FEATURE: Spotlight: Sofia and the Antoinettes

FEATURE:

Spotlight

Sofia and the Antoinettes

__________

IF you do not know…

who Sofia and the Antoinettes is, then I hope that this Spotlight feature opens your eyes to a truly brilliant artist. Her E.P., Leaving the House Is a Performance, was released earlier this month. I am going to get to some interviews with her. The first is from Wonderland. We get to learn some biography and background. A truly incredible artist, I feel that Sofia and the Antoinettes is going to be a major name in years to come. In terms of her commanding headline spots and touring the world with these massive shows:

“23-year-old Sofia – aka Sofia and the Antoinettes – invites me into her house, which just happens to be flat 111 of the 11th building on a street I can’t name for obvious reasons. I’m no numerologist, but that feels like a good sign: an angel number, the kind of coincidence that sets the tone before a word is spoken. Inside, she sits by the piano, golden locks perfectly in place, make-up immaculate, smoking one cigarette after another.

I am meeting her on the day her single, “Hi My Love”, drops – a song that’s sparked a genuine existential crisis. “It’s scary. It’s an old song, about two years old, but I don’t feel like I can let go of the version of myself who wrote it without it being out. It’s kind of selfish.

”Music has always been the soundtrack of her life. Born in Derbyshire, Sofia moved as a child to the sunny shores of Mallorca after her mum “couldn’t stand it there.” Her father, a devoted fan of Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, and The Rolling Stones, filled their home with songs that shaped her earliest memories. “I remember being eight and reading the lyrics to “Famous Blue Raincoat”, thinking, ‘Why did he take a lock of Jane’s hair?’” she recalls. When I ask when music became serious for her, she’s blunt: “It was always serious.”

In school, Sofia lived in the music department – a space where she could immerse in her practice. She began playing the piano at five and wrote her first song at 11. “I just always knew,” she says, when asked why music called to her so early. “I actually don’t know. [It was a] need. I got used to processing my emotions that way, and then I couldn’t stop.”

Back in London at 18, Sofia enrolled at Goldsmiths University, where her artist name, Sofia and the Antoinettes, was born from a mix of her tutor’s insistence she present a concept and her own desire to reflect the multiplicity of herself. One morning, having watched Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette unprepared, she suggested, “What if I am Sofia and the Antoinettes?” It stuck.

From the way she smokes to the way she talks, Sofia seems born to perform. She admits to having done “one harp lesson, just so I can say I did one harp lesson,” but this isn’t a character she’s playing – it’s her, 24 hours a day. “I struggle to do things without an audience. Alone, I might do nothing for hours; with someone else, I perform.”

Naturally, she thrives in the limelight. She curated her own residency at Bar La Doña in Stoke Newington in summer 2025, followed by recently headlining BBC’s Introducing Ones to Watch night this January. Her love for performance, she says, comes from “serotonin, adrenaline, being the centre of attention, all the things you’re not supposed to say.” Her dream venue? “Carnegie Hall,” the legendary stage where artists from Tchaikovsky to The Beatles have performed.

What sets Sofia apart, however, is her love for words. In her living room, books surround me. She writes extensively, often beginning with poetry or short stories. “Writing, to me, is the most important part. When I listen to music, I hear the lyrics louder than everything else.” Tracey Emin, Joan Didion, Sylvia Plath, Eve Babitz – they reflect the honesty she strives for in her lyrics. “Here’s my diary. Everybody read it”.

Before coming to more 2026 interviews and writing, I want to go back to last year. Clunk Mag chatted with Sofia and the Antoinettes about her debut E.P., WOMEN WHO LOVE TOO MUCH. I feel it is important to briefly look back to see where she has come from. A debut E.P. that won a lot of praise, this was most people’s first taste of an extraordinary artist:

“I’m a human writing about my human experiences,” she says. Well, technically, the London storyteller didn’t actually utter any of those words out loud. She wrote them down on a piece of paper instead, almost as if I’d been offered a sneak peek into the innermost pages of her memoir.

To say that it’s a career first would simply be an understatement, however, it’s also one of the coolest ways I’ve conducted an interview in recent years. At the very least, it definitely highlights Sofia’s appreciation of her human nature – somewhat idiosyncratic and always sincere.

It’s that exact integrity that Sofia’s debut EP, ‘Women Who Love Too Much,‘ is laden with.

