Song Recommendations: “Without” (2024) by A.G. Cook / “So I” (2024) by Charli XCX / “BIPP” (2013) & “It’s Ok to Cry” (2017) by SOPHIE

So, how ‘bout that Brat summer? It’s not like by the time I started following her in the early 2010s that Charli XCX was an underground artist or anything. By August of 2013, she had already featured on the massive Icona Pop track “I Love It” and was on an expansive worldwide tour; and that’s when I saw a video of her covering Backstreet Boys’ “I Want It That Way” for the A.V. Club’s Undercover series (which they’ve since removed, but a YouTube historian has helpfully archived it). That particular performance has always stuck with me, not because of its technical proficiency (indeed, she’s even a bit nervous and doesn’t quite nail the key change) but because of the pop-music savvy, passion, and most importantly, the vulnerability and earnestness that she displayed. A real pop star’s pop star. It marked her as an artist to watch, and I was continually rewarded over the next decade as Charli made bigger, bolder, and weirder moves in the scene. And while she was indeed of “pop star” status, she always seemed like an underdog. And it’s hard to see that now, especially in the wake of the bright green, pixelated black-text world we now live in, but following Charli in the early days was exciting exactly because of the dissonance of her being a huge star but also a kind of hidden gem.

At this point, you can’t really talk more without discussing hyperpop, that day-glo, caffeinated, straightforwardly artificial offshoot of electronic music that coalesced in the early 2010s. And you can’t discuss hyperpop without discussing A.G. Cook, founder of PC Music (arguably ground zero, or close enough to it, for hyperpop’s breakthrough) and producer and musician in his own right. And you really can’t discuss any of this without eventually landing on SOPHIE. Her presence and impact in the hyperpop scene cannot be overstated. While never signing to PC Music, she did work with Cook throughout the 2010s and worked on a number of Charli’s projects, including the absolute top-tier “Vroom Vroom.”

And it’s, unfortunately, SOPHIE’s untimely death in 2021 that brings us to the track recommendations here. SOPHIE’s absence leaves a profound void in the music scene, and this year both A.G. Cook and Charli XCX released tribute songs that grapple with her loss, each standing out in their respective (and excellent) albums. Each song takes a vocal line from a different SOPHIE song. Cook, in “Without,” repeats a line from SOPHIE’s breakthrough “BIPP,” though he strips it entirely of its hyperpop energy and arch delivery and sings simply, his voice even breaking: “I can make you feel better, if you want to.” Charli, for her part, sings of her regrets of not taking more opportunities to work with SOPHIE but even offers herself the assurances that SOPHIE would have been sure to give her: “And I know you always said, ‘it’s ok to cry,’ so I know I can cry.” They’re both heartbreaking and fitting memorials to lament the loss of a friend and collaborator. Taking all these songs together certainly forms a picture of how artists can find inspiration and solace in each other’s work, and it also leaves a forever dangling thread of future SOPHIE/Charli/Cook work that can now never come to pass.

At the time of this writing, SOPHIE’s posthumous album has been out for two weeks, but I’ve struggled to give it a full listen for a multitude of reasons we don’t have to go into here. But we’re also a week before the release of the second special edition of BRAT, this version weaving a reimagining of the entire album through remixes and collaborations on each track. Already, some of these versions have not only been as good as the originals, but some are arguably better, and they’re all certainly metanarratively interesting in the context of Charli’s career up to this point. The collaboration with Robyn positions Charli as an inheritor of experimental pop; the massive success of “Gir, So Confusing” with Lorde has shown how presumed industry beefs or slights can be mended through the power of music, and her collab with Billie Eilish really shows just how much fun she can have with other musicians. The big question mark at this moment for me is what the reinterpretation of “So I” will bring us. So far, collaborators for the album have been announced, but the track title where “So I” will slot is still just plainly listed as “Track 9.” We’ll see what Charli has in store for us.