SOPHIE's posthumous album gets release date — here's what we know

Three and a half years ago, we lost one of the greats.

Pioneering Grammy-nominated hyperpop producer SOPHIE sadly passed away at the young age of 34 in January of 2021, but her legacy is living on through a new self-titled second album, set to be posthumously released this September.

SOPHIE is the second album from the Scottish producer who worked with artists like Charli xcx, Kim Petras, Madonna, and A.G. Cook, following 2018's Oil of Every Pearl's Un-Insides.

According to a press release, SOPHIE's brother and studio manager, Benny Long, worked with her for several years developing this album, which Long has now completed after SOPHIE's death.

"When we, SOPHIE's family, took our first steps towards bringing this project to fruition we contacted the dear friends with whom she envisioned the album. We wrote, 'We have been finding comfort in the music SOPHIE left us, it is a gift that we truly cherish as we try to find a way forward, with SOPHIE forever at the center of our worlds,'" the press release reads.

"SOPHIE didn't often speak publicly of her private life, preferring to put everything she wanted to articulate in her music. It feels only right to share with the world the music she hoped to release, in the belief that we can all connect with her in this, the form she loved most," it continues.

"This album has always told the story of SOPHIE's musical journey, a cacophony of skill and creative vision, eclipsing time and genre," it concludes. "Her unique sound world moves at an emotional level, encouraging the listener to intuitively embrace the ever-evolving landscape of light and dark, soft and hard, to the end of self-love and joyful self-acceptance. Emphasizing contradictions of sound and material, SOPHIE's work supersedes the pure aural to create the dimension she dreamed of."

In 2021, Long said that SOPHIE had "literally hundreds of tracks" in the vaults, and that he wanted to make sure her family had a lot of involvement in them being released.

"The idea SOPHIE and I discussed many times was to do one abstract experimental album and then a pop record — this was going to be the pop one — and to keep going on that cycle for years," he said of the unfinished album that would become the self-titled SOPHIE at the time. "I don't want to be like, 'We’re going to put everything out,' because sometimes SOPHIE didn't want it to or it wasn’t finished. But it was quite clear with a lot of songs, just from the fact that we had been working on them and mixing the album, that I know the direction a lot of things were supposed to be going."