As soon as I woke up on Saturday 30 January, just like any other day, I reached for my iPhone to check my social media. On Facebook, I noticed an unusually large number of posts, namely photographs and music videos, on avant-garde singer/music producer Sophie Xeon (better known simply as SOPHIE).
Instinctively, I clicked on the YouTube link to ‘It’s Okay to Cry’ music video. This was the first single from SOPHIE’s acclaimed debut album ‘Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides’, which was nominated for best dance/ electronic album at the 61st Grammy Awards ceremony. The Glasgow-born star came out as trans shortly after releasing this beautiful ballad in October 2017; and that was when she first came on my radar.
Whilst the song was playing, I googled her name. The search yielded devastating news I didn’t expect. A few hours earlier, around 4am, this 34-year-old visionary DJ and ‘pioneer of a new sound’ breathed her last at her apartment in Athens. Following her sudden death, her record label, Transgressive issued a statement on Twitter: “True to her spirituality she had climbed up [to the rooftop] to watch the full moon and accidentally slipped and fell.»