Image of Sofie Royer (left) and CJSW Interviewer Brooklyn Billinghurst (right).
Sofie Royer performed during Sled Island on Thursday, 10:30pm at Ship & Anchor.
Interview conducted in collaboration with Reverie Magazine.
TRANSCRIPT:
Brooklyn (CJSW)
How you doing today?
Sofie
I’m okay. Oh, I’m okay. Thank you. How are you?
Brooklyn (CJSW)
I’m good. Thank you for asking. My name is Brooklyn. I’m talking to Sofie Royer.
Sofie
Perfect.
Brooklyn (CJSW)
So this is for CJSW and Reverie. I don’t know if anybody ran that past you, so yeah, I work for CJSW and just have about 10 questions for you. So it’s gonna be a pretty quick interview. Then I’ll grab a quick picture with you at the end, just to put with the article. How does that sound?
Sofie
Great.
Brooklyn (CJSW)
Okay, perfect. So I did a lot of research for this, and reading the bio page on your website, I was like, really, it struck me how many facets of art that you’re involved in, like, that’s really inspiring and cool, as well as the business aspects of working at Stone’s Throw—the label that you’re on. What was the jumping off point into releasing your own music?
Sofie
So I moved back to Vienna, Austria several years ago when my mom fell ill, and that’s also why I quit my jobs, and then I wasn’t really making music for other people, so I started making music for myself.
Brooklyn (CJSW)
That’s awesome. I love the fact that you are split between Europe and here, my brother lives in Europe, so it was like, hearing your songs in German, like, really made me homesick for where he lives. And, of course, multilingual queen in French, German and English. Is there a language that you find just like the best to sing or write in?
Sofie
Well, it really depends. I have to say, I do really like German. I think there’s a lot of very interesting pronunciations or even terms for, let’s say, I don’t know, maybe like a certain phrase can be summated in a specific word, and it allows you to have a little bit more flexibility of expression. But then, on the other hand, you’re limited to people in Switzerland, Germany, Austria, being the only ones that can understand what you’re saying.
Brooklyn (CJSW)
So yeah, this is true. Bavarian people pretty much it. But that is really beautiful that you find like such like rhythm in that language. Because I agree, there’s German words that just sum up things you cannot say in English. Yeah, my family’s German. Then my brother lives in Leipzig, so I go there about twice a year. Yeah, I don’t speak any but he’s fluent, so I sent him your music. And he was like, damn it. Every opportunity to speak English at home, like, or speak German in Canada, I can’t speak German. Yeah? So he also, as a fan, would like me to pass that message along. And so obviously, you have your violin sitting here with us. I think that’s very awesome that you’re classically trained in violin. Like, congrats. And I was listening to this track this morning “Feeling Bad Forsyth Street” from Harlequin in 2022. There’s that beautiful mingling of violin and guitar, like they’re talking to each other. How did you strike a balance with classical training and then, like the Sofie Royer pop brand?
Sofie
It’s hard to say. I don’t really think that I made conscious decisions to. For example, sometimes feel like maybe stylistically, I’m not as coherent as other artists, or I’m not as, you know, there’s, there’s all these, I think, areas of improvement that I sometimes see with previous releases. So none of this is really a very conscious decision, but maybe more of, like an intuitive one, and those themes kind of do carry over to the new record, where there’s a lot of, like, violin and guitar. I just like the way it sounds and then I think potentially, my musical abilities are limited to kind of the the school of thought I’ve been taught in. And, you know, for example, my band in Europe, they’re jazz musicians, so they have such a different approach to chords. And you know, when we’ll be sound checking, I’ll always hear, you know, just really interesting variations that maybe are outside of my classical wheelhouse, for example. So I think what you’re hearing on my record is really just a product of the fact that, you know, I’m maybe restrained to some of these classical elements. And, you know, I try my best to have fun with it and experiment around outside of it, but, you know, I’m just a product of what I know. So yeah.
Brooklyn (CJSW)
It’s awesome to see you bring all that together. And to, like, listen to that product is great. And I know you opened for like, Lana Del Rey last year. Could you talk maybe about your pop influences and like, how that informs, you know, like the classical part, boosting that up, and then the pop part maybe adding to it.
Sofie
I love pop music. I think my my biggest kind of influences are having just grown up with 90s radio since I was born in the 90s and, you know, there was a lot of Natalia Imbruglia, Kylie Minogue, and then you’d still have bands like 10cc or Steely Dan, which kind of fall into a pop/rock category. And that coupled with, I think some of my favorite songwriters, like Todd Rundgren or Elliot Smith, that’s probably, like, the byproduct of that’s my music is kind of, like, probably very heavily influenced by that, yeah, yeah.
Brooklyn (CJSW)
Huge Steely Dan fan. Oh, they’re so good. They’re the best. You said Natalie Imbrugalia. I did in my 12th grade talent show a rendition of “Torn.”
Sofie
Oh, it was a great song.
Brooklyn (CJSW)
Yeah, she’s the GOAT [Greatest Of All Time]. She’s the queen one hit wonder, but that’s my queen apparently, also that’s like, the best selling song in all of Australian pop history.
Sofie
Did she even write it?
Brooklyn (CJSW)
It’s a cover.
Sofie
It’s a cover, right? Yeah, it’s a cover. I guess that’s not all. Just scroll through stuff on TikTok. It’s like Boomers with Facebook. I just like, look at something on TikTok. I’m like, this must be real. Oh. But yeah, I don’t know, yeah. I saw that just this week. She was playing it at a festival, and then somebody commented like, oh, it’s not even her song. And I’m like, learn something new every day, yeah? But, I mean, she made it. She made it what it was.
