FEATURE:
Modern Heroines
PHOTO CREDIT: Charlotte Rutherford for PAPER
Part Sixty-Nine: Poppy
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DESPITE the fact that…
PHOTO CREDIT: Jenn Five for NME
her new album, Flux, is out now, I am writing this on 19th September (the album came out on Friday). It is a good time to focus on the brilliant Poppy. Go and get Flux on C.D. if you have not done so already. It is out on vinyl in November. Flux follows her third studio album, I Disagree (2020). I feel Poppy (Moriah Rose Pereira) is one of the most fascinating and exceptional women in music. She is someone who will go on to inspire so many others. I am going to drop in a review for last year’s I Disagree. There will be reviews online for Flux in the coming days, but I am a bit eager to write this feature, so many people would have already read what the press think. Poppy, is a Boston-born singer, songwriter, musician and YouTuber. In 2014, she began starring in performance art videos that presented her as an uncanny Valley-like android entity who commented on and satirised Internet culture and modern society. Jump to 2015, where she signed a recording contract with Island Records and released Bubblebath, her debut E.P., in 2016. I am going to skip ahead and focus on her recent work. Before bringing in a few interviews with Poppy, an NME review for I Disagree caught my eye:
“The opening back-and-forth of ‘Concrete’ represents nu-metal for a new generation and sees her sing about wanting to kill off an older version of herself amid musical breakdowns, harmonies and a crowd chanting her name. Months after it was released as the first single from ‘I Disagree’, it’s still a joyful shock to the system.
The pop-metal title track sees Poppy stand her ground and refuse to settle for less than she deserves: “I disagree with the way you continue to pressure me / I disagree with the way you are failing to pleasure me.” Later she offers a hope for the world: “If only all of you could see the world I see / Then maybe everyone could live in harmony.” Skipping between fury and optimism, ‘I Disagree’ sees Poppy wrestle with destruction, new beginnings and how those two different visions fit together.
The Nine Inch Nails-inspired industrial rage of ‘BLOODMONEY’ is an abrasive push back at the industry Poppy finds herself surrounded by. “Never forget the excess of a man,” she roars, “because the grabbing hands always grab what they can.” This is followed by the surprisingly serene ‘Anything Like Me’, which finds menace in the quietest of places
In amongst the anger, the shock and the bubbling melting pot of influences, ‘I Disagree’ is a record about finding pride in who you are. It’s a journey Poppy knows all too well.
“I’ll never ask permission,” she promises on the dreamy escape of ‘Nothing I Need’. “You can be anyone you want to be,” she encourages on the Marilyn Manson-influenced ‘Fill The Crown’. Full of fizzing energy and delivered with clenched fists, closing epic ‘Don’t Go Outside’ sees Poppy wage war with the idea that we should be scared. We’re not doomed. We’re not hopeless. “Everything will be ok,” she argues, defiant and fearless.
Poppy is the living embodiment that change is a good thing. ‘I Disagree’ is her most accomplished record, full of daring theatre and snarling forward motion. While all our favourite rock bands are going pop, Poppy is unapologetically embracing her desire to go heavy. It might be inspired by the bands she grew up listening to, but there’s not a moment on ‘I Disagree’ that feels like a throwback. Try and keep up with her”.
I am going to put in some videos and songs through this feature. I will end with a playlist containing the best tracks from Poppy so far. Ahead of the release of Flux, I have been listening back to her work and noticing the changes and evolution. It is worth sourcing some recent interviews. Before that, I am going back to 2019. NME featured in an extensive interview. We discover more about Poppy’s ‘character’ and what her experience of growing up was like:
“‘Am I A Girl?’ – and the preceding ‘Poppy.Computer’, from 2017 – were seemingly targeted at people who fetishise Japanese kawaii culture and futurism equally. Her forthcoming album, ‘I Disagree’, due on January 10 next year, promises to be a different beast: specifically, one with devil horns. It finds Poppy embracing the tinnitus-inducing thrash of heavy metal alongside those cute, catchy choruses.
