What’s with the Name?

By WILL WEATHERLY, Exposure Staff Writer Ever listen to an Exposure artist and wonder, “What’s with the name?” We’ve got you covered. This week: SOPHIE. OK, so this is a tricky one. If I were to answer directly, I would say that SOPHIE doesn’t actually exist. Surprise! Sadly, that answer doesn’t make any sense, and would make for an article with a very low word count. I’ll let my BFF and “troll of postmodern critical theory,” Jean Baudrillard, explain: Like SOPHIE, he was a pretty provocative guy, and one of the tenets of his philosophy was the idea of simulacra — simulations of things that do not actually exist. Simulacra don’t need to represent reality in order to feel real, Baudrillard said, and this obscures the ways by which we can call some things “genuine” and some things “artificial.” This gets to be tricky when you get to our postmodern era of scripted reality TV, curated Instagram feeds, and catchy pop hooks sang by a female vocalist who is actually a computer. Yes, that is right. The caps-lock says it all: there is no Sophie, only SOPHIE. Which is a British artist named Samuel Long using a bunch of synthesizers and vocal pitch-shifters. Or, if you prefer, a bumpin’ simulation of a pop star that doesn’t exist. Take your pick! Which leaves us with the question: if SOPHIE doesn’t correspond to any actual human name, why the name SOPHIE at all? “It tastes good and it’s like moisturizer,” Long explained to Pitchfork. This is the perfect answer, and I agree entirely. Because in SOPHIE, the fun is just as confusing and arbitrary as that answer, but moreover, it’s absolutely perfect. One of SOPHIE’s tracks, “Lemonade,” was so effervescent it was used by McDonald’s to sell actual lemonade. Like capitalism, SOPHIE knows what you want and gives it to you. (Fittingly, SOPHIE’s debut album, out last week, is called PRODUCT). The drops are vertigo-inducing, the hooks impeccable. Sometimes that feels creepy, like actors in an ad smiling directly at you, their teeth a little too white, their happiness a little unconvincing. Baudrillard, ever the troll, would tell me that nothing of SOPHIE is real, that it is all just our pop music desires recreated and simulated to perfection. And I would tell him to chill out. Postmodernism can be existentially terrifying, sure, I would tell him. But it can also be catchy as hell. And then I would offer him some refreshing lemonade. To listen to more infectious jams like SOPHIE, tune in to Exposure, Monday – Thursday at 11 PM.