It is a gray day in January. In the far corner of Café Podium on Westbahnstraße, SOPHIE LINDINGER talks about antidepressants, transience and melancholy over peppermint tea. In between, it often becomes quiet. But during the conversation, the gloomy season gets a little cheer on the side. Just as in her first solo album “Sophie Lindinger”, it is the pauses that make you hold your breath; in conversation as well as in music. “Yes, it is not easy and yes, it may hurt,” is the motto, “but you can live with it.” After great successes with My Ugly Clementine and Leyya, the musician and producer releases “Sophie Lindinger” on February 10, 2023, an album that is most likely the “reason for her existence.” From “Happy Pills” to “The Winner”, SOPHIE LINDINGER musically excerpts her feelings, giving the listener a hand to hold. Or a straw to draw breath? What that means and why the album fits the current time, the artist tells us in conversation with Ania Gleich.
A friend of mine said that Leyya was a great role model for him as a musician, in terms of sound.
Sophie Lindinger: I find that totally weird.
That someone says something like that about your music?
Sophie Lindinger: Yes! After all, I also listen to music that inspires me. But then you have a completely different relationship to the artist. Through admiration, you build up your own image of a person you don’t know personally. That’s why I find it so weird when someone says that my music is for them what another artist is for me! That’s just weird! It makes me feel so …
… caught?
Sophie Lindinger: Less caught … actually, it feels more like Imposter Syndrome. I think to myself: How can this be? We’re not that good after all! When you do something and release it, you lose a little bit of the sensibility for that stuff afterwards. What happens to it or how people perceive it, I don’t relate to that anymore. That’s why it feels weird when it takes on such a life of its own and someone else sees it as something special again!
Do you find it strange that a foreign person emotionally “appropriates” something that once belonged only to you?
Sophie Lindinger: Yes, completely. That’s why I’m excited in a different way with this album. I’m almost happy to lose the connection to it a little bit. After all, there’s always this invisible limit: I’ll never be able to know how much a person is immersed in my songs. I’m very happy about that. Not because I don’t think it’s cool, but it feels so far away at the same time. On the other hand, this album, like Leyya’s last singles, is one of the most personal things I’ve ever produced: It’s the bottom of my feelings, my soul, my existence. It’s particularly intimate and fragile.
Why are you releasing an album that is so fragile right at this moment?
Sophie Lindinger: I think it was just time. I started writing the album almost three years ago. It’s been very painful. And I didn’t plan to release it for a very long time. But at some point, I thought to myself: there are over ten songs – this is an album! It still took a long time to get over those feelings to the point where I could present it to the outside world. And from the moment I decided to release it, the work just started. It hurt a lot, over and over again. But the longer it’s been and the longer it’s lasted, the more I’ve been able to deal with it. Now this thing can be impactful for others because it was already impactful for me. It also felt right to release it in the winter.
Writing a song as an immediate release and producing it as a relationship-work?
Sophie Lindinger: Of course there’s that instant release when you’re writing the song, but you also have to consider what’s going to happen every time you hear the song – that those emotions will keep coming! It always triggers something. The longer it’s been, the better you can deal with it. But that’s why with this album in particular, I really didn’t want to produce it alone. I needed the support of another person because I was so biased about the album itself. There was no objectivity to find the right sound.
But the album is self-released?
Sophie Lindinger: Yes!
And the title: your idea?
Sophie Lindinger: It’s funny that you ask that! I really thought about an album title for a long time. But none of it amounted to what I have collected in the album. And at some point I came to the conclusion that you can also self-title albums, with your own name. That’s when it clicked, because it makes the most sense for this album. It’s the essence of the album.
“MELANCHOLY IS THE LAST STOP BEFORE ACCEPTING WHAT HAS HAPPENED”.
The tracks are a lot about a sense of absence. You’re touching on a topic that our culture likes to marginalize: our own confrontation with transience.
Sophie Lindinger: I think that’s important! Every change that is big in life hurts. But it’s good that things are transient. Because you don’t realize how important they were until time has passed. You’re right, though: the subject has a weird bias in society. I find that almost toxic, because it’s so important to be able to put things to rest. Or better: to be able to look at the past with distance and accept it. It’s a part of you and you can deal with it.
So it’s never about locking away the past, but how to live with it in the present?
Sophie Lindinger: What does past even mean in this context? It doesn’t fade away. It is still there! You just have to gain a distance from it that is big enough that it doesn’t break you. And that’s why I feel that transience is the completely wrong word.
I’m thinking of an idea by the German philosopher Ina Schmidt, who said that melancholy is the feeling that comes when you have accepted the transience of things.
Sophie Lindinger: That’s true. Although I would rather say: melancholy is the last stop before accepting what has happened. You look at it and feel melancholy as the last sadness that something has been completed. But then it’s more about being able to move on with this feeling.
Would you describe yourself as a melancholic person?
Sophie Lindinger: Absolutely. I used to be a lot more so, though, because as a millennial, I didn’t learn what mental health was until my mid-twenties. Coming from a family with Boomer parents, I’ve believed my whole life that I’m just a melancholic person: I can’t feel joy as much as other people. I don’t laugh as much as other people. I have to leave earlier than other people because I am drained. Because that’s how my whole life has been! And I’ve been telling myself for years: I’m just a melancholic person – that’s my character! But my engagement with mental health has shown me that it doesn’t have to be like that and that this melancholic state is not me. But that it is only a symptom of something, where another cause is behind it. Realizing that has changed a lot for me. In the meantime, I don’t say that so lightly anymore, but have another explanation: I am a person who has no place in this society because of my extreme empathy and hypersensitivity. And that triggers melancholy! Because I have to deal with so many things that other people don’t have to deal with. That always resonates with me. It’s not my character, it’s a condition! Which above all is not in me, but is around me. I myself am not the melancholy!
