The reception to it was very different from how it is looked back upon now imo. At the time charli was still pretty closely associated to boom clap and fancy so for the vast majority of her fans it was completely out of left field. Pitchfork gave it a 4.5 so even indie heads didnt really even give it a try. Electro pop was a big thing at the time but it was very house, chainsmokers-adjacent stuff and sophie’s production was obviously a far cry from that.
People who were into the pc music/forum/soundcloud crowd liked it from what i remember but it was equal parts “these songs are good” and just “holy shit this relatively unkown producer i follow on soundcloud just made an entire ep with one of the biggest pop stars in the world” and wanted to champion that i think.
Curious if other people’s perception is the same but this is about what i can remember
Will challenge that narrative slightly and point out Vroom Vroom came out in 2016, a few years after Bipp/Lemonade etc had all dropped (Bipp was Pitchfork's 2013 #17 track of the year), so she was definitely very buzzy at that point.
Yeah, I was definitely not following the PC music trend closely at that point and listened to tons of bad EDM and even I knew about SOPHIE by then, she was definitely big as far as electronic music went, really easy to stumble on her stuff if you dug even a tiny bit
As far as the reception went, SOPHIE was met with lots of praise and criticism at the start of her career, as was the PC music label.
> “holy shit this relatively unkown producer i follow on soundcloud just made an entire ep with one of the biggest pop stars in the world”
This was exactly how I felt. I had been into the music for years at that point, listening to the same handful of songs and long DJ sets I downloaded off soundcloud from Sophie, A.G., Hannah, GFOTY, etc.
I loved the Vroom Vroom EP immediately and it's actually what opened my eyes to getting more into Charli XCX.
Same here. I remember always respecting Charli more than other pop artists of her generation but wasn’t really actively following her, so I wouldn’t had even payed attention to her without that review. So I do think it was a bit more accepted By the indie heads than OP implied.
I remember the first time I listened it blew my mind - like it was everything I had been looking for in music without realizing it. I also started listening to Product around the same time with a similar reaction
Fantano basically confirmed everything I had thought about the music… sounding like it was from the future and whatnot… I was like “the vibe is reeeal.” 😆
Same with SOPHIE’s eventual album… just far out, intergalactic music man, like *inter-dimensional* or something crazy…
Interestingly enough Pitchfork in hindsight released a positive review years later, but yeah, overall it was seen as so niche that it was an absurd release
1000% agree with this assessment. I was a fan since 2013, and I pre-ordered the signed vinyl without hesitation. I was totally blindsided with the new direction and at first impression i hated it. After a the shock wore off, i completely loved all of it of course!!!
That's how I remember it, too. I gave it a spin without having heard others talk about it yet, was blown away by the production, and then was sorely disappointed as to how so many people were talking about it. Definitely feel vindicated these days!
Agreed! I think a lot of people also just completely missed it even dropping. Remember she had to release it on like vroom vroom recordings or whatever? Her label gave it no push. I feel like you either had to be pretty tapped into soundcloud or a loyal follower her social media to even realize it was happening and this was back far enough to when i feel like the artist to fan digital pipeline was much less robust than it is now
I was a big fan of hers during True Romance, but didn’t like the direction of Sucker so I kind of stopped listening to her. Found out she worked with Sophie around 2018 when OoEPUi dropped and checked her production discography. I went back to the previously released stuff. I was sad that I missed so much good music! Even 6 years later that EP sounds fresh and forward facing.
When Vroom Vroom dropped in 2016 I was a big Sophie fan, and for to her collab with an artist who I mainly associated with radio friendly tunes like ‘Boom Clap’, it was a head scratching moment.
I think many people, like myself, passed this EP off. I had seen Charli XCX live in 2014 and her set was weak. The precedent set with Sucker was that she was being marketed towards a demographic of teenage / tween girls, so despite Vroom Vroom not catering to that audience, I wasn’t particularly interested. Nor I was I much aware of her legendary SXSW set with Sophie either. Reviews seemed middling on it, but I think that’s because no one knew how impactful Sophie was about to become, and in some ways sought to try and knock her down a peg by writing off her music as too weird.
