Sofie Royer

Sofie Royer by Jasmin Baumgartner
Sofie Royer (c) Jasmin Baumgartner

BIOGRAPHY

She adds that the Young-Girl archetype, and the idea that a woman’s worth is measured by her output and performance, was instilled in her since childhood. Born in California to Austrian and Iranian parents, she began playing classical violin competitively at age three and took up ballet and rhythmic gymnastics. A creative childhood led to later success as a painter, model, and DJ; while working at Stones Throw and Boiler Room in L.A., she was known as a tastemaker who chased down vintage musical gems. After moving to Vienna, where she’s now based, Royer began writing and producing music, channeling her love for French chanson into her 2020 debut, Cult Survivor, and looking to Viennese opera and ballet traditions for inspiration for 2022’s Harlequin.

Since Harlequin’s release, Royer has opened for LCD Soundsystem, Lana Del Rey and Air, and she wrote Young-Girl Forever with live performance in mind. “I think about how much fun I’m going to have on stage,” she says. The violin she took up as a child is a constant in her live shows, along with synths coloured by a decades-long love for French Touch and electroclash. With its introspective outlook and brash musical inspirations, the new album oscillates between optimism and doom, celebrating the “Young-Girl” while also rebuking the culture that created it.

Royer counterbalances the somber dreaminess of songs like “Keep Running” with a sharp sense of humor. “Young-Girl (Illusion)” describes a girl who gains her life force from the rabbit fur coats she wears, while “Indoor Sport” is a cheeky reflection on the current state of dating, where the figurative “ball” is always in the other person’s court. The album is rounded out by a cover of “Sage Comme Une Image,” a 1982 song by the Portuguese-Belgian pop star Lio about a woman who’s “brilliant on the page,” whom you’re not allowed to touch in real life.

While Royer would love to be “an ordinary guy” who’s no longer stuck in a perpetual cycle of juvenility, she’s also willing to accept the chaos of being a Young-Girl. On “Lights Out Baby! (Entropy),” she sings gleefully of hurtling towards the next plane of existence. “Instead of clinging tightly to what you perceive as correct – or even real,” she says, “I think sometimes you just have to turn the lights off and surrender.”


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