Charli XCX has opened up about her relationship with the pioneering electronic music producer SOPHIE, who tragically died just over three years ago, and revealed that a track from her forthcoming sixth album will focus on her complicated grief over her collaborator’s passing. SOPHIE was responsible for shifting the modern pop landscape, through both her original songs and her work with artists like Madonna, Vince Staples, and most extensively, Charli XCX.

In an interview with The Face magazine, the “Vroom Vroom” singer said that the track, the title of which has yet to be released, will explore the shame she feels about not having gotten to know SOPHIE better outside of the studio. While the two collaborated on a number of tracks, Charli said that “there was a lot of distance between us because I was in awe of her and wanted to impress her,” though she also said that the producer “believed in me in ways that I didn’t believe [in] myself.”

​“I didn’t feel like I was magical enough for this unbelievably magic person. And that makes me ashamed now I don’t have the opportunity to experience that anymore, because she’s gone,” she told the magazine. “I feel ashamed for being a coward. It’s hard to write about. I’m sad for myself that I didn’t experience all this person had to offer.”

Though SOPHIE was a trans woman, she rarely spoke about her identity or her personal life at all, preferring to let her music speak for itself. Songs from “Immaterial” to “Faceshopping” allowed listeners to experience a sonic world that nodded to trans experience while also transcending the bounds of identity.

SOPHIE was perhaps as well known for her presence as she was for her musical prowess. In one particularly memorable series of posts to X, Vince Staples said that SOPHIE was “different.”

“you ain’t never seen somebody in the studio smoking a cigarette in a leather bubble jacket just making beats not saying one word,” he wrote. “And don’t let the verse be deep or heartfelt cause she stopping the computer and walking outside until you get bacc on some gangsta shit.” She was similarly remembered fondly by artists such as Sam Smith, Rina Sawayama, Shamir Bailey, and Peaches.

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