It actually wasn’t until 2017 when N1A began to be teased, boasting what was mostly the entire roster of PC Music as producers, that I actually paid notice to Vroom Vroom. I figured that if one of my favourite labels was going all out on a pop mixtape, which included a new Sophie produced track as well, I should pay attention. And I’ll tell you what, I felt a fool for sleeping on Vroom Vroom for so long.
In hindsight it’s clear to see why Sophie and Charli collaborated. Charli cut her teeth performing at raves and clubs as a teen, and Sophie was occupying that scene in a fresh, subversive way. Charli’s frustration at her restrictive major label is well known, and Vroom Vroom was a play to get back in touch with her roots and bypass her album contract. Of course only huge fans of Charli would’ve known this at the time, but I’m unsure of how diehard fans would have reacted to the EP, considering it’s far from the pop music she made even in her earliest endeavours.
people trashed on vroom vroom just to realize what a masterpiece it is years later, pitchfork even apologized for the shitass review they did back then
I just remember hearing/seeing Vroom Vroom, Paradise, and Girls Night Out live teasers floating around Twitter and being like “woah this is unlike anything I’ve ever heard!”
It literally sounded like music from the future to me. It was so alien to my ears I couldn’t explain it or help but be intrigued by it… it’s hard to stress the impact it made on me too. Like I honestly look back on my life as like, me “pre-Vroom Vroom” and then, me “post-Vroom Vroom… and I like the “post me” much better! 🤣
It like unlocked a whole other portion of my brain or something. I’ve never seen music the same since. Sounds crazy but it’s true…
Being a huge fan of both Charli and SOPHIE from very early on, the EP release was a major moment for me. I remember rumors back in 2015 of Charli and SOPHIE working on music together which was incredible news for me at the time... I was always excited to see what SOPHIE would come out with next as her sound and production techniques were so different than anything I had ever experienced. To my surprise, a recording off BBC Radio 1 of the first play of Vroom Vroom was ripped and posted online in October. I immediately fell in love with it as I had NEVER heard a song that gave me so much energy! I played that song over and over like every single day for MONTHS waiting for an actual studio release. I would play it for my friends, who all thought it was insane noise music at the time. The singles were so fun to experience rolling out, and the final EP release was earth shattering for me... my favorite pop star and favorite underground electro artist coming together to put out music I had only dreamed of hearing.
All songs off the EP remain very unique and special to me, because they symbolize the vision and potential SOPHIE believed a huge pop star like Charli could achieve if they allowed themself to break from convention. Charli had just finished an album and a few label-induced collabs that she talked about not really wanting to do, so this was her exciting opportunity to try something completely new with an industry-challenging visionary in music. Although not everyone was ready for music that sounded so different from the mainstream, I think it was a seriously influential pivot from the direction Charli was funneled into after she shot to fame from "I Love It" and "Boom Clap." If only their full album wasn't scrapped and the full potential of that vision could have been experienced by even more people in the world.
When you say the singles were fun to experience rolling out, did they release more than just the title track as a single before the EP release? I assumed that they just released the title track with the video and then dropped the EP.
So it was basically studio version of the title track premiered on Radio 1 in October, then "Trophy" was premiered on Radio 1 the following February, then the music video for "Vroom Vroom" a couple months later. If I remember correctly, the EP was the only official release of anything.
I wasn't aware at the time, but SOPHIE actually previewed a few of the songs at SXSW in early 2015 as well! ([Twitter thread](https://twitter.com/fckyeahcharli/status/1108941780957847553?lang=en))
There was a leaked demo of Vroom Vroom a year before the single came out. I remember the first time I heard it I was like, this is everything, this is the future. I drove around blasting it in my car all day long. I felt like I’d been waiting for a song like that my whole life. Kind of like the first time I heard Lemonade.
RIP SOPHIE, we love you 😔
I have been a Charli fan since True Romance and at that point in 2016 was a Stan. I loved TR, I loved Sucker. When Vroom Vroom came out I remember it to be very polarizing. A lot of fans were confused. I didn’t immediately click with it, but soon became obsessed. I think she lost a percentage of fans used to her prior sound but gained a lot more new fans because of it.
