Sofi Tukker (Sofi Tucker)
The city of Providence, the capital of Rhode Island (USA), until recently was famous for two things that seemed to be badly combined with each other. Firstly, this city has a very high crime rate - 4 times higher than the average in the United States. And secondly, it is here that the famous Brown University, one of the oldest and most prestigious private educational institutions in North America, is located.
It was in this university that two ordinary students, Sophie Hawley-Veld and Tucker Hulper, studied at the Department of Art and Architecture from 2010 to 2014, and no one, including themselves, could then assume that literally two years later they would become world stars. and Providence will have another reason to be proud - Sofi Tukker!
What is behind this combination of names?
Sofi Tukker is a music band from New York. The team has two members - Sophie Havlej Veld and Tucker Halpern. The year of creation of the duet is 2014. The musical direction is house (conditionally). Why conditional - see Interesting Facts.
The debut album was released in 2016 under the name SoftAnimals. The album consists of six tracks, the most famous of which was the track "Drinkee". This composition was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Dance Track.
The duo performed at such famous events as FashionWeeks and CMJMusicMarathon. Currently, the team holds a world tour, issuing up to 20 (!) Performances per month. As part of this tour, July 27, 2018 is scheduled to perform in Moscow.
Group history
"We remember how it all began ..."
Tucker Halpern - a mystery man, he does not like to talk about himself. Of the numerous interviews about him, we only know that he was born in Boston, and he got his education at Brown University, having completed the department of art and architecture history. In short, Tucker is Native American and his native language is English.
As for Sophie, with her everything is much more complicated and interesting. The fact is that she herself cannot say which country and which language is her native! Judge for yourself…
Ms. Hawley-Veld was born in Germany to a bilingual family and from childhood was a bilingual. It so happened that for several years she lived in rural areas of Canada, then for some time she studied at a college in Italy and only later, having entered Brown University, moved to the USA. At the same time, her parents live in Holland, and Sophie herself calls Brazil to answer the question of which country's country is closest to her!
"In my heart I feel like a Brazilian!" - Sophie admits in an interview. - "I studied there for only six months and eagerly want to return back, because there everything is literally saturated with music."
It was thanks to the music that the guys met each other. It happened at an art exhibition, where Sophie performed as part of a small jazz band. What is interesting - they performed the compositions of her own composition.
Tarker, who visited the exhibition, who was still a DJ at school and composed electronic dance music, could not but pay attention to this performance. From that moment their creative collaboration began, which, as is usually the case, turned into a personal relationship.
Let's give the word to the guys themselves:
Tucker: We studied at Brown University, but until the year of graduation we were not acquainted. The meeting took place at an art exhibition.
Sophie: I played the acoustic music "bossanova" in the jazz band, and Tucker was a DJ. He came early, saw us and made a remix of one of my songs. Since then, we work together!
Tucker: her songs were beautiful, but horribly slow, so I had to revive them a bit, and in the end they sounded very cool.
How did the guys come to music? Let's hear them again:
Sophie: Composing music has always been important to me. I started writing songs in 6th grade. Then it turned out badly, but I got great pleasure. Dancing, moving, singing and making music has always been something special to me. Then I did not know whether music would be my profession.
Tucker: I have always loved music, but at first it was not something important in my life. I was seriously engaged in basketball and planned to become a professional athlete. But it so happened that I got sick, and for eight months was bedridden. In order not to waste time, I learned how to create music on my computer. On recovery, I began to seriously study DJing.
In 2016, their debut album entitled "Soft animals" was released. The album consisted of six tracks, of which the most famous composition was Drinkee, in a short time becoming an international hit. The number of her auditions on the Spotifay service exceeded 30 million, she occupies high places in the charts of many countries. A year later, the song was nominated for a Grammy Award.
And at the end of 2017, an event occurred that already irrevocably put Sofi Tukker in the category of “stars” - Apple chose the song “Best Friend” as the soundtrack for the release of the novelty - iPhoneX. Thanks to such advertising, this composition has sounded all over the world, and the duet has become known far beyond the borders of the United States.
Interesting Facts
- Tucker played basketball professionally and his height is 203 cm.
- Providence City, where Sophie and Tarker met - one of the most dangerous crime cities in the United States.
- In 2017, the track "Best Friend" sounded at the presentation of Apple during the show of new items.
- The composition "Drinkee" became the soundtrack for the movie "The Incredible Jessica James".
- The song "Johny" was included in the soundtrack for the game FIFA17, and its text, adapted and revised, is taken from a poem by another Brazilian poet - Paulo Leminski.
- Until now, no one can determine the musical direction in which Sofi Tukker works. New York music magazine FADER calls their music "folk-dance", the most authoritative edition of Billboard suggests the term "acoustic house". A number of record companies believe that this genre is called "electropop", and the British MixMag adheres to the term "global house".
- Sophie is fluent in 5 languages: English, German, French, Italian and Portuguese.
- In the late 19th – mid 20th centuries, the singer and actress Sophie Tucker, the daughter of immigrants from Russia, was very famous in the USA.
Sofi Tukker best songs
"Drinkee" - colorful dance hit. The song was released in April 2016. Sophie was inspired to write the poem "Relógio" by the Brazilian poet Ricardo de Carvalho Duarte. The text is in Portuguese, that is, in the language of the original. "It doesn't matter if you know Portuguese!" - says Sophie. - "The essence of the song is just in the complete absence of meaning."
In this song, Sophie's voice merges with the accompanying sounds of electric guitar, bass guitar, bongo and bells, creating a unique effect, somewhat reminiscent of chants. At the 59th ceremony, this song was nominated for a Grammy, as the best dance track.
"Drinkee" (listen)
"Best Friend" - incredibly successful composition. It was released on September 12, 2017. It was recorded with the participation of the Australian duo Nervo, the American duet The Knocks and the singer from Japan Alice Yeno. The song is included in the album Treehouse. This track reached the first line in the Dance / Mix Show Airplay magazine chart Billboard. In addition, it can be heard in the most popular computer game - football simulator FIFA 18.
"Best Friend" (listen)
"Batshit" - In this composition in 2018, Tucker debuted as the lead vocalist.
"Batshit" (listen)
The start of the Sofi Tukker was more than successful. They are talked about, they are in demand, they have a lot of creative plans. Today they live, in fact, in airplanes and buses - a world tour requires travel. Despite this, they manage to compose and record new songs for the joy of their growing exponentially, the army of fans. In April 2018, the release of a new album is planned. Will wait.
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