Sophie Powers

Sophie Powers just wants to make youfeel. Call her music whatever you want – hyper-punk or alt-pop or glitch-rock or any other manner of contrived portmanteau – but donʼt forget that crucial fact: The 18-year-old star is on a mission to reinject genuine emotion into a pop landscape thatʼs more alienated than ever. Think of her as an avenging angel – a vocalist and songwriter who, after having her own emotions callously dismissed as a teenager, is looking to make sure that never happens to anyone else ever again. A pop star as well as a fashion designer, whose boundless creativity is constantly being expressed in both fields, Sophie is leading the charge of a new generation of sharp-minded, creative outcasts. “My emotions were always invalidated as a young girl – youʼre always being told, like, ʻYouʼre a teenager, youʼll get over itʼ,” she says. “I donʼt care if itʼs extremely sad or extremely angry – I just want to make music that makes people feel validated and powerful.”

That mission statement courses through NOSEBLEED – Sophieʼs debut single for Atlantic Records in partnership with Gabe Saportaʼs TAG music, and a brilliantly sardonic rebuke to the societal expectations that are placed upon the shoulders of Gen Z. Frenetic, abrasive, and above all catchy, it plays as a magnificent reintroduction to Sophieʼs singular world after the breakthrough success of her 2022 EP Red In Revenge. In a magnificently snotty deadpan, she sings about her generationʼs unique combination of information overload and emotional deficiency: “We donʼt care at all/And we feel nothing even though we feel it all”. “Gen Z is very messed up,” Sophie says. Written at a time when Sophie was “suppressing [her] own inner artist”, itʼs a striking, cutthroat excoriation of a modern world that wants to place all its hangups on the younger generations. “Society expects so much of young girls and women, itʼs literally insane. This song is about keeping up appearances and then essentially just rejecting them, and one day not giving a fuck – but itʼs also about how society as a whole is so fucked up where Gen Z is just numb from it all.”

NOSEBLEED, like all of Sophieʼs music, has a deeply rebellious spirit – the result of an upbringing listening to iconoclastic stars with an anarchic glint in their eye. Growing up, Sophie was drawn to strident, powerfully confident pop stars like Lady Gaga and Kesha, who struck down expectations of what it meant to be a “female artist” with little more than their own star power; the first show she ever went to was a Bruce Springsteen concert, an artist unafraid to unpick the social mores of conventional North American society and who made his way to arena stages through wry subversion. Avril Lavigne, Canadaʼs patron saint of sarcastic, singular weirdos, was also a key influence. So you can understand how Sophie became the artist she is today: She was raised by musicians who valued individuality and, more importantly, pure honesty, above all else. “I want to put stuff out that combines alternative pop you hear on the radio with something that you heard on the radio 30 years ago,” she says. “I love music that feels nostalgic – but it has to feel fresh, too.”