SOPHIE, sweet like whipped cream

Over the last few years, SOPHIE (the stage name of Samuel Long) has played many times in London and around the world. I’ve been lucky enough to see him twice. This time he played at Village Underground, one of London’s most hip venues. With each successive live performance he has debuted new material to the audience and each time a new song is debuted the reaction is the same: pure unadulterated joy.

The hyper-consumerist (yes, his debut album is called PRODUCT) nature of SOPHIE’s music and aesthetic means that nearly every song he’s produced is calculated and refined to be addictive and engaging. He reels his audience in with obscure, yet oddly familiar sounds. His use and appropriation of these is most obvious on his recent collaboration, ‘Let’s Ride’ with Charli XCX – he mixes her vocal onomatopoeia such as ‘beep beep’ and ‘vroom vroom’ with the sounds themselves. When Long plays this live, the crowd almost laughs each time they hear the sounds of the car. Most people are here for songs like ‘Lemonade,’ with its comical bubbling, or ‘Hard.’ Everyone knows the words to every song, but then you’d expect that when the lyrics are so basic - which is probably why SOPHIE has done so well.

Every song he’s produced is calculated and refined

There were times when the audience’s enthusiasm seemed to fizzle out – when Long played tracks that weren’t from his recent release PRODUCT or other collaborations, but these moments never lasted long.

The rest of the PC Music crew (including A.G. Cooke, Danny L Harle and GFOTY) were all in attendance. To an outsider (and to nearly everyone else in the audience) they were inconspicuous – they looked like every other ironic hipster in the crowd. None of them have really seen the same success as SOPHIE (although GFOTY will be supporting Animal Collective on a number of tour dates later this year). They too were probably in awe and will want to emulate his simple yet iconic live performance.

The set ended with ‘When I Rule The World’ by LIZ, a song produced by SOPHIE last year. LIZ sings “You should do as I say cause things are gonna be my way.” At the moment, Samuel Long and the rest of PC Music might have a small, devoted fan base – but with more collaborations like this and energetic live performances, it won’t be long before SOPHIE and the rest of his friends will rule the musical world.