Soccer Mommy on That Dog, TikTok, and the Love That Cats Provide
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Soccer Mommy's Sophia Allison joins the two-timers club on the newsletter today; she last popped up on here back in November 2020, the same year she released her fantastic record Color Theory. Just a few months ago, Sophia released her latest record Evergreen, and I honestly think it might be her best; the songwriting is darkly shaded and deeply felt, and in terms of people exploring this sound few are doing it better right now. I hopped on a call with her a few weeks ago to catch up on all things in her universe, and of course we started on the topic of cats because mine wouldn't stop demanding food right before we did the newsletter—check it out:
Do you have any pets?
I have two cats, yeah.
How long have you had them for?
About two years. We got them right before christmas a couple years ago.
What color are they?
They're tuxedo, and they're siblings.
Did you have pets growing up?
I had pets as a kid, yeah. I had cats consistently. From when I was in the first grade, we had two cats at a time—at some points, three. Obviously, when I left home for college, and then everything after that, I didn't have a pet until until I got these cats, just because I was honestly gone all the time traveling.
What is it about cats that make them special as a pet? I feel like, if you're a cat owner, it's a "if you know, you know" type of thing.
You can create a really special bond with them—not that you couldn't with, like, a dog as well. But obviously they're a lot easier to take care of than a dog for someone traveling a lot of the time. They have a mind and personality of their own, and when you connect with one and really bond with it, they're really there for you. i've had so many times in my life where I'm really sad about something, or devastated, or if I'm sick and I'm in bed all day, my cats will both just gravitate and stay with me all day. I think that's beautiful. But just like with any pet, when you get this bond with them, you can't buy your way into it. You can't just get it for free. You really have to earn the connection with them, which is amazing. It's kind of like having a child—it's not as much work, so I've heard, but you feel very connected.
You've put out two records since we last spoke for the newsletter. Tell me about how your songwriting's evolved in the last five years.
I'm always very excited to push myself to work harder and dig deeper. When it comes to lyrics, I'm always trying to be better than the last album in my own personal sense. I look at things that I did on every record that I love, and I look at things that I feel like now I could do better—and that's what I constantly want to push towards. I feel the same way about the music, too. I always want to be challenging myself and trying to not get lazy—to write things that are exciting me, that feel new and fresh and aren't just more of the same, in my eyes. For production, I like to jump around to different things, because I get bored easily.
I think my writing over the past couple years has grown more mature in certain ways. If I look at the very beginning of my career, the topics that I was writing about are different now. I still connect to all those things and feel the emotion—I still know those feelings—but even when it comes to writing about similar ideas that I've written about before, I'm always trying to get more depth out of it and find ways to go deeper into whatever I'm feeling and where it's coming from. I want to keep pushing that way, and I can definitely see in my writing that I've tried over the years to find insight that I didn't have before.
Do you remember the first song you ever wrote?
I do, actually. It was called "What the Heck is a Cowgirl?." I was, like, five years old, so it wasn't that fleshed out at that point. It was basically nonsense, and it didn't really have chords—it was more just banging on a guitar. I've come a long way since then, hopefully.
As you got older and your songwriting matured, how did you feel about sharing it with other people? As someone who doesn't make art, I'm often pretty impressed by the level of vulnerability it takes to share something so personal with the world at large.
When I was a kid and I started writing songs, and I was obsessed with it and doing it all the time, there was no thought in my brain to not share things. You're just lacking that level of insecurity as a kid. But as I got older, there was a lot more of that, and once I was writing music that felt really personal to me, it was very hard to break out of that shell and share things. I'd perform all the time, playing music—not my own stuff—but it's still very vulnerable to just start saying, "Hey, this is what I do." But I also had a lot of friends that also wrote songs, so I was able to share with people that had things to share with me as well. It was low-stakes.
It wasn't until right before I graduated high school that I started putting anything out on the internet and sharing it, and it was very nerve-wracking. I'd demo these little songs in my room, and at first I'd just put them on my Tumblr and a couple people saw them. Eventually, I'd just them up on Bandcamp or Soundcloud and not tell anyone, and just kind of let it live up there for the internet and whoever listened to it that way. I eased into it, posting stuff on the internet and then sharing it on my Twitter.
I never liked to sell myself a lot or try to get people to pay attention, but obviously I was definitely insecure about it. It's such a big feeling, writing something and saying something—and it's hard to expect any kind of reaction to everything you do, to constantly be wanting that and not necessarily getting it. So it was easier, at times, to just not try to sell it to or share it with people.
I've talked to multiple artists over the past few years who have grown fatigued with the process of promoting themselves as well—especially when it comes to emotional or personal narratives. Have you felt that as well?
Definitely. It's not just the press, but social media that wants a lot from you—and personally, I don't like to give that away a lot. There are people who do this and love to go do photo shoots and talk with people about the stuff they're making, but if I were living my normal, everyday life, I'd never do any of the stuff I have to do for work, and I try to avoid it as much as possible. But I don't know how we can escape it, or if there's a way out of that, because with how the world is now.
People want content. They want to see people and feel like they know them, and they want to get more and more and more—and a little thing you can throw out for people is fleeting, so you constantly have to be trying to keep that up. But once you get a certain amount of a career, you can pull back a bit. It's gonna hurt your career—it's not gonna help your career—but if it helps you be happier, it's worth it.
