Sophia Stel – “I Do”

Sophia Stel’s “I Do” is the fourth preview of her self-produced debut album, the greatest album of all time, out October 16 via A24 Music. The album moves between deconstructed rave music, ambient electronics and pop, and Sophia’s own wonderfully uncomplicated thesis is that it’s about “believing in yourself and believing in love.” “I Do” is absolutely about the latter.

The lyrics are much sweeter than the production initially lets on. Sophia isn’t hiding behind club-world detachment at all. Is it me, or is she basically giddy? Someone calls her “kinda cold hearted,” and she spends the rest of the song quietly disproving it. She’s hoping the relationship sticks. Time starts moving strangely. She’s thinking about a ring. The other person starts appearing everywhere in her life.

That makes “I Do” a great title because it keeps accumulating meanings. At first it’s almost conversational: yeah, I do like this too. Then the ring enters the picture and suddenly those two words have wandered dangerously close to the altar. Immediately after “I Do” on the album tracklist? “Wedding Song.” We have a ceremony to plan.

George Eyres

Maybe this isn’t really a love song about surrendering yourself to somebody else. It’s a love song made by somebody who’s comfortable enough with herself to say yes to somebody else. That tracks with the larger album, where believing in yourself and believing in love get equal billing. Almost offensively wholesome for an album whose opening track is called “On My Dick.”

The trance of it all makes more sense once you learn Sophia used to work eight-hour night shifts at Vancouver club Paradise, building and dismantling a makeshift studio there and writing while absorbing whatever music was moving through the room. She’s said she makes what she wants to hear first and tries to make music that reflects whatever her life looks like at the time. This doesn’t sound like someone deciding to make a trance song. It sounds like someone who knows the room.

So, Brent, do you take Sophia Stel’s latest single to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until playlist turnover do you part?

I do.