Sophia Stel – the greatest album of all time Review
Breakout fame is like the greatest night out ever: Stel wakes to recount its every high and low the morning after.
Do you remember the best night out you ever had? The ones that stick rarely are the smooth ones. They’re the nights where your highest of highs dance a little too closely to your lowest of lows: the laughter; the arguments; the love of your life, who you know is actually the love of your life this time, that you made eye contact with for two seconds and promptly never saw again; the walk home alone. The oscillation between extremes is addictive.
Breakout fame is a lot like that. Rising Canadian singer and producer Sophia Stel, who became A24’s second official record label signing in February this year, knows it well. Calling her 12-track debut full-length album the greatest album of all time is about as provocative as a name can get. It is a brag in bold font, yet Stel types it out in all lowercase: quiet, almost shrugging. She flashes and restrains in the same breath, which is exactly what fame does: the rush of being seen and the cost of it. The album wakes up to tell the story of newfound public attention the morning after, every high and low drifting back through Stel’s distinctive, atmospheric voice, its tracklist structured like the greatest night out of all time.
The night explodes open immediately. ‘On my Dick’ is a sub-two-minute adrenaline rush whose racing heartbeat kick drum and vivid, suggestive lyrics elbow us directly onto a hazeworld-dancefloor. ‘Molly in The Club’ and ‘Like a Kite’ stretch out that dreamy optimism.
the greatest album of all time’s concept holds together well because Stel never lets the night play out in real time. The album is dominated by electronically manipulated sounds, an augmented aural barrier (or perhaps, protection) against the true, raw feelings of fame. The constant running through every track is Stel’s voice: distant, melancholic, blurred, like someone recounting the night the morning after. Even at emotional peaks like ‘Bitches Talk Shit’, a confrontational bite-back against her newfound critics, she sounds like she is looking back, narrating from some liminal, faraway speaker. Perhaps this is her way of signalling she isn’t standing still and is already moving to what’s next. Or perhaps it’s a form of protection, a way of shielding herself from the growing pains of fame, which the album lets stay just out of reach. It’s a distinctive vocal identity that shapes the whole record into one cohesive memory.
If Stel’s voice is an attempt to shield the narrator, the background is where the vulnerability seeps in and moves the album’s narrative forward. ‘I’ll Walk’ is the turning point. A minute in, the full weight of the drums hits like an unexpected drink thrown into someone’s face, and Stel turns and walks out of the club. The night we expected is over, and Stel has decided she’s had enough of what fame asks of her. Metronome-esque violins mimic her footsteps as the club (perhaps a metaphor for fame itself) recedes behind her. However, as distance grows, the album’s mood brightens. ‘I Do’ is its most danceable track, a bright trance pulse that carves out the weightless freedom that comes after shrugging off everyone else’s expectations and choosing your own way home.
It is in this discovered, divergent autonomy that ‘Wedding Song’ and ‘Now I’ve Got a Lot You Know’ arrive, both as the dawn begins to settle in. The latter is perhaps the greatest album of all time’s most introspective and self-aware track and is also my personal favourite. Here, Stel acknowledges the distance, avoidance, and protection against fame that the rest of the album only hints at, admitting she keeps chasing the highest of highs to avoid the crash of the lowest of lows: ‘If we stay so high, we don’t worry about any low.’ But that only etches the cycle deeper, and halfway through ‘Now I’ve Got a Lot You Know’, Stel finally relents, accepting no absolute saviour will come to pull her out from it: ‘I know there’s no God.’ The night will ‘stop when it stops’. The night is out of Stel’s hands. The electronic haze and distorted vocals are still there, but they are constructed so that every word is completely legible. Confrontation and reconciliation.
Finally, the album completely ends with a burst of ‘Power’ and a final ‘Burn’. On the closer, the haze lifts for a second as Stel’s name is spoken aloud in a found sound snippet, clear and unprocessed, just as everything catches fire. By the time everything goes up in flames, the ending feels inevitable rather than sudden. Stel has been preparing us for it all night long.
On the surface, the greatest album of all time is a victory lap for an artist on the rise. Underneath, it is about the complications that come with (what some would argue) one of the coolest things that could happen to you. The album mirrors that oscillation. Its energy swings between extremes, held together by Sophia Stel’s distant, hazy, melancholic narration, which carries from the opener to the closer. It’s the kind of album you keep replaying, like a night you can’t stop remembering.