“I could be anything I want.” This is the gleeful, defiant lyric at the heart of “Immaterial”, one of SOPHIE’s most cherished songs. The late Scottish-born electronic artist was an expert at deconstructing pop forms and playfully piecing the bits back together. Here, Madonna’s “Material Girl” is inverted, stripped of the physical. The corporeal – our bodies – are tossed away entirely: “Without my legs or my hair/Without my genes or my blood/With no name and with no type of story/Where do I live?/Tell me, where do I exist?”
“Immaterial” instantly became a queer anthem when it was released in 2018, just months after SOPHIE publicly came out as a trans woman. It was destined to be played in sweaty basement nightclubs as much as in lonely, darkened bedrooms. The song was a personal document of transness, a means of “taking control to bring your body more in line with your soul and spirit so the two aren’t fighting against each other”, as SOPHIE put it in an interview. But it also continued SOPHIE’s incredible ability to break boundaries – the boundaries between pop and the underground, between sarcastic and sincere, between art and advert. Why be one thing, when you can be anything you want?
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