In the blood-red basement of New York City’s hot new venue Night Club 101, I was joined by Austrian musician Sofie Royer, an artist whose eccentric electro-pop seamlessly blends classical technique and avant-garde experimentation. Following the release of her latest album, the analytical Young-Girl Forever, in November, Royer has been captivating audiences with her unique sound — one that navigates between dreamy, introspective melodies and genre-defying production.
Since the start, Royer’s immediate sightline has provided inspiration — Viennese opera and ballet were built into her early sound, and on her recent album, the French anarchist journal she read on tour made itself known in both title and lyricism. Before her debut, Royer spent formative years as a Boiler Room DJ, classically trained violinist, model, painter, and former Stones Throw employee, and with a playlist that boasts T. Rex, Jamie Wilde, and Todd Rundgren, it’s evident she’s got well-curated, diverse taste — and has educated herself in the space she occupies.
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For Royer, though, it’s not about name-checking, or working around a reference — for her, the main goal with music is immortality. She idolizes artists for their perpetuity in spirit and sound. The thin line that’s drawn between the pulse of pop culture, and timelessly classic — that’s what Royer is ready to embody.
After a kick-off show in NYC and a slew of SXSW sets, Royer will prepare for her biggest headlining U.S. tour yet. I caught up with the artist to talk more about her enigmatic album, Young-Girl Forever, Bruce Springsteen, and how she spent the three weeks prior in a castle, making a horror film.
Jasmin Baumgartner
You’re going to be coming back to NYC in June?
SOFIE ROYER: I’ll be doing a bigger U.S. tour. There are a bunch of cities that I’m really excited to play, that I’ve never been to, like Minneapolis. That’s the one.
Specifically Minneapolis?
ROYER: I’m a die-hard Prince fan. So that’s the one city where I’m really excited to go. I’m going to go see Paisley Park.
That’s a good reason. Anything else you’re super excited for?
ROYER: I wish I could tell you the other cities, but basically I was shooting a horror movie for the last three weeks, and I’ve been so out of the loop. Yesterday in the car from JFK to the rehearsal space, my manager read me the list of cities that I’ll be playing, and I realized, “Oh, this is a much bigger tour than I thought it would be.” There’s a lot of dates, all over the U.S.
Do you like playing in the U.S.?
ROYER: Yeah, I love it. I have a great time. I love the crowds. I love the people. I think people are really fairly warm and receptive to my music. I don’t know what this next tour is going to be in cities that I’ve never played. I don’t know how acquainted people are with my stuff. It’s going to be interesting.
It’s been a little time since you released your project, and obviously you’ve been working on a movie, and are about to do a bunch of shows. How do you feel about the album now, with some distance?
ROYER: The record came out in November, so to me, it still feels fairly new and fresh — but it’s been about a year since I wrote and produced the songs. I started on everything in January of last year. The record itself was done fairly quickly. We were done with mixing on May 6. It was a shorter turnaround this time, which was nice.
Why do you think this had a quicker process for you than in the past?
ROYER: Well, my first record was kind of aimlessly written. It is basically a record of demos. There’s one recorded version of the songs, and that’s what you hear on the album. I never really considered it as a project that was going to be released. My old boss from when I worked at Stones Throw, Peanut Butter Wolf, had asked me what I was doing in Vienna, and I was like, “oh, well, I guess I’m writing music for myself now” — and he asked to hear it. So I sent him the songs, and that became my first record. The second album was written while I was studying at university, so I didn’t really have too much dedicated time to write. It was written here and there, over the course of two years. With the latest one, I was like, “OK, third album. I have one to two months. I’m really going to dedicate my time to finishing the record.” But even that wasn’t super straightforward — I was touring with my friend Lewis OfMan, opening up for him all over Europe. Any free time in between, I would go back to the studio and work to wrap up the record.
Do you feel like you work better with more going on? Or do you prefer sitting down and spending the next six hours on a project?
ROYER: I love having dedicated time. I wish I could always. I’ll be in LA for a month starting on the 15th of March, and I have a lot of sessions planned, and I’m excited to just spend my time on it. I mean, it’s really what I love doing. But also, it’s kind of the smallest part of being a musician — sometimes it feels like I just have an email job.
That’s so real.
ROYER: My boyfriend always makes fun of me. He’s like, “You just wake up and then get right to emailing!” And it’s so true. There’s just a lot of administrative tasks that you don’t have somebody else to do, if you’re an artist at this very lower-medium level.
The only other person who’s ever said something like that to me is Malice K. Definitely another real one. He said, “I just feel like I’m just writing emails all day, talking to lawyers, managing accounts, sorting things out…”
ROYER: Trying to get my publishing in order. That’s really what it’s like.
I like hearing that. That feels like a facet of the musician experience that’s not universally understood. But if you’ve got the dedication, it comes with the territory. So, your latest album — it seems like there were some pretty specific ideas and themes that went into it. What’s your conceptual process? I’m always curious if the music comes first — or the ideas and references around it.
ROYER: Honestly, I write the material first. Then through writing the material, I find some semblance of a red line that draws its way through the songs, crystallizing. While working on the third album, touring with Lewis, I was reading the book Preliminary Materials for a Theory of the Young-Girl. It just really stuck with me, and I thought it was very witty and funny for a book that had been written in the late ’90s. But it retroactively became the concept of the record — it’s not a concept album. It’s interesting: I find myself talking so much about that reference that I used for the title, but I think the music can exist without it. I think art has to have an aesthetic requirement or prerequisite that can exist without it needing to be explained — and I’m all for the legitimacy of concept art. I just don’t really identify with it myself, as an artist.
