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heavymetal-and-reflective · 3 years

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OIL OF EVERY PEARL’S UN-INSIDES by SOPHIE.

Official Track by track album review by MacArthur Radio, because I’m a professional

I’d recommend this album to fans of Bjork, Aphex Twin, Kate Bush, Arca, Kim Petras, FKA Twigs, Lady Gaga, Charli XCX, Grimes, PC Music, and experimental, electronic, different music, but also pop music.

This album for real changed my life. Queer folks, especially my femme dolls, I couldn't reccomend this album more, keep reading or just fucking listen to it!

*Alyssa Edwards voice* Mama this is garbage ART. First of all, before we even talk about the music, this album COVER??? She ATE.

This album challenged and literally changed my perception on what I believed music was and could be. SOPHIE's sound is both harsh, industrial, ethereal, emotional, strange, scary, and cute, sometimes all of these at the same time. And also so fucking FEMME and QUEER. You may be like, "How does something sound femme and queer?" Be quiet and go listen to "Immaterial" right now if you don't understand.

(You should actually listen to the album in order tho bc if you do, when you finally get to Immaterial it's so much more powerful and emotional.)

The story that this album takes you through explores many facets of identity, to the perception of ourselves through others and how an image is used in marketing for art and products to make something/someone a "brand" ("Faceshopping"), to triumphant queer anthems about reclaiming one's identity (”Immaterial”).

For gender non-conforming folks and/or trans people, this album hits veryy different. We're here to talk about the music but I can't help but bring up how powerful the existence of this album is and how much of a statement it was for SOPHIE, a trans woman to make.

Previous to this album, SOPHIE had produced for artists like Charli XCX, Madonna, Vince Staples, and more, and had released her compilation album PRODUCT. She was known as SOPHIE, but people had assumed she was a cis man from the few times they got to see her, as she almost never showed herself in any of her art. There was no image attached to SOPHIE really. There was lots of speculation on who the hell was SOPHIE, this enigma?

Then she did this.

She released the song and music video "It's Okay To Cry" a powerful song which we will discuss later about identity, and in the video, she appears like this, and even flashes her boobs, but like, in an artistic way. It was her coming out and saying, "This is who I am." Now, she herself has said she was actually very disappointed with the public’s reaction to this video in her interview with Arte Tracks on YouTube. She said, "It displayed alot of the hangups that people have around needing--requiring an image to be attached with music." It was this kind of belief that I believe is the sole theme of the song "Faceshopping".

While I do agree with her, I also contradict myself by believing this was so important and powerful for many people, including myself. It was the first time she ever sang in a song (because she's a producer rather than a singer), at least with her voice not incredibly altered, and her first time she officialy made an appearance in any of her art or media. Other than Kim Petras, I don't know many trans "pop stars" (as SOPHIE called herself, even though her music is a very twisted avant-garde version of pop most of the time) and in my opinion, this was powerful. So sorry SOPHIE, but you really did eat with this video.

So on to the music, I've heard some complaints about the order of the songs in this album and I👏could👏 not👏disagree👏any👏 stronger👏👏👏👏. It's a fucking wild journey and I love that she put one of the most harshest, scariest, HARD songs I've ever heard after one of the most beautiful, soft, emotional songs I've ever heard (”Ponyboy” right after “It’s Okay To Cry), and then in the middle of the album you're in this trench of both despair and cathartic, beautiful emotion. It feels like these songs in the middle are about introspection and struggling to accept oneself, and then we reach the triumphant “Immaterial,” and finally close with “Whole New World/Pretend World.”

This will be a track by track review so here I go.

"It's Okay To Cry"---This is how you open a motherfucking album. This song feels like an omniscent, matriarchal, big titty goddess hugging you and whispering that everything is gonna be okay. For most of this song, SOPHIE is singing so softly and delicately, with a very detailed, soft, galactic, ethereal instrumental full of textures that are best to listen to with headphones. Then comes the last 30 seconds of the song where another beautiful, triumphant voice joins SOPHIE, exclaiming "It's Okay To Cry!" as synths that sound like lightning strikes burst repeatedly, joined with a majestic piano synth that sounds huge and all consuming. It’s pop utopia, it’s a release, like an ejaculation of tears.

The story telling in this track is very powerful. My personal favourite lyric is "I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but I think your inside is your best side." So simple and so beautiful. Then there’s the second verse, “I remember one time you were lost/I came to find you/And I knocked on your front door/That was you I’d never seen before./And I saw the magazine you were reading/And I read the page/And if I had just one single wish, wish I could have said this: It’s okay to cry.” This is a story of a friend, family member, or lover seeing through the wall you’re putting up, and knowing that something isn’t right. You’re going through a hard time and they want you to know that it’s okay to cry and they want you to be vulnerable with them. But these lyrics can also be to yourself.

