Whether DJing or Performing Live, SOFI TUKKER Has Become One of EDM’s Biggest Acts.
With energetic DJ sets and live shows, not to mention plenty of hit records, SOFI TUKKER has been a staple on the EDM scene since 2014.
Comprised of Sophie Hawley-Weld, 32, and Tucker Halpern, 34, the pair’s music has garnered over a billion streams, earned Platinum and Gold records on five continents, and has topped radio, streaming, and Billboard charts. They’ve also earned two Grammy nominations – in 2017, for Best Dance Recording (“Drinkee”), and in 2019, for Best Dance/Electronic Album (Treehouse).
Many DJs are familiar with SOFI TUKKER through the group’s smash hits like “Drinkee,” “Purple Hat,” “Best Friend” (feat. NERVO, The Knocks & Alisa Ueno), “Sun Came Up” (with John Summit), “House Arrest” (with Gorgon City),” “Sacrifice” (with Kx5), “It Don’t Matter” (with Alok & INNA), “Batshit,” and “Summer In New York,” among an array of others.
Some of their songs might even be well-known due in part to their exceptional sync licensing and placements. From Apple commercials to U.S. Open tennis, and video games to TV-show theme songs, their music has become ubiquitous. And that’s not all… they’ve remixed tunes for the likes of Billie Eilish, Lady Gaga, Nina Simone, Katy Perry, Clean Bandit, Demi Lovato, David Guetta, Bishop Briggs, and TOKiMONSTA.
The twosome has managed to construct quite the discography over the course of their career, which includes two wildly successful LPs, Treehouse (2018) and WET TENNIS (2022) – and fans are eagerly anticipating their third full-length, BREAD, dropping in late August.
Their BREAD album is a 10-track musical journey that showcases the very best of what fans know and love from SOFI TUKKER, all while surprising listeners with some unexpected and non-traditional elements. BREAD is an album that’s guaranteed to make you dance, yet each track packs a unique punch, whether through its lyrics, melodies, or productions.
Upon entering their BREAD era, in true SOFI TUKKER fashion, Soph and Tuck have been baking up something special. Having dropped three singles: “Throw Some Ass,” “Spiral,” and “Hey Homie,” all of which have received widespread praise, they’ve also released accompanying music videos for each respective track, including a co-starring role from Heidi Klum in “Spiral.”
So, you might be wondering: How exactly did Tucker – the 6-foot-7 college-basketball-player-turned-DJ – and Sophie – the jazz performing singer/songwriter and dancer – end up becoming one of electronic music’s leading duos?
DJ LIFE had the opportunity to sit down with SOFI TUKKER as the group caught some brief downtime between shows. We discuss their history, including how they first met, all way to up to the recording of the new album. Our chat with Soph and Tuck went down like this…
DJ LIFE: How did you two know you wanted to work together, musically?
Sophie: We met and started working together musically at the same time. Basically, we met in college [at Brown University]. I was doing this sort of acoustic-jazz set at an art gallery, and Tucker was a DJ at the same event. He was playing after me, but came early and saw me play. He was like: “Hey, this is cool, but can I bring a drum beat onto this?” So, he starts playing this drum beat, we loved how it sounded, and thought: “Wow, this is cool! Let’s keep doing this!” Literally, from the moment we met we were making music together, and we just haven’t stopped ever since.
DJ LIFE: Who were some of your musical influences?
Tucker: I think it’s interesting because when we met, Sophie didn’t really have any knowledge or interest of dance music… house music, that is! She was in a dance troupe in school and stuff, so she liked to dance to music [laughs]. But, she wasn’t that literate in dance music. That was really fun because her influences were so different, so we were able to mesh our influences together and it didn’t sound like what was [already] coming out of the dance music world. So, that was really cool. She was really listening to classics in jazz and bossa nova-type stuff. Amadou & Mariam was an act that we really connected on together, but I only really knew of them because of Miike Snow’s remix [of their song “Sabali”]. There were ways that we were connecting, but for me, in my early college days, I definitely fell in love with dance music and Avicii at that time was a big one for me. I became even more into dance music once the bubble started reaching the masses, but from there I really got into more European house-music stuff. Also, Nicolas Jaar was in school a couple of years ahead of us, and there’s this really cool, kind of underground dance music scene at Brown in Providence, R.I. So that definitely influenced us while we were there as well.
