Sophie Allison (pictured above) is a singer-songwriter and musician under the stage name Soccer Mommy. Allison’s songs reflect an alternative and indie rock feel (courtesy of Wikimedia Commons).
There is perhaps no pair of words that presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders could say that would be more entertaining to hear than “Soccer Mommy.” Given this undeniable truth, the world received a gift on Sunday Feb. 23 when Sanders held a rally in Houston that was kicked off by a performance from Sophie Allison—the aforementioned “Soccer Mommy.” In his iconic, goofy 1940s-era Brooklyn accent, Sanders roared “Let me thank [sock-uh MOM-EE], for the music;” which is in equal parts delightful and proof that the Matrix just glitched.
Sanders incited a political youth movement in 2016 and that youthful engine is what currently powers the Vermont senator’s 2020 presidential campaign. It’s unsurprising then that a 22-year-old musician would perform at the 78-year-old senator’s rally.
Soccer Mommy is more than fodder for a serotonin-inducing Sanders soundbite; Allison speaks for the same demographic that the politician’s ideology appeals to. The indie rocker is as musically gifted as she is self-aware, which results in unique, well-crafted music that is unapologetically a product of her influences. Allison’s music sounds like if Taylor Swift had gone grunge instead of pop—a modern Avril Lavigne that speaks for an ill-defined generation too young to identify as millennials and too old to be Gen Z. Well-articulated introspection pervades any Soccer Mommy song, and since the artist’s sophomore album—color theory—is dropping on Friday Feb. 28, it’s worth taking a closer look at the rising star. 2020 may well become the year of Sophie Allison. Soccer Mommy, WTF?
Allison’s studio debut—her 2018 album Clean—is a polished, powerful first impression that navigates contemporary young adulthood and voices a generation’s worth of angst, female empowerment and advocacy for mental health awareness. The album addresses sentiments rebellious women have pioneered since they began picking up guitars, but with the thoughtfulness and levity young adults must balance to cope with modern life.
Listening to Clean feels like someone was able to project the inner insecurities, joys and anger inherent in being 20-something years old in 2020. For example, Allison explained to Consequence of Sound that her song “Cool” is about idealizing things that won’t necessarily make her happy. She explains how it “creates this figure of everything I want to be. It’s fun and upbeat because it’s like a hopeful moment where I’m thinking about how I’m going to be moving forward in my life.” The song’s optimistic tone is unique, as Allison’s material often delves into angrier or more disheartening subject matter.
In “Your Dog,” resentful, fiery lyrics about misogynistic feelings of ownership are sung on top of incongruous, almost wistful instrumentals. Allison pleads, “I don’t wanna be your fucking dog / That you drag around / A collar on my neck tied to a pole / Leave me in the freezing cold.” The song is refreshing in a musical landscape full of unrequited lovers pining after, “Your Dog” illustrates that women—and anyone, really—has the power to remove themselves from institutional toxicity.
The rest of Soccer Mommy’s debut album follows suit and seems performatively representative of the aloof detachment necessitated by being young and fending for your beliefs. Clean climaxes, however, in a moment of vulnerable earnestness—the slow-burning song “Scorpio Rising.” The quiet, vulnerable song is an admission of sorts, where the singer pulls back the curtains to reveal a vulnerable person who does in fact become attached. Allison sings, “I don’t think of my life / Anywhere but in your arms tonight / Won’t say it this time / Can’t even look back in your eyes.”
Clean proved to be a sonically refined, thematically nuanced debut that Pitchfork granted “Best New Album” designation. Now, two years after its release, it seems Soccer Mommy will stick with the shift telegraphed by “Scorpio Rising.” The upcoming color
theory seems like it will be even more personally explorative—and thus even more earnest—than Clean.
Of the new album, Allison told Refinery 29 it will be “an expression of all the things that have slowly degraded me personally.” The album will be grouped into three different hues that represent the different ways the singer organizes those degradations. It begins in “Blue,” which deals with depression and loneliness, before moving to “Yellow” songs—which focus on physical and mental illness. The album will conclude with “Gray” songs that reflect on mortality and death.
The single “circle the drain,” for example, speaks to the downward spiral inherent in depressive episodes—placing the track firmly in her “Blue” hue. The subject matter is approached with the tension and same tonal dissonance found on Clean, as lyrics like “Hey, I’ve been falling apart these days / Split open, watching my heart go / ‘Round and around, ‘round and around / Circle the drain, I’m going down,” are sung over a relaxed, comforting acoustic guitar.
The subject matter may seem too heavy for an artist as young as Sophie Allison, but the artist handles it with the same wise-beyond-her-years nuance that older people may assume people this generation are incapable of. Soccer Mommy is a mouthpiece for frustrated youth, the same people begging for institutional change in a broken, problematic political system. The juxtaposition between the ridiculous stage name and music that clearly articulates balance between anger and melancholy is representative of a population begging to be taken seriously.