WhenSofiaLeavestheHouse,itisaPerformance

The mind behind Sofia and the Antoinettes on turning her most personal thoughts into songs and why she’s more honest in her music than she’ll ever be in conversation.

 

WORDS Olive Walton

 

Interview taken from IMAGINE Magazine Issue Three Pre Order here

 

Sofia Atkinson will lie to you.

 

Sofia and the Antoinettes will sing you truths you’ve kept buried below the surface for fear of them getting out – and will do so beautifully.

 

Speaking to me from her car, parked outside of her boyfriend’s studio on a rainy day in June, she sits with the door ajar, just enough space for the smoke from her vogue slims to escape as she tells me how her past lovers bleed into the worlds within her songs. She shares how her friends and family make up her creative team because they allow her to be vulnerable enough to tap into deep places when she’s making music. She tells me about the close relationship she fosters with her fans, the personal interactions shared in her comments section and just how far that devotion can go – including the girl who got her face tattooed on her arm.

 

Olive Walton: When previously asked about your core values as an artist, you answered, “Brutal emotional honesty.” I want to know, where do you, as Sofia Atkinson, end and Sofia and the Antoinettes begin?

 

Sofia Atkinson: If I were very good at playing a character, I would’ve been an actress – that’s the first thing – but I think there is more honesty in Sofia and The Antoinettes than there is in just Sofia. If you’re meeting me with nothing to do with music, nothing to do with the artist project, I lie a lot. It’s a bad habit but it goes hand-in-hand with leaving the house as a performance. I feel like, “This is probably the way I should be,” whereas when I’m writing music, it’s very stripped down to things I don’t even admit to myself, and then that’s when it becomes way too honest. It’s only in the music that I realise, “Damn, that’s how I really think and really feel.” I don’t know how much I like it, but it’s true.

 

OW: How has your identity as Sofia and the Antoinettes evolved from its inception to today?

 

SA: [My EP] Leaving the House is a Performance was written before [my new EP] Women Who Love Too Much and I think [the latter] has more of an understanding of emotion and love than [the former]. The new music I’ve written is the closest I’ve gotten to understanding how I feel and what healthy love is. I think Leaving the House is a Performance is very childlike. I guess I was 18, 19 writing that. So I guess it’s an evolution of me understanding my human experience and my emotions. The trajectory is that the more I write and the more I read, the more I understand what is true. Sofia and the Antoinettes was born out of me not wanting to be Sofia Atkinson. I also was so stressed about that awful question, “What kind of music do you make?” And I was like, “Well, I don’t want to just make rock or pop or indie music.” And, and it was like, well if I give a name to all the different versions of myself that I feel like I live with, then I can change all the time and not be questioned on it.

 

“I don’t think I’ve ever watched a concert and not wished it was me playing.”

 

OW: It must be really hard to try and define it before it’s really got going.

 

SA: I just feel like a baby. I have no idea, I didn’t know what I was going to make, you know, this project of work, and I don’t know what I’m going to make for the next one.

 

OW: Who was the first performer you connected with and realised “I want to do that”?

 

SA: My dad was very encouraging. I was probably like eight or nine in a restaurant, standing on the table and being like, “I’m going to sing you a song now,” and I would. Whenever I saw a cover band or a busker, I’d ask, “Can I sing a song with you?” I was probably doing that from about ten years old. And I don’t think I’ve ever watched a concert and not wished it was me playing.

OW: Your new EP talks about “The unconscious performing human beings take part in every day.” What is your earliest memory of this?

 

SA: My mother. My mother never breaks character though. She is always poised and she doesn’t see the humour of the fact that she doesn’t break character. Me and my sister laugh about it a lot, but I remember her dad dying when I was eight or nine and she was just in full Chanel the next day taking us to school. Like, “On we go.”

 

OW: How did you know when your latest EP, WOMEN WHO LOVE TOO MUCH was truly complete? Did someone have to pry it out of your hands?

