this isn't working for me anymore. I wasn’t getting back what I was giving it, what I was putting in, so I decided if this is my only album offering, I want it to be interesting and weird, and something that I'm really proud of, not something that I'm worrying about whether it's going to be commercially successful.
I got into such a hole with social media, and the way it is, “this can't be a single because it's not got the TikTok hook or whatever”, and then I'd be, like, “don't get it twisted, this is not what making music is about”. As soon as I was able to reframe that feeling, there was a weight lifted.
This is a flag in the sand, this is me at this stage in my life, and this is the genre of music that I love and the genre of music that I listen to.
With your debut album tour coming up later this year, what's to blame for your favourite tour treat?
We always have to have bottles of Lucozade on tour because of the electrolytes. My drummer is also diabetic, so there's nothing to blame for that, taking up all my tour rider budget with Lucozade.
We always just have loads of crisps, you're not supposed to have crisps when you're performing because they're greasy and salty, and they clog your throat up, but my favourite is Lays green onion crisps - they're so good! The Bossman shop next to my old house used to stock all these crazy international flavours of crisps, and those Lays green onion ones have helped me through some tough times.
Your fans have played a big part throughout this album cycle, including playing cards decorated with the track names and much more. What other surprises have you got in store for your fan base in the lead-up to the album's release?
We've got a few things coming up! There's going to be a little something around the release of ‘Superfriend’, which is out on the 3rd of July. So that's exciting, stay tuned!
There's also going to be something in August that is very exciting, and I'm potentially going to do a countdown 15 days before the album’s release, as there are 15 songs on the physical album.
From the album's track list, what song are you most excited for people to hear that hasn't been released yet?
My favourite songs are always the ones that aren't singles. ‘How to Perform Magic’ – the title track – is probably my favourite song that I've ever made. It's like a stream of consciousness, and I'm really proud of the way that it sounds.
There's another song called ‘Saturation’, which is also musically very interesting; it shifts between a couple of different keys and different time signatures.
I'm really proud that we were able to make something that's really cool musically, but also very sad. I don't know how I'm going to get through performing it live because it is very sad - that's one of the songs that I wrote when I was at my lowest, but it turned into something really beautiful.
With the rawness and the creative process of the album, what's been your favourite part of the ‘How To Perform Magic’ era so far?
My favourite part of the era, so far, was definitely making the record. I made it with Edward Denholm, my bandmate, and we've been making music since I started making music six years ago. I think it's really cool to me that we're the same duo that made this album, as well as the duo who made songs like ‘Fiesta’, five years ago - we've both just got so much better at what we do.
A lot of people start their career working within their circle, and people with whom they're already friends, and then as soon as they get a bit of budget or whatever, their label or their manager often goes “right, you're going in with this big producer now”, and you don't have that same connection. As long as you're both willing to experiment and try new things, if you’re working with the same person, that's what matters.
If you could assign your music to any Pokémon, what Pokémon would you choose?
It’d be Dark Raticate. I found this on the floor last year - I think it was near Cambridge Heath. I just found it on the floor, and I was like, “What?!”.
What is on the cards for 2026 for SOFY?
We’re supporting Kasabian at Finsbury Park on the 4th of July, which is very exciting! I can’t wait! As someone who grew up in Leicester, it's so crazy to me that we're going to be doing that with Kasabian. Then we are playing in Sheffield at Rock and Roll Circus, a festival in Bristol, and we’re going to Germany and Switzerland for some festivals, and then it's the album tour! And a couple of little exciting things for the fans along the way…
SOFY’s latest single ‘DooYaa’ is out now, and tickets are available now for her upcoming EU /UK tour.
Jessica Draper-Mann
Image: Oliver Day
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