It's the seasonal act: Leaves detach from trees with a last flaming breath, dry wind chills your throat and chest and the sun sets quickly towards the heavens, leaving us aching for more of its intangible warmth. There is an emptiness in fall, yet its warmth is immortalized in the digital world. We post pictures and videos of the season online, but they can’t replenish the trees left barren. They only serve as a reminder of what once was. For some, the pains of seasonal change are eased through music. “So I,” track nine from CharliXCX’s critically acclaimed “BRAT”, encapsulates this tension. CharliXCX, with the help of A.G. Cook, processed grief through music.
Situated between “Rewind” and “Girl, So Confusing,” “So I” removes the listener from BRAT’s effervescent rave for just a moment, inviting contemplation about one’s physical and mental wellbeing. Despite not being the life of the party, this song is not a complete departure from the brat mold. It is still abrasive and in your face with its whining synthesizers, punchy bass and incessant autotune. It's an unabashed outpouring of grief expressed through an autotuned lime green shattered hole in the wall. Underscored by a synth sampled from the late producer SOPHIE’s “It’s Okay To Cry,” this heartfelt ballad expresses Charli’s love tinged with loss and her friendship with SOPHIE.
Producing experimental electronic music with Brittain’s PC Music Group alongside A.G. Cook and Charli, SOPHIE’s song “Its Okay to Cry” serves as a metaphor for self-acceptance. SOPHIE was stuck between two worlds in her trans identity: the outer, physical self and her inner, true self which she couldn’t freely express. SOPHIE sings, “Just know whatever hurts, it's all mine /It's okay to cry (It's okay to cry),” connoting the pain that comes with hiding one's true self. This mantra for moving through and accepting life’s difficulties, “It’s okay to cry,” is borrowed and sampled by Charli to help her cope with her close friend's death.
The pair first collaborated on Charli’s 2016 EP Vroom Vroom, referenced in the first verse of “So I featuring a.g. cook” from the Album Brat: “and it’s completely different but also still brat”: “/ First met on the outskirts of Stockholm / All of your things in a black suitcase / First day, made Vroom Vroom in the basement”. They’ve since collaborated on multiple songs in Charli’s Discography such as “Out of my Head,” “Roll With Me” and “No Angel.” SOPHIE’s confectionary production can be heard in the glitzy churning synths of “Lipgloss,” track 10 on Charli’s 2017 Album “Number 1 Angel”. Matching the syrupy production, Charli sings “ Yeah, you know I'm sugary sweet / Baby boy, gon' rot your teeth, like woah.”
SOPHIE’s glimmering production is emulated on “So I” through vocal manipulation that mimics grieving wails, and echoey vocal modulation in the chorus. The brightness that SOPHIE brought to music and to CharliXCX’s life is imbued into the lyrics. CharliXCX sings “Every day, every night, your star burns so bright” and “You had a power like a lightnin' strike.” Aside from SOPHIE’s cultural starpower, the star that Charli references is the asteroid 1980 RE1 which was renamed “Sophiexenon” in honor of her passing, through the efforts of a petition on change.org cosigned by Charli.
Everyone experiences grief in different ways. “Even the most insignificant things felt enormous,” Charli shared in a message on Instagram. “I will honor Sophie in my own time personally, in my grief, through my memories, through my work, through writing things only I will read.”
We carry the memory of the deceased with us: through our lived experiences, through our shared identities, through our compassion, through our culture and through our community. Embracing this overlapping “ven-diagram of self” allows one to keep moving forward through the grieving process. Allowing oneself to process grief with the support we need is essential to communal recovery.
She additionally expressed the level to which SOPHIE had impacted her: “She taught me so much about myself without even realizing. I wish I had told her more how special she was, not just her music, but her as a person. I love you and I will never forget you Sophie."
Death requires one to reflect on just how special every individual life is. For musicians, they are able to process these intangible ideas by rendering them into audible ones. Committing to a written or musically structured form helps one clarify and cope with how they feel, and connects them to an audience who can find empathy within their art.
In “So I” Charli sings, “Didn't know how I should act /I watched you dance online.” Her lament raises ways that the digital age affects the grieving processes. Though she just died, her memory lives on in video and pictorial form, replaying forever in an immortal digital world.
When one loses someone they love, they search for fragments of that person everywhere, like putting together a broken puzzle that can never be completed. Listening to and creating music helps solve this puzzle; the musician finds solace through the conversion of catharsis to music, and the listener finds it through listening to music to experience this catharsis.
Like music, her sounds and words live on in an endless playlist of memories: her smile, her laugh, her dancing, her femininity, her voice, her personality, her passions and her fight for trans rights. We are left with her legacy. “So I” reminds us that grief is universal. In processing the memory of the deceased, one must remember “It's okay to cry / So I know I can cry, I can cry, so I cry.”