A psychotherapeutic paradigm: You are not the condition, rather, you have it. But that also means you can control it!
Sophie Lindinger: Yes, exactly! And this learning to control it is hard. There will always be periods where you can’t do it. But being aware of this leads to feeling much more joy! Because I know: I can bring it out of me and say: Hey it’s not me. It exists, but I can also do other things, because I have room for it.
In “Happy Pills” you talk quite specifically about experiences with psychopharmaceuticals. However, the title also sounds ambivalent. How did you experience it?
Sophie Lindinger: I don’t want to be the person I was before the antidepressants. I have completely different experiences now. The medication has helped me realize that I am not the melancholy. And, that I can consciously control much more and that I am not overwhelmed by this extreme pull of pain. Of course, being on these medications makes you much more tired. Also, I’ve gained weight, which then again is a burden in a society where body-shaming is quite big. But I noticed at the same time that this basic pain in me is no longer there. And that has given me capacities again to experience other things. But it took me a long time to take some. There’s a lot of stigma, especially if you grew up in a rural area, about this, ‘If you take medication, you’re crazy.’ My family didn’t say that now, but you internalize those ideas. That’s why it took so long …
You also have to find the right medication to be well adjusted.
Sophie Lindinger: Yes, very much so! For me, it took almost ten months. That was hard. But I had a great psychiatrist who always told me very transparently: ‘There are two options, what should we try?’ But it was frustrating because I really had to try a lot until I found the right one. And these changes in medication, are real pain in the ass. I wrote “Happy Pills” three months before I finally got the right medication. Accordingly, it came out of a phase of despair, where I thought that maybe nothing would help.
That’s why I find “Happy Pills” so ambivalent!
Sophie Lindinger: The song is also one of the most painful songs I’ve ever written. Along with “Ordinary” by Leyya: Those were both songs where I had no hope left. And usually, I always have a little bit of hope. But those were really moments where I thought: I give up now, it doesn’t work anymore. But that’s also why I thought “Happy Pills” was maybe the best opener.
And how was it with “Coffee”? Again, it’s about a feeling of absence, but not the absence of hope, but of a concrete person.
Sophie Lindinger: That’s also one of my most emotional songs. It doesn’t sound like that. But sometimes now when I play it or talk about it, it still hurts. I realize it just now here with you. I still can’t get rid of that feeling. Because something in me can still relate to it.
The feeling of a present absent person is terrible.
Sophie Lindinger: I lived in this state for two more years, because I lived in the same apartment as the person. Of course, I moved everything around. But it wasn’t until I moved that I realized that I could take off a lot of baggage there.
I have the feeling that people always live on in oneself.
Sophie Lindinger: I feel that way, too. They never die completely. Which brings us back to transience!
Did your show with Mira Lu Kovacs at the Konzerthaus on February 24 also come about in the context of this album?
Sophie Lindinger: Not really. The album was almost finished, and I played a few small solo concerts with my songs every now and then. At the same time I produced Mira’s album “What Else Can Break”. And in it, she processed exactly what I also experienced. So I felt her songs and she felt mine. That’s why we thought, at some point, just for fun, that we should play an evening together where we dedicate ourselves to this topic. And lo and behold, it became reality.
“I WANT TO OFFER A STRAW THAT HELPS A LITTLE BIT NOT TO DROWN”.
There is also another accumulated sadness in the world at the moment. People are getting much worse in shorter intervals.
Sophie Lindinger: Is anyone surprised? If we just look at what’s happened over the last three years. And I don’t even mean just the pandemic now, but also the wars that are happening. The huge inflation that is forcing many people into poverty. The constant confrontation with violence and climate change: how are you going to deal with that? And then you also have your personal dramas: Then something happens, or you break up with your partner. How is a person supposed to process that? I’m not surprised. And I feel the same way. I can’t be on social media very much at the moment because it depresses me so much.
I have noticed the media withdrawal.
Sophie Lindinger: On good days, I can occasionally turn up the radio while I’m cooking to catch up on everything a bit. But when I have a phase where I can just about cope with myself, it doesn’t work. Sure, I also have the absolute privilege of being able to do that. I can just turn it off. For a lot of people, that’s the reality. But you still have to look after yourself.
You can only have an impact in a limited circle.
Sophie Lindinger: I once wrote a poem a few years ago. There I was getting on the subway and I saw someone who was sad and another person who had an impairment and suddenly I had to cry. Not because I felt sorry for these people, but because I imagined how hard everyday life must be for these people. What discrimination they probably have to deal with. And I was taken by that feeling for the rest of the day. It’s crass how you can be taken in by the pain of others. So then I wrote this poem: I needed to let it out.
Poems have something of a quick relief when you feel like such a vessel for the feelings of others.
Sophie Lindinger: Sometimes I feel like a sponge.
But music has the power to transport you somewhere else!
Sophie Lindinger: People sometimes ask what my goal in life is. And actually I think “I don’t know”, but in the end I always say: I want to offer a straw that helps a little bit not to drown. Because that’s what music has always been for me: that straw. And the most beautiful thing is when I can pass this straw on.
But I hope you have diving equipment by now before you do that?
Sophie Lindinger: Yes, totally!
I guess you’re familiar with the tendency to offer help, even though you might be drowning yourself.
Sophie Lindinger: I did that for a long time … but by now, I at least have an awareness of when that limit is reached and I can usually abide by it. Sometimes I still cross it, but only in small doses.
Now it’s hard for me to draw a line in this conversation.
Sophie Lindinger: We can also just leave it like that?
Then we’ll leave it like that.
Ania Gleich
Translated from the German original by Itta Francesca Ivellio-Vellin.