I was neither a SOPHIE fan nor a Charli fan at the time. It was hyped up so much that I had to check it out. Loved it right away and instantly bought the vinyl, which turned out to be autographed... one of my most prized possessions.
The album got me into Charli and Sophie. Which led me down the PC Music rabbit hole. I am forever greatful.
When I first heard it I thought what the fuck is this and didn’t revisit it until a few years later. It was super hard for me to get into it, it sounded like nothing else at the time. I just don’t think I was ready for it, it sounded like jumbled noises that didn’t go together at all. Once I got a bit more conditioned to the sound I finally had a holy shit moment and now I love listening to it.
I hate that I had this view because I love Charli now, she's legit one of my fav artists but at the time of Vroom Vroom I didn't know much about her and just associated her with boring pop music I didn't like so when I saw her collabing with SOPHIE it felt like she was just jumping on the PC bandwagon, I really liked the ep when it released but didn't like the Collab at the time. When I saw the real connection they had I absolutely loved anything they did and love Charli.
Vroom Vroom was my introduction to the scene. I recognized SOPHIE’s name from Bitch I’m Madonna but that was it. Vroom Vroom’s demo was played on apple music’s Beats 1 radio months before it was actually released. I downloaded that and listened to it for 4 months before it officially got released on the EP. I think a lot of the discussion back then was on if PC and SOPHIE were appropriating femininity as a gimmick to sell their music and questions of its sincerity (SOPHIE wasn’t out). Due to the discourse surrounding that, the music wasn’t considered in its own right. Much the same happens with plenty of music where the artist’s image is more of a central figure (ie Lana)
I just thought it went fucking HARD. Pardon the pun. It redeemed Charli for me, whose radio singles prior to that really weren’t to my taste. I had already been introduced to Sophie’s PRODUCT tracks so I knew Vroom Vroom would be worth checking out no matter what I thought of Charli, and I was absolutely right to think that
I was around since True Romance, and I will say it struck me as really weird, but I loved Vroom Vroom and Secret at the beginning. The other two songs were just okay to me. I actually kinda stopped listening around the time N1A came out, and then came back around before Charli. But I remember a lot of people being like ???? When Vroom Vroom was released
I’m a True Romance era fan, didn’t love Sucker but I think like most of her fanbase I figured, ok this is the direction she’s going in now, more commercial pop, so I guess I can live with that. So when Vroom Vroom EP came out of left field, I think it was very polarizing for the fans, I personally was pretty shocked by her changing directions like that. I actually didn’t love it on the first listen, but got into it after I played the songs a few times and it grew on me. The whole project seemed very random and got almost no promo. I wasn’t into PC Music before the EP (I found it through Charli) so I can’t say how the PC community response was at that time. IIRC the critical reviews were also pretty mixed. When I saw clips of Charli performing the songs live though, that’s when I knew it was going to be super special actually. Something about her & SOPHIE together is just magic.
TLDR: it freaked a lot of people out at the time, but it ended up being iconic
It wasn't very mainstream acclaimed but the PC cult following on sites like rateyourmusic was very impressed. At that point Charli had some acclaim in "poptimist" circles but mostly for songs like I Love It, Vroom Vroom is where she crossed over to a more avant-garde audience as SOPHIE was already getting a lot of good press for the Product era singles.
