Honestly Weird: The Blank Canvas of SoKo
To see more of SoKo’s photos, check out @sokothecat on Instagram. For more music stories, head to Instagram @music.
When SoKo (@sokothecat) looks in the mirror, she sees a canvas. Last week, she bleached her eyebrows because she thought she looked “too normal” and “that was annoying.” A couple of days ago, she dyed them pink. Tomorrow? Not even she can be sure.
“I just want to be weird all the time,” she says. “It’s not even that I try to look different, it’s just that I like things that a lot of people don’t like. I embrace it fully. I love wearing pink eyebrows right now. I have a weird pajama shirt on and a weird hat, and it’s fun. Why not?”
This is the modus operandi of the French musician, songwriter, director, actress and all-around creative. From her look to her music, collaborations and starring roles, SoKo strives to imbue the work with a bit of that fierce individualism, a bit of herself.
“Everything I do needs to feel very true, otherwise I really don’t see the point,” she says. “I feel like I’m just wasting my time.”
Her ever-changing exterior is a reflection of the circuitry inside. On the phone, she’s girlish and manic. She describes her world as spontaneous and chaotic. She doesn’t have a home because she’s always on the go. Her precious possessions — thrift store clothes, flea market furniture and dirt-cheap vintage home décor — are safe in an expansive storage unit in the Los Angeles sprawl.
When recording a song, the room becomes an obstacle course of wires and machines. Her imagination is explosive, but beneath the superficial lawlessness lurks a distinct sense of order.
“I’m a little bit OCD with everything,” she says. “It’s always a mess, and it’s always out all over wherever I’m staying, but it’s always done in a way that I know exactly where this pedal is, and I know exactly what setting it’s on, and the amp is always on. I always know what’s going on, and it’s very particular to my weird brain.”
That “weird brain” was given room to roam free on her most recent LP My Dreams Dictate My Reality.
“I’ve always had really intense, weird dreams, and I’ve always been very sure of what I want to do,” she says. “I know what makes me feel good and that’s what I’m after — period. And that’s the same with my record. I just wanted to make a record that feels a little bit more upbeat and uplifting, that I can have more fun with on stage.”
As a follow-up to 2012’s debut I Thought I Was an Alien, it’s much more effervescent and structured.
“Before I was scared of pop,” she says. “My first record barely had any choruses, and it’s actually really fun. I think I grew up with this record.”
As with anything she touches, the record brings something more than meets the eye. Beside the ‘80s-inspired synth lines are excavating lyrics that dig up the pieces of a complex soul. Where her first album aimed at the affections of others, her latest takes a closer target.
“[Before] I was writing in a way that was just like ‘I’m a beautiful romantic person writing you a song and maybe you will love me,’” she says, laughing. “On this record I was more like, ‘F— this. I’m going to write what’s in my head. I don’t care what’s in yours. I’m just going to do my own thing and look in my past, see what was going on in my childhood. What made me so weird? What made me scared of death? And what makes me have fear of abandonment?’ All of these things were resurfacing while I was writing, and I’m like, ‘This needs to go down on the record. I need to go deep with that, make sure I sum it up and wrap my head around it so I can move on.’”
That ability to be honest inside and out is what makes SoKo so appealing. If she were anybody else, she might be everybody else, but she’s not, and that’s exciting.
“If my songs were not true, to have to go on stage and sing them every night, I’d feel like a liar,” she says. “I’ve always spoken from a very personal point of view and things that were always very raw and vulnerable, and I don’t know how to write anything else.”
—Kat Bein for Instagram @music
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