 

SA: No, not at all. I’m the opposite. The second I like a song, I say, “Let’s put it out tomorrow,” and everyone’s like, “Breathe! It needs to be mixed. We need to do the creative”. I want to get it out. How do I know a project is finished? I really like when there’s a thorough line within a project. What we’ve just finished is, I fell in love with a guy that I’d met like four times. He was the son of a sailor and all about the ocean and it was such a mess. All of the music about him sounds very chaotic and unclear. Then I fell in love with a very nice, lovely guy six months later and he has links to Texas and being a cowboy, and now we’ve got a little Western vibe. It’s like the sea versus the land and there’s a thorough line of when I met him and then the last song saying “I understand what love is now. I’m okay.” That is like a ribbon. That completes it.

 

OW: I love the practice that musicians get to do of dissecting your lives and tying up loose ends.

 

SA: I love words so much. I always say there are two types of people, people that hear the music louder than the words and people who hear the words louder than the music. I barely hear the music. It can be the worst sounding song in the world and if the lyrics are good I love it. And I read a lot. I write a lot of poetry and stories and then the bits that I don’t hate kind of become a song.

 

OW: Has the EP resonated with audiences as you expected, and does it connect to them in the same way it does for you?

 

SA: I love hearing what the songs mean to people and how different it is to whatever I wrote it about. What music has only ever done for me is remind me that I’m not insane for feeling this way or for having these thoughts because somebody else has had them. So if I can do that for somebody, that’s the ultimate goal. It’s anything, it’s art, it’s “You’re not alone, other humans feel like that.” My friend hears Revolver and thinks about her father who passed away. It goes,

 

“I don’t think of you most of the time

But when I do

I’m a child in your living room”

 

which to me is just about a musician friend who I was putting at the forefront of my life and I felt very much like a moon revolving around their life and the care wasn’t reciprocated. But when she told me that I was like, “Jesus fucking Christ,” that’s amazing.

 

OW: That’s so heavy, but beautiful. Do you read your comments?

 

SA: Yes. I delete bad comments. This is my page. Get the fuck out of here. I like to reply to them as well. I find it really funny there’s a bunch of random comments and I’m just having a deep conversation with somebody I’ve met at a show in the middle of it. I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to not. I’m nosy like that.

 

“If you don’t like somebody it’s just not going to work. You also can’t get into that vulnerable state of, “I’m going to cry in between these vocal takes,” if you don’t get along.”

 

OW: What’s one musical risk you’ve taken that paid off?

 

SA: It goes back to this thing about me only hearing lyrics. My sound has felt quite dependent on whoever I’m working with, up until this body of work that we’re just finishing now where I’ve actually been really bossy and decided that it needs to be a lot more choir-like and a lot more piano-heavy. But I think it’s different for each song. Spiralling has got such heavy drums because that’s a direct reflection of what my mind felt like. Revolver was a sadder song so it makes sense for it to have that Radiohead sort of riff. Sound is a difficult thing to figure out. But, as far as risks, I feel like it’s always on the production side and I’m very fortunate to work with incredible musicians that will do something like, “This is a bit weird,” and I’m like, “The weirder the better. Do it. Keep it.”

 

OW: How important are trusted collaborators when you’re making such personal work? How do you choose who you work with, and who has been central in your work so far?

 

SA: I can make a decision on someone in five seconds. It’s quite a bad trait. But I’m just like, “I either love you or I just don’t get you.” And a lot of my friends are across things. Darcy is a good friend of mine, she wrote a lot of Leaving the House [Is A Performance] with me;  Louis [Allen] I wrote OVERWHELMING FEAR with, he’s my boyfriend; Joan [Horrach] is my childhood best friend, I’ve known him since I was six, he does all of the creative; my sister [Giselle] does all my styling; my five friends are very involved and then all the producers that I’ve worked with I’ve been friends with before we started creating.

 

OW: So it’s a family affair.

 

SA: Massively. If you don’t like somebody it’s just not going to work. You also can’t get into that vulnerable state of, “I’m going to cry in between these vocal takes,” if you don’t get along.

 

OW: Has there been a moment you’ve experienced while performing or an interaction with somebody after a show that’s really stayed with you?

