SOPHIE cannot be stopped! “Hard” is (naturally) harder, darker, and more agressive than the bubbly (and equally danceable) sister single “Lemonade,” but not in any sort of way we might expect. It still features the chaotic, tiny, bright sounds that define SOPHIE’s music, but it’s the driving vocals, use of silence, and metallic noises that deaden the saccharine emotion and grime up the bubbliness, creating the evil twin that’s smoking cigarettes in the corner while “Lemonade” is licking her little red lollipop. SOPHIE works side by side with the likes of PC Music, and “Hard” actually sounds a bit more like their music than SOPHIE’s own past work — GFOTY is even the vocalist here — but the track still manages to sound totally fresh. “Hard” too feels like SOPHIE’s most poetic work to date. By showing us the many uses of the word ‘hard,’ it challenges what we associate with that word in the context of electronic music. SOPHIE celebrates the danceable hardness of the track, but also celebrates its emotional and technical difficulty. The female vocal saying “I just get so hard” contains a subversiveness that effectively challenges sex and gender norms. I could write about the theoretical worth of this track for hours, but at the end of the day, it’s just really straightforward, and at its core, it’s just fun to listen to.
• SOPHIE: https://soundcloud.com/msmsmsm
• Numbers: http://nmbrs.net
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