Sophie: That was the only real access I had to dance music at that time, so it was really cool!
DJ LIFE: What was your DJ set-up like during those early years?
Tucker: Initially, I was playing off my computer on [Native Instruments] Traktor. From there, I really wanted to learn on [Pioneer DJ] CDJs. I had a buddy who used to be a DJ, but had kind of given it up, so he lent me his CDJs for my senior year of school. I remember I would just wake up and learn them. They were older CDJs, but it was nice because you weren’t even able to use sync even if you wanted to, so they were good to learn on [laughs].
DJ LIFE: How about your go-to setup today?
Tucker: Our setup now is the Pioneer DJM-3000s and the Pioneer DJM-V10, which is the 6-channel mixer, which is good for us because it has two separate cues. At the same time, Sophie can be cueing stuff while she’s using the Pioneer DJ DJS-1000 [sampler]. She’s able to listen to that in her cues without me listening to it in my cue, so that’s definitely what I think works the best for us.
DJ LIFE: Compare your DJ sets to your live sets…
Sophie: The biggest difference is that in a DJ set, we’re mixing all of the songs together and it’s not planned ahead of time. When I’m singing during our DJ sets, it’s usually on top of the track, whereas during our live sets, we’re decomposing the song and taking a lot of stuff out. During our live sets, I’m playing the guitar live, I’m singing live – so, it’s actually deconstructing them and making them “live” [versions]. For the production, we usually have a “set,” you know? So, the production is very different when we do a DJ set compared to a live set. Our live shows also tend to have a bigger stage, which is always fun to use and run around. In a DJ set, we’re using CDJs and there’s usually CO2 and totally different effects; it’s a different vibe, energy level, and feeling.
Tucker: We’ve got the CO2 and the lasers in our live shows now, too, but we didn’t always used to have all that [laughs].
DJ LIFE: How much of a crossover between the two is there?
Sophie: I would say over time they’re becoming more similar. For our DJ sets now, we’ll bring dancers. We’ll dance. There are a lot of performance elements to our DJ sets. A lot of people actually think they’ve seen us live, but they haven’t [laughs]. And then in our live sets, we’re bringing a lot of the really high energy, and mixing songs into each other, which is what we really like about the DJ sets. But there’s still always a different energy: It depends on the venue; it depends on what the vibe of the festival or the club is. And then from there, we’ll usually do what we feel is most appropriate for it.
Tucker: The most technical way to say it is that when we’re DJing, we can play any song at any time. And it’s not only SOFI TUKKER songs, although often the majority are, or remixes of them. But for the live shows, there’s a setlist, we have a plan, and the visuals are all lined up with the tracks. We also have tons of rehearsals and choreography, so it’s all things like that.
DJ LIFE: Let’s venture into the studio. How did you get started there?
Tucker: When I initially learned, I was actually pretty late to the game. I had to stop playing basketball in college. I always loved music and grew up playing the drums a little bit in garage bands, but I didn’t really make music until my junior year in college when I was sidelined and in bed for a long time. I started on FL Studio, so I was a FruityLoops guy, originally; but when I bought a MacBook, I went to Logic Pro. When I was in school, I took some music classes and some they taught on Logic as well. We actually made our first song in Logic, called “Drinkee.” From there, when we started making our first EP, we had just moved to New York and were working out of The Knocks studio – and they had Ableton on theirs. They also told us that once we started playing live that we were gonna want to be working within Ableton, so ever since then, I’ve been in Ableton. Sophie actually also recently started with Ableton, and now she’s pretty good with it already, right Soph?
Sophie: Yeah!
DJ LIFE: With Tuck at home sick, you played your first ever SOFI-only DJ set in Las Vegas recently. How’d it go?