Inspired by Robin Norwood’s bestselling psychology book of the same title, the six-track project spans a multitude of concepts that draw inspiration from the singer-songwriter’s personal life.

Little did she know, though, that a lucky encounter would help her set the wheels in motion for what the project was eventually going to become. “I found the book in a Spanish flea market in the summer of 2022, and the title just meant something to me,” she recalls.

Sofia confesses to going through a heartbreak at the time, which meant that inspiration was getting scarce for her – “but I saw the cover of that book and paid two euros for it,” she then explains. As fate would have it, the cost was money well spent.

“I’m so happy it’s out,” she tells me. “I’ve touched on this before but this project really is a melodical edition of my diary.” Indeed, the extended play is a body-of-work that’s not only deeply introspective, but also undeniably intimate – a phenomenon that the musician herself compares to standing naked in the street. “Not all music is like that,” she clarifies. “But when it’s really personal, there’s no other way to describe it.”

The EP’s daring lead single ‘Spiralling’ opens the project with a bang, utilising sporadic acoustics to soothe the listener after powerful drumbeats catch them off-guard.

Co-written by Jon Buscema in Los Angeles, it sees Sofia study the purpose of love, or the lack thereof. “I was playing the first couple lines to him [Buscema] and, where the drums now exist, I was just attacking Jon’s poor piano trying to explain the juxtaposing aggression I wanted,” she reveals, spotlighting her collaborator’s ability to make sense of the message she was trying to embed into the song. “The words were a diary entry I’d written on a plane, nearly word for word.”

In contrast, one of the EP’s standout tracks ‘Introspection’ takes on a less startling approach to contemplation, at least production-wise. Although seemingly more disciplined, it’s in no way or shape lifeless. If anything, it absorbs you into a cinematic universe where Sofia’s the main act.

“I don’t think I know how not to dwell,” she admits. According to her, you ultimately collect an array of thoughts and emotions whenever you write things down. Fortunately, Sofia has discovered a way to repurpose her ideas through songwriting: “I think if a song makes me cry, in the car or on the train back from the studio, I’ve freed myself from these thoughts living inside me and consuming me. I’ve put them somewhere,” she says.

Speaking of mulling over the things that once were, such intricate reflection often treads a line between much-needed catharsis and something that can very quickly become a tad bit overwhelming.

While some artists draw inspiration from their personal lives, others choose to safeguard their sense of self by using artistic monikers and alter egos as shields. When it comes to Sofia, the barrier between her artistry and personal identity is non-existent. “Otherwise I would have been an actress,” she jests. That is not to say that Sofia hasn’t explored other sources of tranquility, though”

There is another interview that I want to cover off. This one is from CLASH. They spoke with Sofia and the Antoinettes the amazing sophomore E.P. Its title, Leaving the House Is a Performance nods “to the pressures of going out into the world. And so we don’t – a week prior, I’m sitting in Sofia’s bright white apartment in East London to talk through the heartaches and healing she sings about so candidly”:

“Buried In This Room’ and ‘Naked Chess’ are reworkings of the first two singles you released – how did they come to be on this record?

I see my songs as my children and these songs are all siblings, created around the same time. I released ‘Buried (In This Room)’ and ‘Matthew’ on my own as singles and then met my management and label and we moved on to ‘Women Who Love Too Much’. It always bothered me that these earlier songs weren’t in a family on Spotify. When ‘Naked Chess’ started getting popular on TikTok, everyone called it ‘Matthew’ so that’s what it was released as. Then I met my manager and he said, why should anyone say their favourite song is ‘Matthew’ when they could say their favourite song is ‘Naked Chess’? So we changed it back.

What was it like coming back to them and recording them again?

I don’t feel connected to any of the people or emotions in them anymore but I had to put myself back in it which was difficult, almost a form of self-harm. I watched a lot of old videos, read my old diaries and just tried to remember how all these things felt. I’d often end up crying outside with a cigarette before going in to record the vocals like, “I’m ready now!”. ‘Buried (In This Room)’ was the first song I wrote that I actually produced with a producer and it was a weird time. I was so sad. Releasing these songs on the EP feels like they aren’t going to be mine anymore, in a really nice way. Take them!

Something consistent across your work is the use of religious references – why is it important to you to incorporate these into your lyrics?

