Poppy Injects Optimism Into Negative Spaces

Poppy is no less of an enigma now than she was in 2014 when she posted her first video on YouTube titled “Poppy Eats Cotton Candy.” Through these David–Lynch-does-ASMR performance art videos, she satirized social media and internet culture while keeping her true identity concealed. Though she is less interested in the internet these days, her bubblegum pink, uncanny robot persona has not disappeared; it has evolved and transformed through multiple abstract iterations. Now on her sixth album, she has danced through electronic, punk, industrial and pop to become one of the most brilliant voices in metal. 

Negative Spaces is one of Poppy’s heaviest projects to date, but there’s a thread of optimism running through the album: “You don’t know how bright the light is without the darkness,” she says. She doesn’t believe that these two qualities are opposed; rather, they’re intrinsically connected. This is especially true on the synth pop anthem “crystallized,” when she sings, “I’ve never been too good at love / But I’ll wring my eyes dry / ’Cause if I never get back up / I’ll regret what wasn’t mine.”

“You don’t know how bright the light is without the darkness.”

“No album writing and producing process is ever similar, in my experience,” she says. On her 2023 electropop album Zig, Poppy worked with legendary producer Ali Payami who is known for helping to create Taylor Swift’s 1989 and “Can’t Feel My Face” by The Weeknd. On Negative Spaces, however, she worked with alt-metal stars Jordan Fish of Bring Me the Horizon and Stephen Harrison of Fever 333. “The time I spent with Jordan and Steve was a very concentrated time and we moved rather swiftly,” Poppy says, while Zig was created over a longer period of time. “I can also say, with Negative Spaces, it was something that I had been thinking about making for a while and it was serendipitous the way it all unfurled.”

On “they’re all around us,” she screams “Coward!” and dives headfirst into a thunderstorm of rapid, unrelenting guitar and drums, before the clouds part and the chorus opens into a glorious melody as she belts, “When your spirit’s black and blue / And the heroes all desert you / Will you curse what’s coming true?” Over the years, Poppy has trained her voice to seamlessly transition back and forth from death growls and fry screams to saccharine pop melodies. “I warm up every day [while on tour],” she says. “Lots of loud sounds — I usually have to isolate in other rooms because they’re quite piercing.”

The surreal, oozing, black and white imagery on Negative Spaces plays with time and space and size. On the official visualizer for “New Way Out,” she peers through a keyhole to come face-to-face with a miniature version of herself. “The album visuals were inspired by external forces making you feel small and also pushing back against them,” she says. This, along with her hyper-feminine looks complete with lace and bows that she has recently performed in, are reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland. “I find it interesting that my femininity is unnerving to some, but I enjoy existing here,” Poppy says. 

“I find it interesting that my femininity is unnerving to some, but I enjoy existing here.”

Within the past year, Poppy has collaborated with legendary metalcore acts Bad Omens and Knocked Loose, the latter of which saw her nominated for a Grammy for Best Metal Performance. But André 3000, she says, would be her dream musical collaboration — if she could record or perform a song with anyone. On her They’re All Around Us Tour, Poppy is performing alongside three bands that she has been a fan of for a while. “I found Chinese American Bear when they came on shuffle in my car,” she says. House of Protection is her producer and friend Stephen Harrison’s news project. Japanese-language electronic duo Kumo 99 will be opening for Poppy on her Salt Lake City stop. “I think Kumo 99 is very exciting and fresh and more people need to listen to them,” she says. “They have been on my backstage pre-show playlist for a while.”

Get tickets now to see Poppy and Kumo 99 at The Complex on Sunday, March 16. 

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