Sophie: It was awesome! It was something that I felt like I knew I could do, but that I’ve never actually done. At first it was kind of scary, but once it was over, I was kind of like: “Oh wow, I really get it!” [laughs]. Usually, when Tuck and I are DJing, even though I know how to DJ, he’s a better DJ than me. He’s typically the one picking the songs [track selection] and controlling the master, and I’m bringing lots of a cappellas in, I’m sampling, and performing. But actually, having control over all of it was really satisfying and really empowering! We just had a chat last night, and we were like: “Wow, this is really opening up Pandora’s box!” I definitely want to B2B more, and I wanna be more in control because it’s really fun!
DJ LIFE: When did you have your first real “pinch-me” moment as SOFI TUKKER?
Tucker: I think there have definitely been levels to it. Obviously, there are things that happen now that might seem more routine than when they happened early on in our career. Back then, they might’ve seemed like the craziest things ever, which is nice. We try to always stay grateful, even though goals change and everything. I would say the first thing for me was probably our Grammy nomination for “Drinkee” because it was the first song we ever made. At that time, we were so small and playing such small shows that we didn’t even know that was the day they were announcing the nominations, and we didn’t even know we had been put up for it [laughs]! Things are so different now… every time the Grammy nominations come out now, I feel like, “Oh, there is a possibility,” which is crazy. Beforehand, it was so out of this world that we were so shocked and caught off guard that it felt like, “Oh shit… maybe this is going to be a real thing, and we can do this!”
Sophie: I feel like we’re really lucky to have pinch-me moments all the time, you know? I feel like I had a pinch-me moment yesterday when I was DJing… and I was all by myself and I can do it – this is amazing [laughs]! We can be in a restaurant and randomly our music will start to play, and those are pinch-me moments.
DJ LIFE: Similar to WET TENNIS, I just found out there’s an acronym for the BREAD album title as well. Venturing into the world of BREAD… did the acronym come first?
Sophie: First, it was the track, secondly, it was that we loved the title of the track, and it also felt like it was a statement for the album, so let’s call the album BREAD. But BREAD just because of actual bread. Everybody around the world gathers around bread to bond with the people that they love – and also to get energy. And then as far as the acronym, it was sort of the first thing that came to mind: “Be Really Energetic And Dance.” It’s really simple, straight-to-the-point, and everything that we want our music to do.
DJ LIFE: What are the next singles from the BREAD album going to be?
Tucker: We just released “Hey Homie” and then the next one we’ll release when the album comes out is “Woof.” We really feel like every song on the album can be a single, so it’s been really hard to choose.
Sophie: The plan is really to figure out a way to give all the songs a “single life,” even after the album is out… like by doing special activations, music videos, and things like that.
Tucker: Yeah, and “Perfect Someone” is actually the theme song for The Sims new video game. But we had to go in and sing it in Sims language [“Simlish”]… That gives shine to [“Perfect Someone”], and hopefully in another way that can spark something there. So, stuff like that for songs that might not get your traditional music video and DSP push…
DJ LIFE: How did the creative process differ with BREAD album, as opposed to your previous two albums?
Sophie: The BREAD album-making process was very different. First of all, we spent a lot of time in Brazil while making it, and we’ve always had a lot of Brazilian influences. Spending all this time there and going to [Rio de Janeiro Carnival], all while making the album was definitely a big part of it. But also, the level of care and time that we took with each song was really at a level that we’ve never done before. In some ways, sometimes we take a song all the way to 120-percent, and then we’re like: “Actually, we gotta take it back a little bit and add some of that raw magic.” We really wanted to do our due diligence with the songs, and we even did a lot of songs that didn’t make it onto the album. But these 10 songs are extremely special, single-worthy tracks.
Tucker: Also, going to Brazil for two months to work on this album was very different than the last album, which we made during the pandemic. I also think the fact that we were touring and traveling during this album, you can feel that there’s more energy in the songs because we want to play songs that have a lot of energy and make people dance. Those kind of influences weren’t there as much during Covid, while we were sitting at home. We didn’t have that same inspiration or idea of what’s going to work on the stage and what’s not in that same way.
