Friends Like These

On the back of just one EP, Soft Animals, 2017 was a meteoric year for dance-pop duo, Sofi Tukker, with a Grammy nomination and the use of their song, ‘Best Friend’ by Apple to advertise the iPhone X turning it into a blockbuster smash. But before they were adopted by the mainstream, the pair – Sophie Hawley-Weld and Tucker Halpern – were a hit with queer kids across America and Europe.

“We really make it clear that we value being yourself, and expressing yourself however you want and celebrating that,” Tucker says. “That’s where we’re most happy and that’s what we want to create for the people who are with us. That’s something the queer community stands for and we admire that. Hopefully there’s some mutual admiration there.”

Sophie and Tucker are talking to me on the phone from a dressing room at the Jimmy Fallon Show, on which they’ll be appearing later to perform ‘Best Friend’. It’s a platform most performers can only dream of, and the pair are just getting to grips with it.

“I think we’ve taken last year in our stride, because for us we’re just on the road every day, doing shows, writing songs, doing what we love, so what’s happened doesn’t hit us really,” says Tucker. “Today’s one is pretty wild, though. It feels a little crazy.”

That said, Sophie didn’t quite take being in the presence of a pregnant Beyoncé at the Grammys this time last year in her stride either. “We were so wide-eyed,” she says. “It was like, ‘what are we dong here? This is awesome!”

The pair met three years ago when they were both studying at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.

“I was playing an acoustic bossa nova set in an art gallery and Tucker was booked in as the DJ for later at the same event,” Sophie explains. “He came early and saw me play, and he basically ended up remixing one of my songs on the spot. The next day we met up and started making music, and we pretty much haven’t stopped since.”

The moment was part of a reinvention for Tucker, who had come to the University on a basketball scholarship.

“I spent my whole life training to be a basketball player,” he says. “That’s what I loved and what I thought I was going to be doing, but then I got sick and had to leave school for a year. I was in bed for six or seven months and I wanted to be productive, although I didn’t have the energy to do much. So, I got music software and watched a bunch of YouTube tutorials trying to train myself how to use it. Then when I went back to school I played basketball for a little longer until my doctor said ‘no more’. I had one year left, so I said to myself I really want to make music my career after I leave. I started DJing at parties all over campus and all over Providence, and I really got into it.”

Having forged a connection, Tucker persuaded Sophie to move to New York and embark on a career in the music industry with him. She wasn’t so keen to begin with.

“I had a fear that making music was a sort of selfish or self-indulgent thing to do,” she explains. “I feel like I got a really good education and there’s a responsibility with that education to give back and to make sure that my life’s work is a contribution. I wasn’t sure whether or not making music would do that. Now I couldn’t be happier about how it feels in terms of it being a contribution. It’s something I’m offering to the world that I’m really proud of.”

The summer after graduation was spent honing their sound, something that could have been disastrous, given how different their taste in music is.

“I like music that Tucker finds boring,” says Sofi. “He’s very high energy. The stuff that we don’t agree on is frenetic.”

“It took us that summer to figure out a lot of things,” says Tucker. “Like about how to work together, how to be upfront and honest with each other.”

“We went down a lot of dead ends,” adds Sophie. “We’d keep working and working trying to make something right, when it wasn’t actually clicking. I think we’ve learned to navigate that. If something feels really good, we’ll keep going. If it doesn’t feel that excellent, we’ll let it go.”

The feel-good factor extends to their shows, which Sophie describes as “our favourite thing to do.”

“With people coming to our shows at first, we didn’t know what to expect. But the people that come ended up being the kind of people who make that vibe instantly in the room, and it’s like this energy cycle, where we’re giving them energy and they’re giving us energy, and it becomes this amazing experience. They’re people who all want to be joyful and expressive and loose and loving.”

“That community, we’ve found out, is one of the most important things about who we are as a band,” adds Tucker. “We love being surrounded by people who bring each other up, and support each other, and create things together.”

Ironically, neither Sophie or Tucker were aware of the original 1920s singer and comedian, Sophie Tucker (immortalised by Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl), when they came up with the amalgamation Sofi Tukker as the name for their band.

“We kind of found out after,” says Sophie. “We’re so happy to pay homage to her. She’s bad-ass.”

I’ve a feeling Sophie Tucker would have firmly approved of Sofi Tukker too.

Sofi Tukker play Dublin’s The Button Factory on January 27, ticketmaster.ie