"Ponyboy"---So "It's Okay To Cry" ends and then suddenly we get this raunchy, scary, harsh banger that hits us smack in the face, unexpectedly. This song goes HARD, in an almost literal sense, with the instrumental full of industrial "metallic" sounds that give SOPHIE her unique "pots and pans banging together" sound. We have a girly voice singing "Ponyboy💋💋" and then a deep, distorted, monstrous voice singing "PONYBOY💀☠😡🤖🔪" This song is if Aphex Twin produced “S&M” by Rihanna.

45 seconds in this track and we got these lyrics about submission and S&M; "Lock up the door/Put the pony on all fours/Crack down the whip/Make the pony bite the bit./Spit on my face/Put the pony in his place./I am your toy/Just a little ponyboy." After It's Okay To Cry one may ask themselves as they find themselves in the corner shaking from the terror of this song, "Is-is it still okay to cry?" Two tracks in and already SOPHIE has surprised us. What could we expect as we continue?

"Faceshopping"---Like I said before, I believe this song to be about SOPHIE's view that people believe an image has to be attached to music for it to be appealing, and the enitire concept of "branding" oneself when it comes to art and making a product.

This song is similar to Ponyboy sonically, with similar industrial textures and a harsh sound, though I love this track more because where Ponyboy is intense high energy the whole time through, Faceshopping is fucking weird and you don't know what to expect with SOPHIE anymore after listening to this. You have an almost silent instrumental in the beginning, with a voice saying the following lyrics in a bit of a sassy tone, "My face is the front of shop/My face is the real shop front/My shop is the face I front/I'm real when I shop my face."

Then, another deeply distorted, monstrous vocal comes in and the instrumental turns to a cacophony of sounds reminiscent to screeching metal, nails on chalkboard, and pots and pans banging together. But the thing is, it sounds good. It's strange without a doubt, but it's a catchy song that just works. We then get a more "feminine" vocal singing "Na na, na na, na na na nana!" and then the song goes quiet again as we have the voice saying the lyrics similar to the beginning. And just when you expect Sophie to keep this formula throughout the song, out of nowhere, we get a bridge that is one of the most beautiful, majestic, emotional things I've ever heard in my entire life, with the vocals singing the lyrics, "So you must be the one/That I've seen in my dreams,/Come on, touch me/Set my spirit free/Oh, test me/Do you feel what I feel?/Do you see what I see?/Oh, reduce me to nothingness!" to the synth pads and textures in the instrumental. Personally, I believe these lyrics in the bridge to be about the person one may feel they are inside being brought out in their expression. They’re seeing themselves for the first time. It's not gender dysphoria for once, it's gender euphoria almost. Then the song goes back to it's former sound and ends intensely.

"Is It Cold In The Water?"---This is Sophie's most ballad-ish song, with Cecile Believe singing the vocals over an instrumental that starts off sounding like you're hearing it deep under water almost, and as the song progresses you are rising and rising, until you break through and suddenly you're overwhelmed with so much emotion and you can finally breathe. You gasp in the lungfuls of air while you can, and you’re scared, but also you feel free. It's rare that music ever makes me feel like I'm almost spiritually connecting to some type of higher power, or like my soul is being spoken to in such an intimate way, but this is one of those tracks that just does it.

The lyrics: "I'm freezing/I'm burning/I've left my home./Soft ache, me/Earth shaking/I feel alone" and then the chorus is "Is It Cold In The Water?" sung over and over. These lyrics, and all the lyrics in this album really, can be interpreted in so many ways. Personally I interpret it as one taking a step into the unknown, leaving behind all they know and have been conditioned to think and feel, and also exploring the deepest parts of themselves they tried to repress, and how this can be terrifying, like learning to love, embrace, and express yourself for the queer elements of you that you've been taught to hate, for example.

"Infatuation”---is an underrated track that I do not hear enough love for and I don't get it!! Personally, purely based on sound and feeling, this is her most emotional song and just touches a part of my heart like...nothing else really. The vocals in this song's background, especially at the beginning, are like from a pink and slimy, dying alien crying out for it's mother as it bleeds in an ocean of oil, or it's the mother of this alien singing the lullaby to her precious baby as it dies slowly in pain. The instrumental is soft and ethereal in the beginning and then gets more powerful and big as the drums come in, and at the climax of the song, these distorted synths come in that are kinda indescribable. If I had to though, it’s almost like the sound my Gameboy Advanced made when it used to crash. That sounds bad, but it's not, it's actually my favourite part of the song, and suddenly it becomes the main part of the instrumental with the soft and whispering vocals singing "Infatuation/Who are you, deep down?/ I wanna know." These lyrics could obviously be about really liking someone and the desire to know them very deeply (AKA infatuation) but it can also be interpreted to be about exploring one's own identity.