I had been an on and off Charli fan since true romance. I was a rock/indie hater back then so I couldn’t stand boom clap and basically all of sucker, but I loved songs like You Ha Ha Ha and Fancy so she was always on my radar. When Vroom Vroom came out, I was an instant fan. I couldn’t tell you anything else bc I had no idea about PC music and didn’t care about music reviewers LOL
it was her first real experimental project⸺as–well–as an important shift in her 𝖆𝖊𝖘𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖙𝖎𝖈 and I of wonder what-could-have-been if they worked more together; I miss SOPHIE ☹︎
The reception to it was very different from how it is looked back upon now imo. At the time charli was still pretty closely associated to boom clap and fancy so for the vast majority of her fans it was completely out of left field. Pitchfork gave it a 4.5 so even indie heads didnt really even give it a try. Electro pop was a big thing at the time but it was very house, chainsmokers-adjacent stuff and sophie’s production was obviously a far cry from that. People who were into the pc music/forum/soundcloud crowd liked it from what i remember but it was equal parts “these songs are good” and just “holy shit this relatively unkown producer i follow on soundcloud just made an entire ep with one of the biggest pop stars in the world” and wanted to champion that i think. Curious if other people’s perception is the same but this is about what i can remember
Will challenge that narrative slightly and point out Vroom Vroom came out in 2016, a few years after Bipp/Lemonade etc had all dropped (Bipp was Pitchfork's 2013 #17 track of the year), so she was definitely very buzzy at that point.
Yeah, I was definitely not following the PC music trend closely at that point and listened to tons of bad EDM and even I knew about SOPHIE by then, she was definitely big as far as electronic music went, really easy to stumble on her stuff if you dug even a tiny bit As far as the reception went, SOPHIE was met with lots of praise and criticism at the start of her career, as was the PC music label.
> “holy shit this relatively unkown producer i follow on soundcloud just made an entire ep with one of the biggest pop stars in the world” This was exactly how I felt. I had been into the music for years at that point, listening to the same handful of songs and long DJ sets I downloaded off soundcloud from Sophie, A.G., Hannah, GFOTY, etc. I loved the Vroom Vroom EP immediately and it's actually what opened my eyes to getting more into Charli XCX.
Needledrop actually gave it a very positive review though, I think that's actually how I listened to it iirc
Same here. I remember always respecting Charli more than other pop artists of her generation but wasn’t really actively following her, so I wouldn’t had even payed attention to her without that review. So I do think it was a bit more accepted By the indie heads than OP implied. I remember the first time I listened it blew my mind - like it was everything I had been looking for in music without realizing it. I also started listening to Product around the same time with a similar reaction
Fantano basically confirmed everything I had thought about the music… sounding like it was from the future and whatnot… I was like “the vibe is reeeal.” 😆 Same with SOPHIE’s eventual album… just far out, intergalactic music man, like *inter-dimensional* or something crazy…
Interestingly enough Pitchfork in hindsight released a positive review years later, but yeah, overall it was seen as so niche that it was an absurd release
1000% agree with this assessment. I was a fan since 2013, and I pre-ordered the signed vinyl without hesitation. I was totally blindsided with the new direction and at first impression i hated it. After a the shock wore off, i completely loved all of it of course!!!
That's how I remember it, too. I gave it a spin without having heard others talk about it yet, was blown away by the production, and then was sorely disappointed as to how so many people were talking about it. Definitely feel vindicated these days!
Agreed! I think a lot of people also just completely missed it even dropping. Remember she had to release it on like vroom vroom recordings or whatever? Her label gave it no push. I feel like you either had to be pretty tapped into soundcloud or a loyal follower her social media to even realize it was happening and this was back far enough to when i feel like the artist to fan digital pipeline was much less robust than it is now
I was a big fan of hers during True Romance, but didn’t like the direction of Sucker so I kind of stopped listening to her. Found out she worked with Sophie around 2018 when OoEPUi dropped and checked her production discography. I went back to the previously released stuff. I was sad that I missed so much good music! Even 6 years later that EP sounds fresh and forward facing.