I write about God because I believe in her. I pray a lot – I’m always laughed at, kneeling at the end of my bed. What I ask for, I get. And when I don’t get it, I choose to believe it’s God protecting me from what I want. Like the Jenny Holzer quote, ‘protect me from what I want’… I think God and Jenny Holzer are friends.

Your songs definitely feel very confessional – does this ever feel difficult at a time where it seems like people shy away from authenticity for fear of being ‘cringe’?

It’s the only way I know how to write. I try not to think about being cringe or anybody I know hearing any of this because if it’s not extremely honest, I don’t like it. I’m glad to know that whatever lyrics I put out, I can stand by. And all the names in the EP are real because the relationships I’m talking about felt so unresolved. That sparked a lot of conversations!

I saw you open for Lola Young at the London Palladium which was a really special night – did you learn anything from her or from your own performance that you’re bringing into your next gigs?

There’s a Spanish word for it, duende, this authentic emotion that Lola has every single time she sings, especially in the bridge of‘You Noticed’. I cry every time I hear it. It’s almost not human – that’s the goal, to portray all these emotions properly for the audience.

What was the recording process like for ‘Leaving The House Is A Performance’ and what did you take away from it?

I made it with Dan Carey, which was a dream of mine. That first Wet Leg album was my university soundtrack – it was the only vinyl ever played in my house. Dan calls himself the mad professor and has all these old gadgets. Our first conversation was about letters I bought at a flea market from a man that had died. I’d written songs based on these letters, love letters from women to this man. Dan had an old tape machine also from a flea market with original 1950s tapes inside of a couple hearing their own voices back for the first time.

The last thing we did for the project was the broken bit at the end of ‘Jewellery Box’ on the tape recorder, and it broke while we were doing it which is why it sounds like that. So that’s the last thing it ever recorded, which feels kind of cosmic.

We worked on every song at once, doing all the piano parts and then all the guitar parts and so on. So it really felt like one cohesive body of work. It was hard to relive the emotions I’m singing about – some of the vocals are the original ones and I feel so bad for that girl. Every time I go through old photos and diaries, I’m like “It gets better! I promise!”. I’m releasing it for that version of myself. I’m so excited for it to be out, but I’m really excited for what’s next – I feel very lucky”.

I am finishing off with a review of Leaving the House Is a Performance from DORK. This is one of the best E.P.s of the year. From an artist we will be hearing a lot more from. A legend in the making. She has just completed a run of U.K. dates. I wonder what the summer holds in store for Sofia and the Antoinettes. From the very first notes, you are grabbed by her energy and phenomenal songwriting. Do make sure that you check it out:

“Sofia and the Antoinettes wears her feelings loudly and dramatically. Across six tracks, ‘Leaving The House Is A Performance’ is an EP that leans into the mess of relationships that don’t quite work out.

Opener ‘Buried In This Room’ goes straight for the emotional jugular, with sweeping intensity. It’s followed by ‘Naked Chess’ (great title, no notes), where the line “I’ve been avoiding writing about you” hints at how much of this EP has been waiting, maybe hurting a bit. It’s not trying to be subtle.

‘Hi My Love’ has a brighter, synth-led edge, circling a second date that already feels doomed: “She’s getting all dressed up to break her own heart”. From there, ‘I Don’t Know What I’m Doing on Earth, I Don’t Know What on Earth I’m Doing’ traces old friendships and missed connections with lines like “running around collecting names”.

‘Vespa’ lingers on the past with a creeping sense that it’s not done yet (“it’s starting to haunt me”), before ‘Jewellery Box’ closes things out with a quieter fear, circling the EP’s central idea that even stepping outside can feel like a performance.

It’s a lot of feeling, all at once, delivered with conviction. If you’ve ever overthought a text or replayed a conversation on the walk home, there’s plenty here to sit with”.

There is a lot of excitement around Sofia and the Antoinettes. Quite rightly, too! I did wasn’t to include a 2025 interview, as it was important to take a quick look back at her previous E.P. However, she has a new E.P. out and this is her strongest work to date. If you have not heard Sofia and the Antoinettes, then do make sure that you follow her on social media. An absolutely compelling and enormously talented artist, I feel the next few years are going to be huge for her. Leaving the House Is a Performance is the latest brilliant work from a sensational and brilliant songwriter. I am looking forward to hearing…