 

SA: Have you seen that picture of my face tattooed on somebody’s arm?

 

OW: No. What? That is insane.

 

SA: That is a feeling that nobody prepares you for. It’s the whole of the Women Who Love Too Much cover. That absolutely blew my mind. It was after the Hoxton Hall show, this girl came up to me and she said, “I’ve got something to show you,” and I was like, “What the actual fuck?” I also read all of my DMs and there are some messages that people send that just make me cry. I got a message yesterday that said “Your songs have brought me joy, jealousy, laughter, tears, pain, comfort and more when I’ve needed it most. I believe that the words you’ve written have become ingrained in my being. You’ve changed my life and are an inspiration to me, and I will forever be grateful to you. Thank you.”

 

OW: Oh my God. I have goosebumps.

 

SA: I read these things and I’m like “What? Thank you, but what?” That will never not shock me. I really wish I could see into little windows of what people are doing when they’re listening to the music. You’re in the kitchen with your friends or in the car or whatever. I love getting videos of things like that. It’s so cool to be a soundtrack to somebody’s moment.

OW: Are there any influences in your work that listeners might not immediately recognise but you’ve got hidden in there?

 

SA: That’s a nice question. My god is Leonard Cohen, everyone knows that. He’s never, ever written anything bad. Not one sentence. I guess there’s a lot of Sophie Calle, who’s this French contemporary artist. She did a lot of work studying people sleeping and worded it all in very beautiful ways. I love Sylvia Plath. I guess it’s literary and art inspirations more than just musicians, but it all comes back to words. Tracey Emin is a poet before anything else. Her titles of her works… I’m always floored, “How have you described that feeling in four words like that?”

 

I Followed You to the End and I whisper to My Past Do I have Another Choice. She also has two neon signs that say, “Is Anal Sex Legal?” and “Is Legal Sex Anal?” which I love so much. They’re amazing.

 

OW: When making your last EP, was there any art that was central to it? Was there a film or something that you were reading at the time that really influenced the work you were making?

 

SA: Well, ‘The Antoinettes’ came from watching Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, and I was literally like, “Oh, she’s just such a misunderstood girl,” which I get is controversial – I don’t actually mean the Queen, I mean Kirsten Dunst in that film. There’s pearls and lace and threads from that, but I came away from all of that so much when I wrote Women Who Love Too Much and then again, this new set of music is very sirens and sailors and gods and angels – It’s a lot more fantasy. I think it’s evolving and changing. There’s always an album that I’m listening to or a poetry book that I’m reading whilst we’re writing a body of work.

 

“It’s so cool to be a soundtrack to somebody’s moment.”

 

OW: The EP touches on both platonic and romantic heartbreak. Do you think friendship breakups are often overlooked in music compared to romantic ones?

 

SA: There are definitely songs about friendship heartbreaks. I Don’t Know What I’m Doing on Earth is more than that, to me it is just a big fat question mark asking “Am I doing this right? Because I’m trying to and I’m sorry for all the times I haven’t.” I don’t know that there are enough songs that acknowledge one’s actual part in the destruction of things. I feel like there are a lot of songs that are like, “You did me wrong as a lover, as a friend,” but I like that that’s a song that says “I probably did you just as wrong. I’m sorry.”

 

OW: What are you working on right now? Are you constantly making new music?

 

SA: I don’t know how much I’m allowed to say, but we’ve just finished some music that I am  extremely proud of. I would play it to Leonard [Cohen] without having a heart attack. I actually just played the whole thing on the drive here. I love it. I’m really excited about it. It’s called Existential in High Heels.

 

OW: How do you write best?

 

SA: I probably write the bare bones of things on my own at a piano or just typewritten ideas. And then Connor and Will Manuka, I always say Will is like Mozart on the piano, and Connor’s like Hendrix on the guitar – I’ve got Mozart and Hendrix at my disposal. I have had them for the last month so that’s been amazing. I’ll say, “What about this melody?” And then they’ll just play the most incredible thing.

 

OW: Thanks so much for sitting with me.

 

SA: No, thank you. I loved it, it just felt like a conversation with a friend.