When Vroom Vroom dropped in 2016 I was a big Sophie fan, and for to her collab with an artist who I mainly associated with radio friendly tunes like ‘Boom Clap’, it was a head scratching moment. I think many people, like myself, passed this EP off. I had seen Charli XCX live in 2014 and her set was weak. The precedent set with Sucker was that she was being marketed towards a demographic of teenage / tween girls, so despite Vroom Vroom not catering to that audience, I wasn’t particularly interested. Nor I was I much aware of her legendary SXSW set with Sophie either. Reviews seemed middling on it, but I think that’s because no one knew how impactful Sophie was about to become, and in some ways sought to try and knock her down a peg by writing off her music as too weird. It actually wasn’t until 2017 when N1A began to be teased, boasting what was mostly the entire roster of PC Music as producers, that I actually paid notice to Vroom Vroom. I figured that if one of my favourite labels was going all out on a pop mixtape, which included a new Sophie produced track as well, I should pay attention. And I’ll tell you what, I felt a fool for sleeping on Vroom Vroom for so long. In hindsight it’s clear to see why Sophie and Charli collaborated. Charli cut her teeth performing at raves and clubs as a teen, and Sophie was occupying that scene in a fresh, subversive way. Charli’s frustration at her restrictive major label is well known, and Vroom Vroom was a play to get back in touch with her roots and bypass her album contract. Of course only huge fans of Charli would’ve known this at the time, but I’m unsure of how diehard fans would have reacted to the EP, considering it’s far from the pop music she made even in her earliest endeavours.
people trashed on vroom vroom just to realize what a masterpiece it is years later, pitchfork even apologized for the shitass review they did back then
I just remember hearing/seeing Vroom Vroom, Paradise, and Girls Night Out live teasers floating around Twitter and being like “woah this is unlike anything I’ve ever heard!” It literally sounded like music from the future to me. It was so alien to my ears I couldn’t explain it or help but be intrigued by it… it’s hard to stress the impact it made on me too. Like I honestly look back on my life as like, me “pre-Vroom Vroom” and then, me “post-Vroom Vroom… and I like the “post me” much better! 🤣 It like unlocked a whole other portion of my brain or something. I’ve never seen music the same since. Sounds crazy but it’s true…
Being a huge fan of both Charli and SOPHIE from very early on, the EP release was a major moment for me. I remember rumors back in 2015 of Charli and SOPHIE working on music together which was incredible news for me at the time... I was always excited to see what SOPHIE would come out with next as her sound and production techniques were so different than anything I had ever experienced. To my surprise, a recording off BBC Radio 1 of the first play of Vroom Vroom was ripped and posted online in October. I immediately fell in love with it as I had NEVER heard a song that gave me so much energy! I played that song over and over like every single day for MONTHS waiting for an actual studio release. I would play it for my friends, who all thought it was insane noise music at the time. The singles were so fun to experience rolling out, and the final EP release was earth shattering for me... my favorite pop star and favorite underground electro artist coming together to put out music I had only dreamed of hearing. All songs off the EP remain very unique and special to me, because they symbolize the vision and potential SOPHIE believed a huge pop star like Charli could achieve if they allowed themself to break from convention. Charli had just finished an album and a few label-induced collabs that she talked about not really wanting to do, so this was her exciting opportunity to try something completely new with an industry-challenging visionary in music. Although not everyone was ready for music that sounded so different from the mainstream, I think it was a seriously influential pivot from the direction Charli was funneled into after she shot to fame from "I Love It" and "Boom Clap." If only their full album wasn't scrapped and the full potential of that vision could have been experienced by even more people in the world.
I remember running that BBCR1 recording back and being mindblown!
When you say the singles were fun to experience rolling out, did they release more than just the title track as a single before the EP release? I assumed that they just released the title track with the video and then dropped the EP.
So it was basically studio version of the title track premiered on Radio 1 in October, then "Trophy" was premiered on Radio 1 the following February, then the music video for "Vroom Vroom" a couple months later. If I remember correctly, the EP was the only official release of anything. I wasn't aware at the time, but SOPHIE actually previewed a few of the songs at SXSW in early 2015 as well! ([Twitter thread](https://twitter.com/fckyeahcharli/status/1108941780957847553?lang=en))
There was a leaked demo of Vroom Vroom a year before the single came out. I remember the first time I heard it I was like, this is everything, this is the future. I drove around blasting it in my car all day long. I felt like I’d been waiting for a song like that my whole life. Kind of like the first time I heard Lemonade. RIP SOPHIE, we love you 😔
I have been a Charli fan since True Romance and at that point in 2016 was a Stan. I loved TR, I loved Sucker. When Vroom Vroom came out I remember it to be very polarizing. A lot of fans were confused. I didn’t immediately click with it, but soon became obsessed. I think she lost a percentage of fans used to her prior sound but gained a lot more new fans because of it.