Brooklyn (CJSW)
Dare I say, is it her song?
Sofie
It’s like, yeah, it’s her song, yeah. It doesn’t matter. She didn’t write it. It’s her song.
Brooklyn (CJSW)
Yeah, yeah.
Sofie
A lot of pop musicians today do not, famously, do not write their own songs. One million per cent, like so nobody’s writing their own songs, yeah, I am. Just, I want it.
Brooklyn (CJSW)
Sophie Royer writes her own song to that on the record. So Young-Girl Forever. We’re eating it up. We’re loving it. We’re live, laugh, loving okay, I love it. It’s fantastic. I don’t need to tell you that. You know, it’s fantastic. I want to talk about the instrumental choices on that because I noticed it’s a bit more guitar heavy, genuinely Steely Dan-esque, like you have these, like, not over driven, but, like, clean, toned riffs. Is that also part of your jazz band? Like, was that informed by your musicians?
Sofie
I was very inspired by one of my favourite kind of like, I was listening to a lot of I was listening to two artists in particular while I was making this record. It was Part Time, which is a really great band. Shout out David Loco, and then Prince. And so, I think all of the guitar solos that you hear that are like, some of them are mine, some of them that are very technically gifted or not mine, that’s completely beyond my ability on the guitar. They’re Giuliano Sannicandro and his big ask that is he also plays with me in my band in Europe. And my big ask I was like, more prints, more prints. And we would, you know, we would like, write them kind of and figure it out, and then do a million takes. But, yeah, I’m really, I’m really, I really, I replay some of them on the violin on stage, and it’s just really fun getting his voicing right. And it’s really cool. There’s a lot of strings layered, but maybe not as overt as on the second album. And another element I had a lot of fun playing is maybe the kind of like grungier bass sound that you hear on “Young-Girl (Illusion), and Saturday night it’s just me playing. I recorded two bass lines at the same time, and then it’s just a lot of distortion. Yeah.
Brooklyn (CJSW)
Distortion enthusiast, if it can be used, it should be used. That’s cool. I always love learning about how you create like an album as like layered, as Young-Girl Forever. Like, of course, that took a million takes. Of course, that took three people, maybe writing the same thing at the same time. Like, fascinating. I’m so happy you could share that with me. I want to know, what does it mean to be a young girl forever?
Sofie
It’s so I mean, I got I was reading this, but I didn’t have a name for the album, and I was reading this book while I was on tour with Louis Offman right around the same time he was making the record, and it’s called the Theory of a Young Girl by this French anarchist group called Tiqqun. And it had a lot of, like, little bon mots or, like, really short phrases about kind of this theoretical figure of the young girl as a commodity and capitalist society. And I thought it was I thought the book was just really funny. I really enjoyed it. I don’t want to over intellectualize it. There’s definitely critiques that can be taken with the book itself. And the title was either gonna be goodbye young girl or young girl forever. And to be honest with you, Louis, often this band kind of made the call. They’re like don’t call it Goodbye, Young-Girl. Like, it sounds kind of sad. And I was like, Yeah, fine. So it’s Young-Girl Forever. Because, you know, yeah, I think, I think it really, I think it really does speak volumes kind of to the fact that there’s this expectation that, you know, also, this has nothing to do with the book, really, but like that, there’s this expectation on women to have, like, I don’t know, certain milestones or whatever that they need to reach, and it feels very patriarchal to impose those kind of deadlines on oneself. So, you know, you can just do what you want forever, I guess. As long as you’re able to, you know, live somewhere where you can, you should exercise the right to.
Brooklyn (CJSW)
I agree, as a 21 year old, I agree. I’d like to be a young girl forever. It’s fun getting older. Yeah, thank you for saying that.
Sofie
I would not trade my left foot to be 21 again.
Brooklyn (CJSW)
I’m enjoying it so far. But I can’t, like, I can’t wait for 25-27-30. My mom didn’t have me till she was 40. So she was like, got to be a young girl forever, kinda like, you know, yeah, okay. So like, having that wise influence of like I had that, yeah, yeah. You should be a young girl forever. You should have that too. Where do you see the Sofie Royer kind of experience taking you in the future?
Sofie
I mean, I just hope I can keep making music. I do have a fourth record done. Yeah, I do have a fourth record done. I am maybe going to be a little bit I haven’t been very precious with my music at all. I’ve just kind of, you know, made an album and then released it, and maybe I can afford myself a little bit of time here. But, yeah, I would just love to kind of be in a position where I can keep doing it. So, yeah, I hope that opportunity presents itself.
Brooklyn (CJSW)
I would love that opportunity as well. And lastly, here, what do you hope audiences feel walking away from your Sled Island show specifically like you’re in the context of a variety of artists. What do you hope people feel from Sofie?
Sofie
I hope people just get to enjoy themselves and maybe let their imaginations runfree. I think that’s something that I really like try to do with my songs. I don’t, I don’t aim to have some very big or specific message, if anything, I kind of want to just provide little like anchor points for people to daydream or, you know, have have kind of, maybe more nebulous or specific to them experiences with with the songs they’re like. I don’t know what this means, but this is what it means for me.
Brooklyn (CJSW)
Don’t tell my boss, but I totally put on your music and, zone out at work, and I’m, like, on another planet with these little string instruments, and I’m just vibing, yeah, yeah. Oh, well, thank you for making the music.
Sofie
Yes, I have to go home and drop all of this off because I don’t want my work stay until 11:30.
Brooklyn (CJSW)
Yes. Lucky for me, I have this little, nifty, amazing wristband that gets me into everything. But that concludes our interview.