When we last spoke, you mentioned that you'd just left social media. Has anything changed there?
I'm on Instagram now. I'm not ever gonna go back on X or anything like that, but I'm on instagram—I just don't use it much. But I'll go on and post a Story every once in a while. I still leave a lot of stuff up to my management to post—anything work-related, they can do. If we're on tour or something, I'll post some photos here and there and throw a little bit of stuff out for people, because I don't really mind that part. I'll post pictures of my cats, and I do actually go on there and look at it a little bit, too.
Have you felt any specific pressure to market yourself more on TikTok? I've spoken to several artists recently who've had to deal with that.
Definitely. I mean, everyone has. It's a huge part of the music world now, stuff like that. And I hate it, personally. I'm not going to go on a rant about it, but the whole thing chips away a little bit at what we're actually trying to do. It's all about short-format stuff, but I've always been very much like, "Yeah, I'm not doing that." Every once in a while, I could do something that I don't like doing, like making a video of me playing a song or something like that—but I'm not going to be one of these people where that's part of their life, especially since I spend a lot of the time on the road, and I'm trying to write all the time, which is actually the only thing that matters.
If I'm actually spending all my free time being a TikToker, what am I doing? Am I actually making music? But, again, there's nothing wrong with doing that, and there's nothing wrong with being someone who wants to do that. But for me, it's not genuine. I do have a TikTok account that they made, and it's just basically them sharing things that I've already posted on Instagram.
Are you somebody who can write on tour? Some people find it a real struggle to do so.
I can write on the road, but I prefer to write at home, just because I have more space and less people around. But if I have an idea, I'm going to work on it whether people are around or not. I'll just work on it quietly and not really sing out loud. I'm just always writing, really. I don't really go many days without picking up a guitar and trying to write something, so if I get a good idea, I'm going to follow it.
Talk to me about working with Ben on this record. When it comes to producers, you seem to seek something different every time.
I care a lot about how things sound, and you gotta make it what you want and really get into it. I'm not an engineer, but I have a lot of ideas as far as production, so it's really important to find people who understand what you're going for. You have to come in with a vision. I don't like the idea of talking to producers and just picking someone that's good and cool and having them lead. I'll have a very specific big-picture idea of what I want it to sound and feel like, and what I want to evoke. Obviously, I look at what people have done, and the things that they've been able to achieve sonically with other artists. It's about talking to them and throwing around references and ideas, and seeing who's matching up with you.
When I talked to Ben for this record, we talked a couple times and I really felt like he understood what I was saying I wanted it to sound and feel like. When he'd throw out ideas or references, it was very much matching what I was wanting out of the situation. When you try working together, if it doesn't work, it doesn't work—but usually, if you talk a bit about it and make sure that you're on the same page, you can find people that you're going to be able to work with and make something that's going to feel really exciting.
What have you been listening to lately?
I've been listening to that dog. a lot the last couple weeks. I love them. I've been listening to the new EP by this band Her New Knife that I really like. Around Halloween, I was really into that. I've been listening to the new Momma song a lot too. The new Christopher Owens album is really good.
Tell me more about why you love that dog. They're definitely a band that every successive generation seems to discover, and it's always nice when that happens.
There's definitely been a big renaissance of the grungy pop-rock sound that was very big in the '90s, and that dog. definitely came back into the fold with that a little bit. They're also just very interesting. They have these songs with great melodies and fun, snarky lyrics—particularly on Totally Crushed Out. I really love the strings on that one, it's super cool and kind of dissonant at points. They're one of those bands where, they might not be the #1 grunge band that people think of, but they're cult classics. I got into them because other musicians were being like, "You should totally listen to this band."
There was a Stardew Valley reference on this latest record. What's your level of gaming?
I'm not a huge gamer. I only play a couple of games, Stardew being one of them. It's nostalgia games for me, like Pokémon and stuff, but I don't do that on the regular. I'll get in a phase and start up a game and really play a lot for, like, a week. With Stardew in particular, I've played a lot at this point, so now I go on when there's updates or if I feel like working on a new farm. But I'm not gaming like all the time.
You mentioned being on the road a lot. How are you feeling about touring these days?
You definitely have times where it's time to go out on tour and you're not feeling like doing it. But I like touring. I like to see new places, even if it's just snapshots, even if it's just a day. I like waking up and being somewhere new and knowing that there's new possibilities for the the portion of free time that I have during the day. I like the schedule, because I love coming home and having nothing on the schedule and being able to just do whatever I feel like, and then having more of a
rigorous, strict schedule to my life when I'm working. It helps keep my brain focused and calm.
I'm very excited to go back out again and do a real headlining tour, because we've been doing support tours and festivals for a while. I like support tours, but I don't love playing festivals. But I'm excited to play full shows for people.
When it comes to seeing new places on tour, anything specific come to mind?
At the end of tours, if we're going to a really cool place that we've never been, I like to stay a couple days. It's a nice way to get some time to see something else. So much of the world is the same in a lot of ways, but it's also so different. There's so much culture to see and absorb, and it's really important to travel and see the world a little bit. Tokyo was really great and somewhere I'd wanted to go for a really long time. Me and the band got to eat food, play VR, go to cool bars, and just wander. It was really nice.