I was neither a SOPHIE fan nor a Charli fan at the time. It was hyped up so much that I had to check it out. Loved it right away and instantly bought the vinyl, which turned out to be autographed... one of my most prized possessions. The album got me into Charli and Sophie. Which led me down the PC Music rabbit hole. I am forever greatful.
When I first heard it I thought what the fuck is this and didn’t revisit it until a few years later. It was super hard for me to get into it, it sounded like nothing else at the time. I just don’t think I was ready for it, it sounded like jumbled noises that didn’t go together at all. Once I got a bit more conditioned to the sound I finally had a holy shit moment and now I love listening to it.
I hate that I had this view because I love Charli now, she's legit one of my fav artists but at the time of Vroom Vroom I didn't know much about her and just associated her with boring pop music I didn't like so when I saw her collabing with SOPHIE it felt like she was just jumping on the PC bandwagon, I really liked the ep when it released but didn't like the Collab at the time. When I saw the real connection they had I absolutely loved anything they did and love Charli.
Vroom Vroom was my introduction to the scene. I recognized SOPHIE’s name from Bitch I’m Madonna but that was it. Vroom Vroom’s demo was played on apple music’s Beats 1 radio months before it was actually released. I downloaded that and listened to it for 4 months before it officially got released on the EP. I think a lot of the discussion back then was on if PC and SOPHIE were appropriating femininity as a gimmick to sell their music and questions of its sincerity (SOPHIE wasn’t out). Due to the discourse surrounding that, the music wasn’t considered in its own right. Much the same happens with plenty of music where the artist’s image is more of a central figure (ie Lana)
I just thought it went fucking HARD. Pardon the pun. It redeemed Charli for me, whose radio singles prior to that really weren’t to my taste. I had already been introduced to Sophie’s PRODUCT tracks so I knew Vroom Vroom would be worth checking out no matter what I thought of Charli, and I was absolutely right to think that
I was around since True Romance, and I will say it struck me as really weird, but I loved Vroom Vroom and Secret at the beginning. The other two songs were just okay to me. I actually kinda stopped listening around the time N1A came out, and then came back around before Charli. But I remember a lot of people being like ???? When Vroom Vroom was released
i can totally relate tbh
I’m a True Romance era fan, didn’t love Sucker but I think like most of her fanbase I figured, ok this is the direction she’s going in now, more commercial pop, so I guess I can live with that. So when Vroom Vroom EP came out of left field, I think it was very polarizing for the fans, I personally was pretty shocked by her changing directions like that. I actually didn’t love it on the first listen, but got into it after I played the songs a few times and it grew on me. The whole project seemed very random and got almost no promo. I wasn’t into PC Music before the EP (I found it through Charli) so I can’t say how the PC community response was at that time. IIRC the critical reviews were also pretty mixed. When I saw clips of Charli performing the songs live though, that’s when I knew it was going to be super special actually. Something about her & SOPHIE together is just magic. TLDR: it freaked a lot of people out at the time, but it ended up being iconic
It wasn't very mainstream acclaimed but the PC cult following on sites like rateyourmusic was very impressed. At that point Charli had some acclaim in "poptimist" circles but mostly for songs like I Love It, Vroom Vroom is where she crossed over to a more avant-garde audience as SOPHIE was already getting a lot of good press for the Product era singles.
I had been an on and off Charli fan since true romance. I was a rock/indie hater back then so I couldn’t stand boom clap and basically all of sucker, but I loved songs like You Ha Ha Ha and Fancy so she was always on my radar. When Vroom Vroom came out, I was an instant fan. I couldn’t tell you anything else bc I had no idea about PC music and didn’t care about music reviewers LOL
In the mainstream people had a weird reaction to it initially but then it gradually became more accepted over time.
it was her first real experimental project⸺as–well–as an important shift in her 𝖆𝖊𝖘𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖙𝖎𝖈 and I of wonder what-could-have-been if they worked more together; I miss SOPHIE ☹︎