Baltimore-born and Hamburg/Berlin-based, Sophia Kennedy shares new single ‘Imaginary Friend’ where she explores what it means to let go of a persona you’ve created yourself. Taken from new album Squeeze Me out 23rd May via City Slang, which follows the release of DJ Koze’s album Music Can Hear Us where Sophia is featured on two tracks. “Imaginary Friend is a song that has come a long way. It’s gone through many different stages to become what it is: a pop song”, Sophia says. “The song is also about a kind of transformation or metamorphosis of the different stages of coping with grief. It is about longing for reality and saying goodbye to an imagined idea of a person. Memories and longing can become obsessions, the imagined friend becomes an enemy. The decision to let go is therefore a liberating blow.” Director Timo Schierhorn said on making the video, “I’m not only a huge fan of Sophia Kennedy’s future-predicting pop songs, I also deeply admire her unique acting abilities. When we began developing ideas for the video, it quickly became clear that she needed a very specific kind of stage — something massive, hard to control, and a little bit dangerous. So we rented a 5.8-ton lift and moved it within just two millimetres of a three-million-euro glass facade. It gave her a performance space suspended 24 meters above the ground, where we could only communicate by radio.” He adds, “Cinematographer Tom Otte filmed from inside a shopping mall, through layers of glass, as Kennedy performed between six and nine characters in a single take. Every take was brilliant, but we had to choose just one. I still wonder who she was looking at. Far in the background, always present: the Atlantic.”
Watch / Listen to ‘Imaginary Friend’ HERE
Stripped down compared to her previous works, Sophia embraces her talent for catchy melodies with pop appeal and psychedelic flourishes on Squeeze Me. A cinematic quality runs through the entire album’s 10 tracks — it’s no surprise, given Kennedy once studied film. Rigor and beauty, humor and melancholy, fatalism and strength – Squeeze Me inverts everything about Sophia Kennedy, echoing the album cover. Either she or the rest of the world is upside down, depending on each of our perspectives. More focused and more pop than ever, Squeeze Me is Kennedy’s most cohesive album, perhaps even a kind of artistic manifesto. It’s a multilayered, self-assured statement that thrives despite—or perhaps because of—all the inner and outer crises around and across it. Squeeze Me doesn’t ignore the world outside but instead counters it with one of its own—one we somehow recognize but have never glimpsed quite this way before.
Following her self-titled debut (2017, Pampa Records), a radiant dance between the glamour of the Great American Songbook, electronic textures, and clubland influences, earning her international acclaim, Kennedy released her second album, Monsters (2021, City Slang), and delved deeper into surrealism and transcendence. Now on Squeeze Me, Kennedy and her long-time musical collaborator and co-writer Mense Reents sketch a more disillusioned commentary on the status quo of the world at large. The complexity of interpersonal relationships, questions of power dynamics, and the quest for self-determination —longstanding themes for Kennedy—run as a cohesive narrative throughout the album.
More minimalist than her previous works, Squeeze Me brims with Kennedy’s gift for catchy melodies with a certain pop appeal and psychedelic hues: repetitive piano chords, shimmering synth bass lines, strangely flickering choirs, and even a scream set the sonic stage. The songwriting on Squeeze Me thrives in its stark simplicity, finding beauty in paring back. Over the hum of an organ and steady drum-machine beats, Kennedy casts off a stale, supposed dream state with irresistible charm and effortless cool. Sophia will play her second ever London show on 19th November at Shacklewell Arms – her first was almost 8 years ago in 2017. Tickets on-sale now.
Squeeze Me is out 23rd May via City Slang Records Pre-save / Pre-order
Tour Dates
May 30th DE – Neustrelitz – Immergut Festival
October 8th DE- Cologne- Bumann & Sohn
October 9th DE-Offenbach – Hafen 2
October 10th DE-Stuttgart – Merlin
October 11th CH-St. Gallen – Palace
October 13th DE-Munich – Kranhalle
October 14th AT-Vienna – Flucc
October 15th DE-Dresden – Tonne
October 16th DE-Leipzig – Conne Island
October 19th DE-Berlin – Lido
October 25th DE-Hamburg – Knust
November 19th UK-London – Shacklewell Arms
Keep your mind open.
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[Thanks to Amy at After Hours PR.]
