"Sofia" is a song by American singer Clairo. Fader Label released it as the third single from her debut studio album ''

Immunity Immunity may refer to: Medicine * Immunity (medical), resistance of an organism to infection or disease * ''Immunity'' (journal), a scientific journal published by Cell Press Biology * Immune system Engineering * Radiofrequence immunity desc ...

'' on July 26, 2019. The song was written by Clairo and Rostam Batmanglij, who also produced the song, and features drums from

Danielle Haim Danielle Sari Haim (born February 16, 1989) is an American musician. She is the lead guitarist and vocalist of the pop rock band Haim, which also consists of her two sisters, Este Haim and Alana Haim. Danielle also serves as the group's drummer ...

. "Sofia" became a sleeper hit after going viral on the video-sharing platform

TikTok TikTok, known in China as Douyin (), is a short-form video hosting service owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. It hosts user-submitted videos, which can range in duration from 15 seconds to 10 minutes. TikTok is an international version ...

, charting on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100 more than a year after its initial release.

Background and composition

Musically, "Sofia" is a Eurodisco,

dance-rock Dance-rock is a dance-infused genre of rock music. It is a post-disco genre connected with pop rock and post-punk with fewer rhythm and blues influences. It originated in the early 1980s, following the decline in popularity of both punk and dis ...

, and

soft rock Soft rock is a form of rock music that originated in the late 1960s in Southern California and the United Kingdom which smoothed over the edges of singer-songwriter and pop rock, relying on simple, melodic songs with big, lush productions. S ...

song, with a pulsating

electropop Electropop is a hybrid music genre combining elements of electronic and pop genres. Writer Hollin Jones has described it as a variant of synth-pop with heavy emphasis on its electronic sound. The genre was developed in the 1980s and saw a r ...

beat. In a

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin ...

post, Clairo explained that "Sofia" was inspired by her first experiences having crushes on older women whom she saw in the media. She named

Sofia Vergara Sofia ( ; bg, София, Sofiya, ) is the capital and largest city of Bulgaria. It is situated in the Sofia Valley at the foot of the Vitosha mountain in the western parts of the country. The city is built west of the Iskar river, and ...

and

Sofia Coppola Sofia Carmina Coppola (; born May 14, 1971) is an American filmmaker and actress. The youngest child and only daughter of filmmakers Eleanor and Francis Ford Coppola, she made her film debut as an infant in her father's acclaimed crime drama film ...

as examples, and claimed that writing "Sofia" was her way of celebrating her discovery whilst "maintaining the cheesy/corny lyrics you'd normally find in songs where you profess your love". She continued by writing that the song "captures a moment in erlife but instead of hiding it, it's expressed in an almost 'explosive' manner".

Critical reception

Carolyn Droke of

Uproxx ''Uproxx'' (stylized in all caps) is an entertainment and popular culture news website. It was founded in 2008 by Jarret Myer and Brian Brater, and acquired by Woven Digital (later renamed Uproxx Media Group) in 2014. The site's target audienc ...

described the song as an "anthem for the actualization of lairo'ssexuality", saying that the lyrics and rhythm "encapsulate feelings of exhilaration and trepidation at the threshold of a new relationship". Harry Todd of ''

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'' compared the production of the song to that of

The Strokes The Strokes are an American rock band from New York City. Formed in 1998, the band is composed of lead singer and songwriter Julian Casablancas, guitarists Nick Valensi and Albert Hammond Jr., bassist Nikolai Fraiture, and drummer Fabrizio ...

and

Sleigh Bells Sleigh Bells may refer to: * Sleigh bells, a type of bell which produces a distinctive 'jingle' sound, especially in large numbers. * Sleigh Bells (band) Sleigh Bells is an American musical duo based in Brooklyn, New York, formed in 2008 and ...

, with its "heavily processed guitars and crunchy drums". He continued to praise producer Batmanglij for "peppering he songwith

arpeggiated A broken chord is a chord broken into a sequence of notes. A broken chord may repeat some of the notes from the chord and span one or more octaves. An arpeggio () is a type of broken chord, in which the notes that compose a chord are played o ...

synths and

vocoder A vocoder (, a portmanteau of ''voice'' and ''encoder'') is a category of speech coding that analyzes and synthesizes the human voice signal for audio data compression, multiplexing, voice encryption or voice transformation. The vocoder was ...

melodies that recall

Daft Punk Daft Punk were a French electronic music duo formed in 1993 in Paris by Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo. Widely regarded as one of the most influential acts in dance music history, they achieved popularity in the late 1990s as p ...

's lovelorn slow-burns", and Clairo for "selling" the song with her vocal performance. Katherine St. Asaph of ''

Pitchfork A pitchfork (also a hay fork) is an agricultural tool with a long handle and two to five tines used to lift and pitch or throw loose material, such as hay, straw, manure, or leaves. The term is also applied colloquially, but inaccurately, to ...

'' compared the synths in "Sofia" to that of "

Dancing on My Own "Dancing On My Own" is a song by Swedish singer-songwriter Robyn, released on 20 April 2010 as the lead single from her fifth studio album, ''Body Talk Pt. 1'' (2010), the first in her ''Body Talk'' series. "Dancing On My Own" was produced by ...

" by

Robyn Robin Miriam Carlsson (born 12 June 1979), known as Robyn (), is a Swedish pop singer, songwriter, record producer, and DJ. She arrived on the music scene with her 1995 debut album, ''Robyn Is Here'', which produced two Billboard Hot 100, ''Bil ...

Credits and personnel

Credits adapted from Tidal. * Claire Cottrill – songwriter * Rostam Batmanglij –

producer Producer or producers may refer to: Occupations *Producer (agriculture), a farm operator *A stakeholder of economic production *Film producer, supervises the making of films **Executive producer, contributes to a film's budget and usually does not ...

, songwriter,

recording engineer An audio engineer (also known as a sound engineer or recording engineer) helps to produce a recording or a live performance, balancing and adjusting sound sources using equalization, dynamics processing and audio effects, mixing, reproducti ...

– drums *

Emily Lazar Emily B. Lazar is an American mastering engineer. She is the founder, president, and chief mastering engineer of The Lodge, an audio mastering facility that has operated in New York City's Greenwich Village since 1997. She won a Grammy Award fo ...

–

mastering engineer A mastering engineer is a person skilled in the practice of taking audio (typically musical content) that has been previously mixed in either the analog or digital domain as mono, stereo, or multichannel formats and preparing it for use in dist ...

* Chris Allgood – mastering engineer *

Dave Fridmann David Lawrence Fridmann is an American record producer and musician. Career From 1990 onwards he co-produced most releases by Mercury Rev and The Flaming Lips. Other bands he has worked with include Weezer, Saxon Shore, Neon Indian, Wolf Ga ...

– mixer * Cary Singer – recording engineer * Nate Head – recording engineer * Dalton Ricks – recording engineer * Michael Harris – recording engineer

Charts

Weekly charts

Year-end charts

Certifications

References

{{Clairo 2019 songs 2019 singles Clairo songs LGBT-related songs Songs written by Rostam Batmanglij Songs written by Clairo