Trivia / SOPHIE

• Ascended Fanon: "UNISIL", the bonus off of the physical release of Product, was uploaded by a fan onto Youtube with a stock 3D render of a bouncy castle as its image, playing into the same plastic motif of Sophie's Product-era singles. When the track was publicly released as a single B-side in 2021, "UNISIL" was officially depicted with the exact same castle model, but textured to be a harsh black.
• Development Hell: Soon after the release of Oil of Every Pearl's Un-Insides in 2018, Sophie announced plans of releasing three/four "albums" in the year (a mix of EPs and LPs), including a remix album. 2018 came and went with no official announcement of these projects, with Sophie herself implying that her label wouldn't let her release them, even stating "if it's not possible for any reason, then I'll just leak them." The remix album's release finally happened in July 2019, over a year after that of OOEPUI's, but everything else had seemingly evaporated. Sophie's premature death has especially put their fate into dire question, though her family members, namely her brother and mixing engineer Ben Long, reported she had "literally hundreds of tracks" in the vault, and have expressed interest in releasing it posthumously.
• Missing Episode: Sophie has produced many distinct (and technically untitled) tracks and remixes that have never seen official release, only relegated to live performances. Fan favorites include "Burn Rubber", "Ultraviolet Love", and "OOH".
• Newbie Boom:
  • While Sophie was already relatively popular beforehand, she and PC Music as a whole gained a lot more popularity following their regular collaborations with Charli XCX starting from her Vroom Vroom EP.
  • She also concurrently gained more recognition after reinventing her public image starting from "It's Okay to Cry" and with the release of Oil of Every Pearl's Un-Insides.
• One-Book Author:
  • Discounting the Product compilation before it, Oil of Every Pearl's Un-Insides is her one and only studio album, partly owed to her dying before she could make a follow-up.
  • QT, her side project/Virtual Celebrity persona with A.G. Cook, only released one single named "Hey QT" in 2014. Due to Sophie's passing, QT is unlikely to ever release anything else.
• Promoted Fangirl: Sophie was a huge fan of Autechre, naming them as a key influence and stating that they were the only artists she would ever allow to remix her music. Years later, Autechre would release an official remix of her song "Bipp", with Sophie expressing her enthusiasm for it in her final tweets before her untimely passing.
• Reclusive Artist: Prior to 2017, very little was known about Sophie's personal history, and even after achieving fame and popularity, she initially tended to remain anonymous. Sophie's identity was initially concealed in interviews through voice masking, as well as by covering parts of Sophie's body, and so little was known about her that prior to coming out as a trans woman, some commentators accused Sophie of "feminine appropriation", on the assumption that Sophie was a man using a female stage name.^note Her responses when asked about it didn't help, such as in a 2013 Pitchfork interview (conducted via e-mail), in which when asked about the choice of Sophie as a stage name, the artist responded: "It tastes good and it's like moisturizer." One infamous incident was a Boiler Room liveset in 2014, where she paid a drag performer to mime a DJ set on stage while she stood nearby as a bodyguard. Since then, however, she slowly became more open to performing live sets herself, culminating in 2017 where she put herself more in the forefront, starring in her music videos, singing on "It's Okay to Cry," and participating in more photoshoots and in-person interviews, where she's described as "surprisingly straightforward." She goes into more of her thoughts and philosophy on the matter here.
  Sophia the Robot: SOPHIE, if you were invisible for a day, what would you do?
  Sophie: I'm all about visibility these days, Sophia.
• Short-Lived, Big Impact: Sophie only released one full album and a compilation during her lifetime, but her production style has been massively influential on the current landscape of pop and electronic music, and she is remembered as a monumental figure in the LGBTQ+ community.
• Trolling Creator: In addition to misleading her audience as to who she was in interviews, including her 2014 Boiler Room liveset, she announced a bundle of products to be sold at a POPCube event with PC Music in 2015, including "a set of wedge heels, a puffa jacket, and unique sunglasses" to be released alongside Product later in the year. The store is removed now, but reportedly they were all immediately sold out (aside from the "body safe silicone product" that was already bundled with the special edition of Product), raising suspicions that they might have been completely fake.
• What Could Have Been:
  • "Pretending" from Oil of Every Pearl's Un-Insides was originally "a full song with lyrics and everything," but Sophie felt it was "too literal" and manipulated it to become the extended ambient soundscape found in the final product. The fact that if incredibly sped-up, you can make out someone singing "I'm just pretending..." seems to be an artifact from this.
  • According to her brother/co-producer Ben Long, Sophie was almost finished with a follow-up album to Oil of Every Pearl's Un-Insides that was vastly more pop-oriented, with the plans in the future that they would cycle between an experimental album and a pop album every few years. This was tragically cut short by Sophie's early passing, though there are at least discussions to posthumously release the music she was almost finished with.
  • According to A.G. Cook in his eulogy to Sophie, she had brainstormed the concept of an online platform in which she could share access to all kinds of stems, fragments, and revisions of her music, beyond the confines of modern streaming services.

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