Name: Sophie Lindinger

Nationality: Austrian
Occupation: Singer, songwriter, composer, producer
Current Release: Sophie Lindinger's latest singles "15 Years" and "Coffee" are out now.
Recommendations: I recommend the movie The Fall (2006 by Tarsem Singh) - it’s a visual masterpiece and I love the story of it.
Also, look at the art my colleage Marco Kleebauer does. Music or paintings, I admire his work.

If you enjoyed this interview with Sophie Lindinger and would like to stay up to date with her work, visit her on Instagram. Or head over to the websites of her other projects: My Ugly Clementine; Leyya.



When did you start writing/producing/playing music and what or who were your early passions and influences? What was it about music and/or sound that drew you to it?

I have always been drawn to music.

When I was around 3 years old I started attaining a kids & music class at our town’s music school and in elementary school I played in some tiny musicals for Christmas.

I learned playing the flute, starting around 5ish and changed to guitar and piano later. With 11, I wrote my first song with the few English words I learned in my first year of English class and soon I realised what happens when I write - namely feeling relieve and peace.

I think Avril Lavigne was the first singer-songwriter who inspired me. It just blew my mind what music made me feel and I wanted to recreate this feeling with my own words and write about things that I didn’t talk about.

Having something no one could take away from me.

When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening and how does it influence your approach to creativity?

Music sets my feelings free. Thoughts, worries, fears etc. that are stuck in my subconsciousness start to show and make me aware of what’s going on in my mind. Feelings like sadness or anger that overwhelm me - I can take them out of my body and commit them to paper, so I can look at them from afar and rearrange and cage them in a song.

It’s like therapy - but talking to myself and my subconsciousness.

How would you describe your development as an artist in terms of interests and challenges, searching for a personal voice, as well as breakthroughs?

Since I started making my own music I have always tried to be my biggest critic. Especially with lyrics I can see my development when I look back at old songs. I always wrote in open phrases so I could hide behind them and now I am so direct that sometimes I feel I am letting my audience inside my apartment. But I love it.

Just like I’ve grown as a person, my music always grew with me and with time I opened myself up to other genres, positions, experiments, etc ... I have never thought back then, as a singer-songwriter for myself, that I would become a producer and songwriter for other people as well. That I will be able to live off my music still feels insane to me.

But it showed me that I will never stay still and if I’m open enough there will be many experiences waiting for me

Tell me a bit about your sense of identity and how it influences both your preferences as a listener and your creativity as an artist, please.

My identity was always a mystery to me. What does it even mean? It feels like giving something, or myself, a description that will have to be the same forever. Like an instagram bio you can never change again.

I have always struggled with that. I think most of my lyrics are about that. My existence on earth, a creature destined to die, a personality, a body, a sexuality, dreams. Searching for who I was.

But the last few years I went through a lot of shit and realised that I can be a lot more than what I am and what people thought i was. A lot more than just one thing. I can be happy and sad, shy and outgoing, sexual and asexual and everything inbetween.

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music and art?

I never have ideas when I work on music. It just comes out of me. Like in a trance.

My emotions and experiences are the source and what comes out is nothing I can really control.

How would you describe your views on topics like originality and innovation versus perfection and timelessness in music? Are you interested in a “music of the future” or “continuing a tradition”?

I never really thought much about trends and stuff. I always wanted to feel my music in whatever shape and form.

Of course I get influenced by the times and current music and genres. And subconciously I probably will always put something of that into my music. But I never thought: “I have to do this to be innovative“ or “I have to do that to be timeless“.

I think this is something that is not in my hands, or anyone's hands. It happens.

Over the course of your development, what have been your most important instruments and tools - and what are the most promising strategies for working with them?

My guitar and my voice have been my most important tools for my music. I’ve written on synths and over a production.

But if it’s just me and the urge to write I will always grab my guitar. Although I know the chords are limited and maybe I have the same chords in a few songs, I always somehow manage to make something different out of them.

This is because it’s a particular emotion that leads me and the chords are just a carrier for precisely that emotion.

Take us through a day in your life, from a possible morning routine through to your work, please.

A day in my life - well, it depends on what phase I am in. Am I touring? Am I working on an album? Do I have a few weeks to paint or travel?

I don’t have a routine. Only a few small ones - getting up to make myself some coffee, going back to bed to drink it there, eating some cereal with fruits. Forgetting to eat lunch, getting really hungry in the afternoon. Nap, cause I ate too much.

Everything inbetween depends on what I have or want to do.

Could you describe your creative process on the basis of a piece, live performance or album that's particularly dear to you, please?

I start with a feeling, or something bothering me, feeling the urge to write it down.

I go to my guitar and sit on my carpet in the living room and play around with my guitar and hum a few melodies. Write down words and repeat the parts over and over again. Everytime I add something new, I record it on my phone so I don’t forget it.

This is something I ALWAYS do and is the most exciting moment.

Then I go to my studioroom and record and produce it for days in an intense hyperfocus mode and building up the production until it feels like it’s finally there where I want it to be. And listen to what I did every morning seeing if it recreates the feeling I had when I wrote it.

Listening can be both a solitary and a communal activity. Likewise, creating music can be private or collaborative. Can you talk about your preferences in this regard and how these constellations influence creative results?

I mostly listen to music on my own and so is writing my music. I am very odd when it comes to that. I want it in a specific way and if it is not exactly how I pictured it, I get anxious.

With time I have learned that sharing and working on a piece with somebody else can be really special too. But these people need to have the excact same picture that I have.

How do you see the connection between music and science and what can these two fields reveal about each other?
 
I think they are very connected: what happens in the body when listening to music and what it can do to the brain and health. Why we love certain patterns and sounds and why certain compositions reveal different emotions.

It's fascinating.

Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

If if weren't for music, I would often fail to know how to dissect the chaos in my head, how to get it in order and find out WHY I feel a certain way. It gives me longterm subconscious inner peace.

Mundane tasks give me short-term conscious peace. Peace for the moment.

Music is vibration in the air, captured by our ear drums. From your perspective as a creator and listener, do you have an explanation how it able to transmit such diverse and potentially deep messages?

Music stimulates a different part of the brain and it tackles the listeners' emotions. It gives us the feeling of being heard and connected with other people feeling the same things.

It has a strange power. Nothing else has that quite the same way.