It’s a stylistic shift that follows testing times, including a lawsuit, a high profile beef, and a second bad record deal – more of which later. This, then, is heavy metal as catharsis. “I try to channel all of my anger steam into my art and maintain some form of composure, even when I feel I want to end everything,” she says, troublingly. End herself or end the world? “The world.”
So you were feeling quite angry about some things? “Yeah, but I would say it feels natural too. When we were making ‘Am I A Girl?’ we were driving to the studio and listening to a lot of heavier music. I would go in and write a rainbows and butterflies song and I was like, ‘OK, there’s a disconnect here’…”
PHOTO CREDIT: Jenn Five for NME
Previous interviewers – particularly the infamous US ‘shock-jock’ Howard Stern – have made a sport of trying to get Poppy to break character, or even simply to laugh. Even out of the public eye, Poppy carries herself with an air of almost supernatural composure. She sits bolt upright, doesn’t slouch, and speaks carefully and with great consideration in a soft, southern American accent. She’s fiercely intelligent and quietly assured. She drinks black coffee and frequently cracks her knuckles, which snap so loudly you wonder if there’s a metal skeleton in there after all.
An exaggeration of this emotionally guarded person is the one that Poppy’s fans have become obsessed with. In some of her YouTube videos, she asks endless questions of the viewer about their relationship with social media, and whether they validate themselves through followers. In others, she experiences crises about the nature of her own existence. In some, black goo oozes from her mouth. They’re videos that challenge the viewer in a number of ways: not much happens, it happens very slowly, and – though they’re absolutely PG rated – you probably wouldn’t want to be caught watching them at work. They’re much like the trend for ASMR videos, in which people whisper and click and generally make the viewer feel a bit strange in a way they can’t quite put their finger on.
When previous interviewers have asked where Poppy lives, the reply would be “the internet”. Actually, she confirms, she grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, and lives, not-quite-alone, in Los Angeles, California. “I have a Sphynx cat. He’s the demon man of my home. His name is Pi and he I think he was sent to ruin my life,” she says.
It’s easy to imagine Poppy being an outsider in Nashville, typically the home of country music and cowboys rather than robots, and a place she describes as having “that small town feeling”. It’s equally easy to see her being on the fringes in Hollywood. She describes her life there as feeling like “I’m in the middle of a lot of things, but with my journal out, just watching.” So you’re an anthropologist? “I guess so,” she says. “I think everybody would say that about me. When I’m in a room, I’m looking everywhere. I think I would be a spy if I wasn’t a singer.”
Though a keen dancer, Poppy spent much of her childhood alone in her bedroom. “I would intentionally isolate myself from a lot of things,” she says. She did half of her education in public school, where she was bullied, and completed her studies early in homeschool. “I didn’t have a positive experience [at public school],” says Poppy. “I barely said any words, so that kind of opened me up, in a way, to be the target of everyone’s teasing.”
For what things?
“Being skinny and quiet.”
Homeschool conjures images of a parent playing the teacher role. Actually, says Poppy, she did her studies alone in her bedroom, where “the internet was my teacher.” When you consider that image – a slight, quiet girl, sat alone in a room with only the internet for company, diligently racing through the curriculum – it’s not too difficult to join the dots to Poppy’s character on YouTube. “Yeah, it does actually make sense when you think about it,” she says, as if this might, improbably, be a fresh thought. “I like that. If I could just have that be my legacy – famous for being alone in a white room – I’d be happy with that”.
There is a bit more I want to highlight before wrapping up. In July of this year, The Forty-Five interviewed Poppy. It is clear that Poppy’s music and style has changed through the years. Flux seems like a new era for her:
“Persona or not, we’re certainly in a very different era of Poppy these days – last month saw the release of a grunge-flecked new single. While previous releases toyed playfully with rock influences and set them against crisp, glimmering pop melodies, ‘Her’ goes full pelt, and wouldn’t sound out of place on a Hole record. Produced by Justin Meldal-Johnsen – known for his work with Paramore, Wolf Alice and Nine Inch Nails, among others – the spiky comeback moment is accompanied by a dystopian stop-motion video in which robotic singers are cranked out of a production line and forced to perform. It’s the first glimpse of a forthcoming new album which takes influence from the heavier end of the sonic spectrum, and explores the idea of “accepting uncertainty in your life and not being afraid of the unknown.” Though there are no featured collaborations “there are people who have lent their skills to making some of the album,” Poppy hints cryptically.
