Conference Agenda

Hyperpop, a genre characterized by vocal modulation and musical maximalism, has been described as “self-engineering by using sound as artistic flesh for surgical operation” (Kuwabara 2018). This paper explores SOPHIE’s use of the cisgender- and transgender-female voices, electronic timbres, audiovisual elements, and lyrics in the music videos of “It’s Okay to Cry” (2017) and “Faceshopping” (2017) to address questions of the organic body and identity from posthumanist, queer, and feminist perspectives. I analyze the marrying of lyrics, music, and images to create transgender narratives of the “egg crack” moment that explores gender dysphoria and euphoria.

Technological mediation of the voice abstracts the organic body, which is apparent throughout SOPHIE’s discography. I argue that the employment of synthesizers extends the organic body, blurring the lines between human and machine, and consider the concept of the cyborg as it relates to the musician (Haraway 1985). Furthermore, the temporal developments in both instrument and vocal layering craft a narrative in which the transgender identity emerges. In “Faceshopping,” rather than using her natural voice, she alters it to sound grainy, deep, and robotic while borrowing the songfulness of the voice of Cecile Believe, a cisgender-woman (Malawey 2020). Such a contrast, I argue, crafts a narrative that displays feelings of gender dysphoria, euphoria, and a longing for gender-affirming care.

SOPHIE’s on-screen presence further accents the transgender voice (Greenberg 2023). “It’s Okay to Cry” was the first time she publicly displayed her own bodily image from the shoulders up and “came out” to the world as a transgender woman. The twinkling and uplifting timbres of synthesizers are echoed by the gradual shifts in the video background, from rainbows and blue skies to storms. This drives the song to the “egg crack” moment, as well as the feelings of gender euphoria. In the music video for “Faceshopping,” her bust is reimagined as a 3D model undergoing extreme modifications. This image accompanies SOPHIE’s technologically mediated voice, representing a sense of disembodiment. Her artistry enables us to envision a narrative in which the transgender woman’s identity emerges for both the musicians and the listeners.

In this autoethnographic project, I analyze some compositional qualities of three indie-folk songs by Sufjan Stevens to reveal their potential resonance with queer listeners. I draw on Yi-Fu Tuan’s (1974) and Leonieke Bolderman’s (2020) theories of topophilia and musical topophilia—affective relationships between people, places, and music. Using these theories and close examinations of the use of dynamics, vocal timbre, meters, and instrumentation, I conclude that the act of travel, in conjunction with Stevens’s sonic journeys, provides a mental space and imagination of a Texas where my queer self can flourish privately and peacefully.

Through spectrogram analysis, I find that the heavy presence of high frequencies in “Run Away With Me” is not perceivable as “loud”; rather, the high-frequency component of the sounds originates from a processed and heavily reverbed Steven’s voice. Such a process retains Steven’s natural voice in its falsetto register while also heightening a sense of whimsy. This noisy profile is timbrally contrasted with the lower-frequency-only instrumental backing track. Given my tendency to blast music in my car as loud as possible, I draw a metaphor between a deeply felt sonic “horizontalness” and the wide-open spaces and gentle hills I often traverse.

In “Cimmerian Shade” and “A Running Start,” Stevens uses similar progressions from a more acoustic to an electronic soundscape, in addition to Stevens’s lilting qualities and the use of irregular time signatures. I construct a metaphor for the process in which I, first, absorb information about my surroundings (Texas as “folk”) and, ultimately, cultivate mental reconciliations regarding my sexuality (self-acceptance as “electronic”).

Effectively, these cathartic escapades have established a symbiosis between my consumption of music and experience of place, where each now inspires and enhances the other. I illustrate how playing with affect can foster an uplifting, empowering, and even reconciliatory sense of queer embodiment (Cusick 1994) and self-reckoning in a frequently turbulent twenty-first-century United States. Musical topophilia has become the foundation of my ethics of care, a way in which I can now bolster my own everyday mental health through music—and this is my favorite way of “being gay.”

The concept of girlhood as a constructed and commodified musical identity has received attention from various scholars (Pecknold 2016, Apolloni 2016, Warwick 2013, Bickford 2013, Stras 2010). Singers like 21-year-old Olivia Rodrigo still capitalize on this identity today as a valuable facet of their output. However, while our current discourse (Moore and Martin 2019) acknowledges that producers play a role in constructing these identities, the exact processes and effects of their work remain elusive in analytical discussions. In this paper, I analyze several performances of “all-american bitch” from Rodrigo’s 2024 album, GUTS. Co-written and produced by 42-year-old Daniel Nigro, both individuals claimed their creative labor in the song and are responsible for the construction of girlhood, but the narrative requires us to take on larger gendered implications when viewed through the scope of Nigro and Rodrigo’s particular producer/artist relationship. Furthermore, the opaque collaborative process should be examined for its implications on how listeners interpret girlhood in Rodrigo’s songs.

During the bridge, her vocals switch instantaneously from hysterical screaming and shouting into smooth and light singing. Through this juxtaposition of refinement and rawness made possible by editing and production techniques, Rodrigo starkly defines boundaries between the internal and external depictions of her character in this track: a young woman caught up in the unrealistic standards imposed on her by society who internalizes feelings of ever-growing rage and turmoil. However, bringing this characteristic juxtaposition forth within a singular body in real time is an impossibility (Cusick, 1994), and it reflects Nigro’s (and patriarchal society’s) conceptions of what girlhood should sound like. To reconstruct the song’s ironic commentary on gendered expectations, this contrast previously brought about through production must be achieved through alternative strategies.

My analysis concludes by framing this discussion of artistic labor within the larger context of how artists’ work (particularly that of female vocalists) is frequently devalued in discussions about production (Warwick 2013). However, we can still acknowledge the track’s purpose of disrupting and disputing gendered norms for listeners and Rodrigo’s intent for empowering young women, even when its messaging may be mediated by market-driven conditions.