Sofie Royer, the Austrian-Iranian singer-songwriter, is set to release her new album Before/After on 4 September via Stones Throw Records. The record, already hailed as one of the year's best, showcases her trademark wit and erudition, with songs referencing film-making, French theory, and even a catchy funk-pop chorus built around the word "sesquicentennial."
A Pop Star with a Philosopher's Mind
Royer, 35, studied philosophy, psychology, and English for a teaching degree. "Maybe I've just spent too many years on [academic journal database] Jstor, but I love a good reference, right?" she says. "Paying attention to references is one of the coolest things that you can do: a little keyhole into another piece of knowledge."
Her new single Actress follows Charli xcx's Camera as a pop song about film-making, with lyrics referencing rotoscoping, call sheets, screenplays, establishing shots, and cinéma verité. Over pumping disco, she purrs: "When the dust settles on your heart / I'd like to audition for the leading part," and "My mise-en-scène is flawless, don't you know I'm quite adored / I'll win you over in 35mm 4K-restored."
From Vienna to LA to London and Back
Born in the US to an Austrian mother and Iranian father, Royer spent her high-school years in Vienna and attended a conservatoire, excelling at violin. At 19, she moved to Los Angeles to work at the record label Stones Throw. "If you come from a mixed background, and then you're socialised in a third country, you aren't ever really belonging to one place. I'm always just 'part-', right?" she reflects.
She later moved to London as one of the first employees at Boiler Room, the music platform that grew into a major startup. "There just wasn't a necessity to scale up in that way," she says of its commercial growth. "It's a bummer because it makes you think: everything [countercultural] is kind of doomed, isn't it?"
Navigating Personal Turmoil and Artistic Identity
While in London, Royer's mother was diagnosed with cancer. As an only child, she quit her job and returned to Vienna to care for her, starting her degree in philosophy, psychology, and English, plus an incomplete painting degree. Songwriting became a way to process. "I was singing a lot of karaoke around that time in the basement of my art university, and then one thing led to another. It was a real way for me to escape," she says.
Her debut album Cult Survivor came out in 2020, but performing it live "was like reopening an old wound." She adopted a pierrot persona for 2022's Harlequin and based 2024's Young-Girl Forever on a French philosophical tract. "The beauty of age is that you care less and less about it. You couldn't pay me to go back to my 20s," she jokes. "I mean, you could pay me, because I'm self-employed, so I'm down for money."
Artistic Success and the Metrics of Music
Despite admiration from peers like Lana Del Rey, Air, and LCD Soundsystem, Royer has not achieved the same commercial success. Her new album addresses this openly. On Sold Out the Jazz Club, she sings: "Always a nominee, never a winner / The longer I keep this up the less I can afford dinner," and describes herself as "too pop for the art world, too indie-darling for the mainstream."
"Very few professions are as measured in metrics as people working in the arts," she says, "specifically music, and these metrics are publicly available" – Spotify listeners, tickets sold. "And not only that, then you're being interviewed: 'Where do you see yourself in five years? What does success mean to you?' That's what I wanted to perhaps release when it came to these songs."
Moving Forward: Acting and New Projects
Royer has also moved on from therapy, singing "I spent five years on that couch, and I'm not ever going back again" on the new song C'est la D. She clarifies: "I was actually in therapy for longer than five years, but it just sounded so cool to sing five instead of seven." She says her therapist agreed she no longer needed it. "We as humans have a certain semblance of resilience, but there's a lot of financial value placed in today's market of psychoanalysis," she adds.
Now a full-time musician, Royer is also branching into acting. She had a cameo in the 2024 remake of Emmanuelle, playing a bar singer, and has made two films with Austrian director Jasmin Baumgartner: Too Hot to Die, a satirical comedy about a reality dating show, and the bigger-budget dramedy Sentimental Fail Club. "You're just the paintbrush and the film is the canvas. You're just an element in somebody else's artistic vision," she says of acting's appeal.
Despite her complex references, Royer can also write a straightforward love song, like Opium, comparing her affection to the drug's high: "A hundred years is nothing with it, I want more." Even here, she adds a dash of analysis: "That one just felt like such a direct, honest song. And also, like, structurally dadaist. So it made the cut."