Someone in the youtube comment section of this song wrote "This is what Infatuation sounds like. You are in heaven but suddenly everything starts to burn." Just wanted to share that bc I think it's beautiful. That “burning” part of the song makes me want to cry every time I hear it.

"Not Okay"---This is another underrated track. It's less than 2 minutes and has a very interlude-ish energy, and is one of her strangest songs. It sounds off, uncomfortable, unsettling, faintly terrifying, but also satisfying. To me, this song captures the feelings of unconfortableness within oneself. I feel like if I had to give gender dysphoria a sound, it'd be this song.

"Pretending" ---This is another interlude-ish track, except that it's almost 6 minutes long. This song doesn't really have any vocals, except people have said that if you speed up the song, it sounds like she's saying at the end, "I was just pretending./Pretending/ I was just pretending." I believe this is SOPHIE's artistic way of expressing the feeling of repressing one's self and pretending to be something they’re not. It starts off reserved and low, and then breaks into this ambient, heavenly soundscape that sounds like...well, Heaven. Like you literally see the light and are running towards it and then you see the clouds and pearly gates. The light is blinding, but you don’t look away.

Similarly to Infatuation, you hear this voice towards the end as well that sounds like a pink slimy alien, except this one is not dying; it's being born. It's the pink alien inside you breaking free, hatching from the egg that you and the world put it into, and then...we arrive to Immaterial.

"Immaterial"

THIS FUCKING SONG!!!!!!!

AHEM.

This is gender euphoria. “Not Okay” was gender dysphoria, “Pretending” is the journey of self introspection, growth, and battling internalized feelings of shame, and Immaterial is euphoria. THIS, IS A FUCKING BANGER. I feel like through words I can't do this song justice to how powerful, anthemic, and good it is to me which is dissappointing but I will try.

These lyrics are about extistentialism, identity, queerness, materialism, self introspection, and self actualization. It's about seeing beyond our physical selves, the labels we identify as, the boxes we and society put ourselves into, and realizing that we can be, as she sings, "Anything we want."

The verse lyrics are "You could be me and I could be you/Always the same and never the same/Day by day, life after life./ Without my legs or my hair/Without my genes or my blood/With no name and with no type of story/Where do I live? Tell me, where do I exist?"

And then, the instrumental almost completely fades away to silence, and we get this iconic life changing bridge: "I was just a lonely girl, in the eyes of my inner child/But I could be anything I want/And no matter where I go/You'll always be here in my heart/Here in my heart, here in my heart/ I don't even have to explain, Just leave me alone now!/I can't be held down!/ I can't be held down!!"

These lyrics are almost like an apology to her former self, or a message to her young, sadder self who may have felt out of place in this world for being trans, repressing herself, and not understanding who she was and why she felt that way. She's saying that sad young girl will always be here in her heart , but that now she can't be held down anymore. Also the way she alters the vocals in this song are so fucking crazy, ESPECIALLY at the bridge. So glossy, pink, and maliciously queer. And the instrumental?? Euphoric, electronic, dance BANGER!!!!

When I talk about how powerful pop dance music can be, this is exactly what I’m talking about. When you can write about an experience that is painful, but make it into a beautiful piece of art that makes people feel such a pure, unadulterated joy, and you can make rooms full of people jump to that, that...is power. That is beautiful, and really that’s how I feel about all music in general, but especially pop dance music, because you’re making people happy and making them dance. This song means the world to me. Speaking of worlds...

"Whole New World/Pretend World"---This song is 9 minutes long, and is the song I least listen to by SOPHIE. I do think it's an amazing closer to an album and especially this one, but I never listen to it really so I can't genuinely write too much about it. This song is one of her most insane experimental ones, that kinda combines the ambient, cinematic elements of Pretending with the industrial, harsh, robotic elements of Faceshopping and Ponyboy. It starts off pretty linear and intense, with an instrumental that makes me feel like I'm being chased by a giant robot with a big laser, and then goes completely off the rails into the second part of the song, "Pretend World" which is much more abstract and sounds faintly like an alien-robot hybrid army dying as the bacteria and germs of Earth enter their immune system and they all die slow painful deaths. It's an amazing song, but not really for me. I think it may be because it’s just a bit too long.

This whole post was quite long though! But I love this album with all my heart and really reccomend it to anyone who wants to listen to interesting, different music that still also has an element of pop to it at time, although I would say SOPHIE's album PRODUCT is more pop. If you read this, thank you. I did it more for me because I’m so obsessed with things I just need to channel it into something sometimes, which is what I love about Tumblr.

Fav tracks-It's Okay To Cry, Ponyboy, Faceshopping, Is It Cold In The Water?, Infatuation, Not Okay, Immaterial.

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