While 2023 was thoroughly successful for rising indie pop artist SOMOH, 2024 continues to take her to new heights with a first-ever sold-out headline show at London’s The Grace in March, while her latest EP ‘Problem Child’ was released on the same day as the concert and has been featured across multiple Spotify playlists, including the famous ‘New Music Friday UK’. We talked to the indie riser about her musical beginnings, her main inspirations and how she learned to embrace her queerness in her artistry.
SOMOH, aka Sophia Mohan, grew up in a British-Irish-Italian household, together with an older brother. “When I was a child, I was in church choir with my dad and then my mom put me in classical singing lessons for a while, because she wanted me to sing in Italian so my grandparents could understand. And I just kept singing because I liked it and it got to a point where I couldn’t really imagine myself doing anything else.”
As for many other artists, the biggest inspirations for writing her songs stem mainly from personal experiences and observations: “The whole idea of my song ‘Man’ just came from me looking at this heterosexual couple on the train and thinking how easy it is for them to just exist.” As Mohan describes herself as a queer woman, having had a girlfriend for the past four years, she’s been on a journey of letting her queerness play an essential role in the kind of artist she is and wants to be: “I think at first I was kind of afraid to have that be part of what I was doing, and I didn’t want that to be the main focus. I was also influenced by people telling me that I shouldn’t do that because it would put me into a box. But I don’t think that’s the case anymore. Now I think it’s actually a really important part of myself. I want that to be something I stand for, especially because I didn’t really have any artists that I grew up listening to do that. I want to write love songs that say ‘she’.”
Looking at her latest release, the main concept for Mohan’s new second EP ‘Problem Child’, “was kind of moving forward from all of these things that happened to me as a child and just letting go of that part, and all the resentment and anger.” Compared to her first EP ‘A Plan To Get Home’, she describes her sound as more elevated: “I think the songs are a lot more full-band-sounding. You can imagine it more for the stage.” Less bedroom, more performance? “That’s exactly what I was going for. I was kind of done with that era, I want to be a stage girl,”, she laughs in excitement.
Regarding her visuals, Mohan prefers to be in full creative control and build everything herself: “I feel like that is also so important in the storytelling.” Even the #1 badge she is wearing on the EP’s cover has a deeper meaning to her and her story: “I wanted to do something that incorporated ‘Favourite’ with ‘Problem Child’ because I feel like both songs are similar and I thought it was an oxymoron because I’m a problem child, but also, I’m your favourite. I’m the number one. And also my mum now always calls me her favourite problem child after I showed her the song.”
Mohan’s plans for the rest of the year are to release more music and to play more gigs, and we are sure that it is only about time until she becomes everybody’s favourite.
Written by Vicky Madzak // Photography by Oscar Blair
GEM Magazine 