Poppy

Based in Los Angeles, the onetime performance artist who evolved into a pop sensation known as Poppy produces tracks that skillfully merge creative expression with broad commercial appeal, traversing an array of styles spanning metal through pop and the territory between them without shedding her distinctive core identity. Early on, she built a sizable online audience through social media clips whose topics turned progressively more outlandish and eccentric. Once she started issuing music via Diplo’s Mad Decent imprint, her observations about social media and celebrity grew still more self-referential; the inward-looking electro-pop of Poppy.Computer in 2017 together with the excursions into nu-metal and dance-pop on 2018’s Am I a Girl? further dissolved the lines surrounding the project. In 2020 she executed a daring reinvention via the widely praised, Grammy-nominated I Disagree, which embraced the pop-metal path she had already hinted at. After the 2021 EAT EP, she issued the live-to-tape Flux, tightening her emphasis on riff-driven delivery. Additional stylistic forays encompass the industrial-tinged Zig from 2023 and Negative Spaces in 2024, which ventures into synth pop and punk.

Poppy first appeared on YouTube during 2014 via a clip of herself consuming cotton candy without speaking. Audiences were puzzled, yet the moment marked only the beginning of her signature brand of clever millennial spectacle. With her wide-eyed gaze, platinum-blonde hair, and vintage-inspired ensembles, Poppy’s precisely calibrated wholesome image, rising fashion influence, and ironic videos—including extended readings from the Bible, ten-minute repetitions of her own name, and the inflation of a plastic rabbit—fused satire, subversion, and outright eccentricity. By early 2015 she had begun releasing music, opening with a Lana Del Rey-styled take on Mac DeMarco’s “My Kind of Woman.” Months afterward came her first proper single, “Everybody Wants to Be Poppy.” After signing with Island Records she dropped the follow-up “Lowlife,” along with a remix featuring Travis Mills, a reggae-inflected track that opened her debut EP, Bubblebath. Issued in February 2016, the four-track collection of infectious dance-pop highlighted her musical breadth and taste, prompting comparisons to Grimes, Icona Pop, Melanie Martinez, and Charli XCX. That October she released the experimental ambient album 3:36 (Music to Sleep To), created with polysomnographists from the Washington University School of Medicine to encourage restful sleep and dreaming. A year later her official debut full-length, Poppy.Computer on Mad Decent, entered the Top 40 on both the Heatseekers and Independent Albums charts. On 2018’s Am I a Girl? Poppy collaborated with Diplo, Grimes, and Lady Gaga associate Garibay for material that blended mainstream pop and nu-metal textures while examining fame, fashion, and selfhood. During promotion she began weaving heavier textures into her work, drawing from Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson, and Rob Zombie. In the same spirit as Am I a Girl? cuts such as “Play Destroy” and “X,” her 2019 single “Concrete” showcased rapid metal riffs and driving percussion, employing a saccharine assault reminiscent of Babymetal. This trajectory reached full expression on her third studio album I Disagree, which surfaced in early 2020. Her first release for Sumerian Records, it also marked her initial Billboard 200 appearance. The bold pop-metal sound of I Disagree resonated with critics and listeners, prompting an expanded deluxe version, I Disagree (more). She sustained a notably active stretch with Music to Scream To—the score to her graphic novel Poppy’s Inferno—and a holiday EP, A Very Poppy Christmas. Closing her standout year, the I Disagree track “Bloodmoney” earned a Grammy nomination for Best Metal Performance, making Poppy the first female artist nominated in that category. The following year at the Grammy ceremony she performed a new song, the scream-laden “Eat,” which appeared on EAT (NXT Soundtrack). Released a month after her cover of Jack Off Jill’s “Fear of Dying,” the hard-hitting EP also included “Say Cheese.”

Near the close of 2021 Poppy delivered her fourth album Flux. Clocking in at nine tracks, it stood as her most concentrated statement to date, merging multiple hard-rock approaches through a direct, unified approach produced by Justin Meldal-Johnsen (NIN, Deafheaven). Fronted by the resolute single “FYB,” the 2022 Republic/Lava Stagger EP combined aggressive punk-metal riffs with introspective alt-pop. Poppy opened 2023 with the industrial-metal-leaning “Church Outfit,” followed by an intense version of Canadian nu-metallers Kittie’s 1999 song “Spit.” She also joined forces with Stu Brooks and Danny Elfman on “They’ll Just Love You.” Rounding out a full year, she toured jointly with PVRIS ahead of her fifth album Zig (Sumerian), which included further singles such as the industrial-pop “Motorbike” and the introspective “Hard.”

Poppy began 2024 by teaming with alt-rock outfit Bad Omens on “V.A.N.” (“Violence Against Nature”), performed both headlining and support dates, and closed the year with her sixth album Negative Spaces. On the record she broadens her already expansive palette to incorporate ’80s-inspired synth pop and pop-punk while featuring guest appearances from Knocked Loose and Bring Me the Horizon’s Jordan Fish.