I respect that. This is an opinion, but often better work comes out of being less referential.
ROYER: Obviously. I am shooting myself in the foot here, though — so many of my songs have references in them — but also the songs can exist without you knowing any one of them. You know what I mean? And that’s also not the point of them. I get inspired by things and add them in a lyrical sense.
I’d like to think everybody does that, even if they’re not fully aware. Are there other mediums you look toward when you’re looking for some sort of jolt of inspiration? Fine art, fashion…
ROYER: There’s not something specific that I look for. It’s just life and how you live life, which sounds so trite, but really, I think anything… People are always like, “Oh, did X, Y, and Z influence you? Or was that an influence on your music?” And I’m like, “Well, inherently, anything you experience is going to leave some kind of impression, whether that’s what you consume on your phone, the clothes you wear, the food you eat, or where you go and what you do with your time.” I think it’s silly to say that none of it plays a role in whatever your output is. Any input, I think, is going to have some effect on what kind of art you’re making.
This may be the totally wrong question given what you’ve said, but do you feel like you’re going into the sessions in LA wanting to do something different, to take a new direction?
ROYER: I just want to make pop music. That’s really it. At the end of the day, I really love pop music, and I feel like pop music can be better than what it is right now. And I’m not trying to reinvent the wheel — I am fully aware that I’m not making super subversive records, but I do think that we can marry musicality with a pop sensibility.
I hear that in your music, in a different way than I do in other pop coming out today. I mean — last we spoke with you, you mentioned Todd Rundgren as an inspiration. I love it — that’s a whole other world when it comes to pop music, and speaks to the musicality side. I have to confess, I’m not someone who listens to a lot of contemporary pop, but I can get into Heart or some Bryan Ferry.
ROYER: It’s great. Those were some amazing times for pop music. Think about fucking Bruce Springsteen, just killing it — you know what I mean? He was a huge mainstream artist. What’s the equivalent of a Bruce Springsteen today? Who do we have? Drake? I don’t know. I’m not even throwing Drake under the bus — I like his new song, even though it kind of sounds AI-generated. It’s well written in my opinion, and there’s something genuinely heartfelt about it. He’s just ruminating on his life, and, in kind of a nihilistic way, he’s crying every night. I’m like, “I love this trajectory for him.” I look back, but I am also very in touch with pop. The only news I’ll read is pop culture — it gets a bad rep, but I think there’s so much that pop culture reflects about the state of society we live in today.
Jasmin Baumgartner
What was your favorite song from this last project?
ROYER: Oh, gosh. That’s hard. I mean, that’s kind of forcing somebody to pick what kid is their favorite. It varies. I do really like “Lights out baby, entropy!” I think that’s right up there. I love “Keep Running (Sebastian in Dreams),” “Young-Girl (Illusion),” and “Babydoll.” Those are my top four, I think. Also, because they’re really fun to play live, it’s hard to pick!
That’s good, though. It brings me back to what you said about the project still feeling fresh. I spend a lot of time talking to musicians, and so much of the time, it feels like once the second the album is out, they’re over it.
ROYER: I absolutely know what you mean. Or even before it’s out. I have musician friends who are like, “You listen to your own music, at home?!” And I’m like, “Obviously. That’s who I’m really making it for!”
Selfishly, I make songs that I wish existed primarily for myself. If I don’t like them, how could I expect other people to like them and get behind them? There’s also another kind of layer to what you’re saying. It’s not all about people not listening to their own music — I think a lot of current music does not consider longevity as a factor. I’ll listen to contemporary pop, and I’m like, “This is such a good song.” I’ll listen to it for a week, and then I can actually never listen to it again. A year later, I’m like, “Oh, remember that song that I liked?” I’ll go back and listen to it, and it does nothing for me. That’s maybe the one real goal. I am not even saying I’m succeeding at it — but the one thing I want to uphold for myself is having longevity, whether its in the chord structure or something else. Even now, I look back at my first record, and I’m like, “My God, I did not know what I was doing with production. I wish I would’ve spent more time on that.” But I still enjoy the songs themselves separately from their production.
Talking about your first album, this series of underproduced demos, makes me come back around to Bruce Springsteen — a pillar of time-tested, commercially successful music. After Springsteen put out his first charting album, The River, he went and released Nebraska, demos recorded on a 4-track recorder in his bedroom. Then he turned around and gave us Born To Run. When it comes to timelessness and longevity — production isn’t always the key.
ROYER: Absolutely. It can feel very, very dated.
Not to be corny, but the secret might not always be tangible. What makes a classic could be in instrumentation, or it could be the level of genuineness…
ROYER: Some of my band members in Europe are jazz musicians, and I’m always so impressed by how they jam in between rehearsal. Like, “Oh, you just think in chord structures.” I studied performance violin and [have] a classical background, but I feel like it’s then really hard to think outside the box, and I’m constantly trying to surprise myself with different chord ideas and things like that. Ultimately, it’s like my brain wants stuff to resolve. Then that’s what I end up with. Even if I play around with things at the end of the day, I’m still trying to get them to resolve.
It’s about the journey, not the destination, right?