Arguably, Poppy has always done a similar thing with her music – drawing listeners in with swathes of pastel candy floss, before gripping them with strange, blooping pop music. “Get up, put my makeup on, I know it’s time to go,” she sings on ‘Make A Video’ from her 2017 debut album ‘Poppy.Computer’, “sing along to a dumb pop song that they play on the radio”. The following year, ‘Am I A Girl?’ explored similar themes with a more menacing bite – while 2020’s ‘I Disagree’ pulled from heavier metal and alternative rock. On that record’s opener ‘Concrete’ Poppy appears to kill off her previous era atop overwrought, squalling guitar solos and flowery, orchestral interludes: “bury me six-foot deep,” she deadpans, “cover me in concrete”. Though Poppy insists that this tension between lightness and darkness is instinctive – ”I don’t set out to be like ‘I’m going to do this’ she says – she admits that she’s drawn in these directions on a “subconscious” level. “I’m very aware of how I perceive or consume or digest things from other people, and I think subconsciously people that are attracted to my works view it similarly as well,” she says.
PHOTO CREDIT: Frank W Ockenfels III
Poppy’s home state of Tennessee has the highest number of megachurches per capita in the entire US – these mammoth places of worship often have thousands in their congregations, and often broadcast their sermons on TV in a practice known as Televangelism. Growing up in a city woven with religious threads eventually led Poppy to found her own Poppy Church – a virtual world for fans.
“It’s always been a topic that has been multi-layered for me,” she says. “It’s never something that can be black and white, and it’s always something that I struggled finding my interpretation and meaning with. I always found it kind of ironic that some of the people who hurt me the most in my life were people that were extremely religious. It has always been a frustration – there’s something perverse about someone who portrays themselves as being pure, and the contradiction, the juxtaposition and the thought that there’s always something darker underneath something that looks so concise and pristine… that’s what I think about often.”
Poppy’s new album is also her first since parting ways with her former collaborator Titanic Sinclair – in a statement on social media, the artist claimed she was subjected to “manipulative patterns” of behaviour. Though she doesn’t refer to him by name during our conversation, she pointedly mentions the idea of breaking free from “people that have been like a ball and chain or a negative force,” and seems liberated by the freedom of this new chapter.
The visuals for new single ‘Her’ certainly seem to allude to these past events; a devilish figure sits on a throne and claps as a series of identikit puppets roll off a musical conveyor belt. “Give her a face, give her a name, that isn’t hers, then make her yours,” she snarls on the song. “It’s based on people’s perspective of how things were,” she says of the song. “Did I feel like I was controlled? Or did people perceive me as being controlled?”.
Two more interviews before closing this up. I want to bring together as much information about Poppy as possible, as she is such a compelling artist and person. Numéro interviewed her back in April. Among other subjects, the dangers of social media was discussed:
“Have you been hurt by digital platforms and social media?
In the past, yes. I’ve felt upset by opinions published on social media. At the time, I wasn’t yet using those platforms to promote my music. A lot of people think that simply having an opinion is enough to allow them to share it with the whole world. I think you’ll agree it’s pretty frightening to see the consequences a simple Tweet can have. I’m not really sure if I trust my generation. As for the cultural industry, I’m not sure we can really talk about trust. Let’s look on the bright side: today we’re moving towards greater acceptance of otherness. Before, people were quickly put in boxes.
Are you frightened of ageing?
For a long time I was, yes. But I think those fears were related to an anxiety, that of not managing to be more fully what I really am. They’ve faded a bit with time, particularly when I realized that I was working hard every day to become what I really wanted to be.
PHOTO CREDIT: Sofia Sanchez & Mauro Mongiello
Are there mistakes you’ve made since starting your music career?