DJ LIFE: Tell us a bit more about some of the activism work that you do outside of music…
Sophie: Right now, one that I’m most involved with is our Un-Endangered Forest Project. We have a distillery in the Brazilian Atlantic rainforest, and as part of that project in the same region, we’re basically finding seedlings of endangered trees and figuring out how to make sure they don’t become endangered. So, we’re going in and replanting them on properties throughout the region. The team that’s working on it is really cool and really knows what they’re doing. We love trees and the jungle, which have always been part of our aesthetic, so it’s great to be able to partner with an organization that is making sure that we actually have trees – it’s really cool [laughs]!
DJ LIFE: What’s to come for the upcoming tour? Any new stops for this one?
Sophie: There’s a lot of places where we’re going and playing bigger venues than we’ve played before. We’ve always wanted to play The Anthem in Washington, D.C., or venues that we’ve either been to shows at before or we were the opener in the past and now we’re the headliner.
Tucker: There are some new places for this tour. Right now, we just unfortunately had to cancel a few weeks of touring in Europe [due to my recent strep throat]. So, now I really want to be playing in Europe [laughs].
Sophie: But we are playing in Europe in November!
Tucker: We are, but it’s those fun summer places like Ibiza and Mykonos that we won’t be able to play in, which I was really looking forward to…
DJ LIFE: Your songs have done especially well as far as sync placements. What role did these play in shaping or benefitting your career?
Sophie: I think it’s really hard to pinpoint that one because I feel like we don’t find out in the moment, especially when it’s something like a video game. People might be playing it and hearing our music while they’re playing it, so it becomes a part of their life. But then, we’ll hear from people that they’ve heard of us because of FIFA, which are sort of harder to put your finger on, but we have done some bigger ones, like Apple.
Tucker: Yeah, Apple, for sure. When we did the iPhone X launch, [“Best Friend”] played during the announcement for it, which was really cool… also, the commercial for it where people were singing the words to the song. There were so many people watching, that it almost immediately made a difference for us. The best moments are the ones we can see the most or feel the most. Another cool one was The New Pope, because we’re the theme song [“Good Time Girl”].
Sophie: That one was awesome!!
Tucker: As far as what it means to our career, especially during our early years of touring, we were DJing a lot, you don’t make money touring… you just try not to lose money touring. We were basically funding all the touring and all the grinding that we were doing was because of all these syncs. And I’d say that was about 80-90-percent of our income for the first three, four years of being a band until we got to a bigger level. Those placements could not have been more important because they helped us pay rent and be able to keep going with it.
DJ LIFE: From creating your own on-stage costumes to collabs with designers like Dolce & Gabbana, fashion – both on and off stage – is a big part of your lives as well, right?
Tucker: It’s definitely something that I’ve always really been into and it’s another way to sort of build out the world, express our art, and what we wanna say. I think being colorful and fun is just an extension of our music and personalities. I know Sophie’s had a lot of fun designing outfits and stage outfits as well as making relationships with some amazing designers. Yeah, I just love it!
DJ LIFE: At this stage in your career, what are some of your bucket-list items or things we’d find on your goals list?
Sophie: Oh, my God, there’s so much that I want to do, both creatively, and also have people respond to things, which is the part that you can’t control.
Tucker: For me, which is more of a broad stroke, would be continuing the growth. We’ve been lucky that since we’ve started, we’ve been on an uphill trajectory, and we’ve been able to keep the momentum going for eight years. I just like continuing that feeling, the feeling that we’re growing. Each time we do a tour, the venues get bigger. Not every time you put a song out will it be bigger than the last, but as long as we keep making better music in my mind, then that feels like growth to me. And if we keep loving what we’re doing. Yeah, I’d love to play stadiums, but in some places we’re able to play arenas now, which is mind-blowing, but once you get there, I know the way I am, I’ll want to then aim for bigger [laughs]. Next would be I want to win a Grammy after being nominated for them… it’s things like that that I’m always striving for, but I’m also just a competitive person… [laughs].
