Poppy
Listen to Health and Poppy’s First Collaboration on ‘Dead Flowers’
Health released their single in collaboration with Poppy “Dead Flowers.” Poppy’s darkly angelic voice glides through the industrial clouds of Health’s instrumentals. She opens the track: “Erased some stuff / And now they’re fighting me / ‘Cause we fade apart / Moon is soft to see,” which is seemingly the opposite route taken in The Rolling Stones’ 1971 track of the same name off Sticky Fingers. Health’s ethereal blend of searing guitars and snapping drums delicately elevate Poppy and lead vocalist of Health Jake Duszik while taking on the chorus. [embedded content][embedded content] “Every time we release a new track we get asked to give a quote about it,” Health said. “Truthfully, I’m not sure it makes much of a difference.” Health will release a sequel ...
Poppy on Seeking ‘Inner Peace,’ the Beauty of Cry-Driving, Focused New LP ‘Flux’
On 2020’s I Disagree, perpetual shapeshifter Poppy found catharsis within her “post-genre” chaos, utilizing whiplash transitions from djent-y metal to candy-coated electro-pop to many places in-between. Part of the thrill was submitting to the unknown of it all — like with “Concrete,” a song that somehow feels like a mash-up of Nine Inch Nails, the Beach Boys, Michelle Branch, Queen and System of a Down. But for an artist with a reputation built on surprise, perhaps the most startling U-turn is to stop swerving so wildly. Ironically, the singer’s fourth album, Flux, feels like the opposite of a flux. Working with producer Justin Meldal-Johnsen (Beck, St. Vincent, M83) and tracking live with her touring band, Poppy wound up with nine tight, hook-focused songs that favor front-to-back c...
Poppy Releases New Single ‘Her’ With Stop-Motion Video
Today, the self-referentially named electro-pop star Poppy has released a new single called “Her.” Coming as the third notable release from the artist in a prolific past five weeks, the single was produced by Justin Meldal-Johnsen (M83, Air, St. Vincent). It’s accompanied by a dystopian video animated by stop motion director Chris Ullens (Rex Orange County, Lee Ann Womack). Watch it below. [embedded content] The new single is the follow-up to her most release in April – a cover of Jack Off Jill’s “Fear of Dying,” which you can listen to here. Earlier this year, Poppy performed a mesmerizing GRAMMY show in March, surprise-released the five-song EP NXT SOUNDTRACK in partnership with the WWE and Sumerian Records, landed a role as the face of a new fragrance for L’Oreal, and recently announced...
Poppy Surprise Releases Eat EP in Collaboration With WWE
If you had “Poppy partnering with WWE to release a new EP” on your 2021 Bingo card, you were paying more attention than we were in the previous weeks. After showing up to perform on WWE’s NXT several times over the past year, Poppy went on the show last night to announce the release of her new five-song EP, Eat – NXT Soundtrack. As one might deduce from the title, the EP contains the official theme song of this Sunday’s NXT TakeOver: In Your House, “Dark Dark World.” Also included in the EP are “EAT” (which she debuted at her Grammy performance this year), “Say Cheese” from her April performance on NXT, and a pair of other tracks, “CUE” and “Breeders.” “NXT is all about individuality and building characters and Poppy has built her own brand in a similar fashion to ...
Exit Interview: Poppy on Canceled Tours, the New ‘Sonic Vibe’ of Her Next LP
Poppy vividly remembers her 2020 “Mission Impossible moment.” The pop-metal shapeshifter was gearing up for a European tour behind her acclaimed January LP, I Disagree, when her manager broke some unfortunate, pandemic-related news. “I got the call right when I was about to fly [over there],” she tells SPIN. “We were like, ‘Do you think we can get in and get out, just do the U.K. and come home?’ It was maybe four hours later, they were like, ‘Oh, the borders are closed.’ That phone call was crazy for me and will always stick in my head.” Like most musicians, Poppy suffered some tough breaks this year, including a postponed North American tour opening for metal giants Deftones and Gojira. On the bright side, she was able to “flow” through the insanity: performing (safely) on a WWE broa...
The 30 Best Albums of 2020
After a deluge of canceled or delayed tours, drive-in experiments, Bandcamp Fridays and bedroom livestreams, we’re finally here. Yay? It’s hard to celebrate much of anything in 2020. But one encouraging sign from the music industry has been the number of artists innovating on the fly — figuring out ways to sustain their careers through the madness. And as fans, at least we’ve had new albums to help us process our continuing semi-apocalypse. Having (mercifully) reached the end of this awful year, we have even more perspective on the functionality of a great record. The 30 we’ve assembled here have prompted us to dance, helped us grieve, made us laugh, or even just allowed us to escape into a transportive riff or soundscape. We assume they did the same for the artists themselves. Let us reme...
Hear Poppy’s Apocalyptic New Song ‘Khaos x4′
Join Poppy and dance through the apocalypse. On her reliably genre-repellent new single, “Khaos x4,” the vocalist moves from cutesy whisper to frightening scream over a shifting backdrop of glitchy electronics, wailing metal guitars, and power-pop flourishes. “Everyone around you is a casualty,” she sings. “I’m happy that the world is gonna end.” Listen below. “Khaos x4″ is one of four bonus tracks on I Disagree (more), an upcoming expanded edition of her latest LP, I Disagree. The album, out Aug. 14 via Sumerian Records, also features the previously unreleased cuts “If It Bleeds,” “Bleep Bloop,” and “Don’t Ask.” Poppy was set to support Deftones on a summer North American tour, which, like the majority of live music, has been altered due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The 26-date trek is ...
The 50 Best Songs of 2020 (So Far)
Great songs have a freedom that albums don’t because great songs only have to pull off their trick once. It’s like how a great SNL sketch can be a terrible movie or why Vine was an underrated miracle of online comedy. Sometimes an artist can get a lot more done in miniature. When people say that no one listens to albums anymore, they’re obviously mistaken, but they mean that no one listens to certain kinds of albums anymore. They won’t wait to get to the good part, and an industry that’s been padding out their wares for decades has had to adapt to a new reality where the customer is always dope. From Hailey Whitters to Hayley Williams, from King Von to Christine and the Queens, here’s a supercut of just the good parts: The songs that have challenged and delighted and comforted us through a...
The 30 Best Albums of 2020 (So Far)
On one hand, who can think about stuff as trivial as this? On the other, what else is there to do? If art was made to fill a cultural vacuum, well… now’s the fucking time, buddy. Hopefully, you’ve been binging every show, reading every book, repainting every bathroom you’ve been putting off. Hopefully, when (and if) we make it out of quarantine alive, we’ll be able to look forward to better things. For now, we still have music. Some of the great albums and EPs below demand your full and undivided attention. Some of them demand to intensify your workout or gaming session. Mostly they just sound good, and you should pair them with whatever activities music enhances for you. Even sleep; lord knows that could be improved upon. Others will keep you wide awake. If any of these albums make you th...