Of course! Everyone makes mistakes. Mine include working with people who weren’t able to point me in the right direction, particularly when I was in the wrong and incapable of seeing it. But the word “mistake” is too strong, particularly in our business, because it’s very negative and doesn’t take into account the idea of experience. Paradoxically, keeping the wrong company can sometimes trigger a reaction that allows you to emancipate yourself. I don’t make decisions the way I used to anymore.
Journalists often class your music as “nu metal,” but I don’t think you agree with that categorization...
No, nu metal isn’t a genre I’d like to be assimilated with. [Laughs.] What’s more I never felt my music could be classed in any one category or another. Contemporary music has emancipated itself from the old classifications. Let’s say “contemporary metal” instead.
Rumour has it that metal fans are nicer and more open-minded, and yet it wasn’t until 2021 that a woman was nominated in the category at the Grammy Awards...
Metal fans are open-minded? No, I wouldn’t say that. [Laughs.] I think that those who make metal music are often very open-minded, adorable and extremely inspiring. They’ve given me a lot of advice and shown me a lot of love. But metal fans are the guardians of the creative temple, which they defend jealously, and they can sometimes be rather conservative. They’re definitely not as conciliatory as those they adulate! There are many women in the world of metal, so clearly it’s wonderful that I was nominated in that category”.
The last interview I am mentioning is from Vanity Fair . Although it is from 2020, it is a really interesting chat that I enjoyed reading. I have selected a few excerpts:
“At the same time, the Poppy character itself began to feel like a straitjacket—creative anathema to someone with a constant need to move forward. “One of my biggest fears is regressing,” she said. “I don’t want to ever be moving backwards. I need to always be going forward. I even have a problem when I have a layover.” Not only that, but Poppy was realizing that the internet and social media, her chosen venue for artistic expression, was becoming an increasingly ugly and toxic place.
Poppy wrote I Disagree with Sinclair, but also, apparently unbeknownst to Sinclair himself, some of the record’s lyrics, she now says, were about him. It was a small but symbolic act of defiance. Of the whole period, Poppy said, “It just got to a point…when the air just felt very heavy. I felt like there was a shift coming.”
The shift happened, finally, at the end of last year. In December, she took to social media to announce the professional breakup with Sinclair, with then uncharacteristic candor. It was not an amicable split. “I was trapped in a mess that I needed to dig my way out of,” she wrote, “and like I always do, I figured out how to handle it. I encourage those of you who feel trapped in a situation whether it be similar to my previous one or not—to take the first step, because that is the most difficult one.”
During our interview in February, Poppy did not mention Sinclair by name, instead referring to a “previous collaborative partner” and “certain people.”
Not long after the split, in May, Poppy released a statement in a since-deleted tweet saying that an unnamed ex-boyfriend had leaked photos of her sans makeup online, along with unreleased material. “This is an attempt to make me feel small, insecure and exposed,” she wrote. “Those tactics aren’t going to work.”
Recently given the opportunity to respond to the statement, Sinclair didn’t deny such accusations. “Poppy is a true living enigma,” he wrote in an email. “She was my best friend, my business partner, and my lover for half a decade and not once did I call her by her legal name.”
“I’m disappointed with how she decided to treat me in the end,” he added. “And I have to live with how I reacted to accepting (and ultimately respecting) why she did it in the first place.”
An hour after our interview back in February, Poppy, or a version of her at least, lay in a casket at Brooklyn Steel, her eyes closed, arms across her chest. Around her, a small gathering paid their respects, taking turns at saying a few words each. The funeral ceremony was Poppy’s characteristically twisted way of killing off her famed former self once and for all, closing a chapter and beginning a new one.
Poppy’s longtime fans—her “Poppy seeds”—remain devoted. She’s grateful for that, but also excited about reaching a whole new audience. As much as it was for the fans, the ceremony was for her too, a way of laying a version of herself to rest and letting go. She talked about her old persona, and what was known as the Poppy project, with an epitaphic finality. “She had her life.… I don’t think there’s a part of me that will miss it,” she said. “I feel like it served its purpose”.
With a new album out, there is a lot of eyes on Poppy. She is a sensational artist who will continue to make incredible music. Flux is her latest offering. An innovative, consistent and striking artist, Poppy is most definitely…
ONE of the absolute best.