Viral sensation Sophie-Maude joins forces with Devilskin's Nic Martin
'I saw it absolutely take off,' Martin said.
Their paths crossed after Martin's fiancée was hired as Sophie-Maude's make-up artist. Not long after, Sophie-Maude secured new music funding from New Zealand On Air.
Martin said the two come from vastly different musical backgrounds.
'But then there is so much in common,' he said.
When Sophie-Maude visited Martin's home in Pāpāmoa, a conversation with her mother, Sarah-Maude's 'mumager', sparked plans to assemble a live-performance band for the rising star.
Determined to shed the polished, pop-star image she had outgrown, Sophie-Maude said she wanted to bring more authenticity to her performances.
'I grew up with pop songs and anything sparkly,' she said.
Since debuting on Spotify in 2020, Sophie-Maude has climbed to the top of the NZ Hot New Singles Chart on ZM, featured with bands Blindspott and A Perfect Storm, and has released six singles.
Martin, a cornerstone of New Zealand's rock and metal scene, now mentors Sophie-Maude in songwriting and music production.
'It's been cool talking to someone directly who's been in the music industry for a long time,' Sophie-Maude said. 'Just to hear his experiences.'
The explosion of viral videos has transformed how artists reach audiences, which Martin acknowledged is very different from when Devilskin first broke into the scene.
'It's breaking down the barriers and helping artists reach their niche audiences,' he said.
Still, Martin warned that virality alone isn't enough. Without a clear strategy, he said artists might struggle to sustain momentum.
'It's always been a challenge because there is always competition.'
Sophie-Maude admitted she would have handled her viral moment differently in hindsight.
The now-famous video that launched her career featured a then-15-year-old, home-schooled Sophie-Maude inhaling helium and singing Ariana Grande's High. After seven deep puffs, she passed out and had full-body convulsions—a moment that quickly caught the attention of media outlets like LADbible.
'It's been a huge learning opportunity,' she said. 'It made me learn a lot more about algorithms.'
Now, during Aotearoa Music Month, both artists are focused on new projects. Martin is preparing to tour with Devilskin later in May, while Sophie-Maude will perform an acoustic cover of an iconic Kiwi song, yet to be revealed.
Despite lacking industry connections and navigating life with ADHD and autism, Sophie-Maude is determined to succeed on her own terms.
'I think my neurodiversity is definitely a superpower,' she said.
She said the structure of a traditional job wouldn't suit her.
'Or anything to do with maths,' she said.
For Martin, working with Sophie-Maude is a rewarding reminder of where he started - joining a band at 15 and learning the ropes largely on his own.
'I've learnt so much from [Devilskin] and our manager, but there was a lot I had to figure out on my own.'
The music industry in New Zealand presents its own challenges, particularly for independent artists, Martin said.
'It can feel like this constant weight on your shoulders - like pushing a boulder up a hill.'
Sophie-Maudes' work ethic gives her an excellent chance of overcoming this weight, Martin said.
'She is so receptive, and I can tell she's so passionate and genuine about this pursuit.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
NZ Herald
7 hours ago
- NZ Herald
Kiwi actor and former Lotto co-host Marise Wipani dies on birthday
Former Lotto co-host and actor Marise Wipani has died. The former Miss New Zealand runner-up and actor on classic Kiwi film Came a Hot Friday died on her 61st birthday, according to a post on her Facebook page. She died 'peacefully today … surrounded by family and friends', the message
Otago Daily Times
16 hours ago
- Otago Daily Times
Take a chance auditioning
Production manager Susan Moore, left, Remarkable Theatre past president Melanie Grindell and director Ryan Brennan studying the script for Take a Chance on Me. PHOTO: SUPPLIED Auditions for Queenstown's Remarkable Theatre's 2025 play, set in the unpredictable world of dating, are on this weekend. Described as "a laugh-out-loud comedy", Take a Chance on Me, by noted veteran Kiwi playwright Roger Hall, will run over eight performances during September at the Arrowtown Athenaeum Hall. It follows six hopeful singles navigating the highs and lows of modern romance — primary school teacher Fleur, homemaker Lorraine, lawyer Eleanor, plumber Brian, pharmacist Tim and banker Dan who's just been made redundant. Also being cast are two main ensemble roles, male and female, who each play over a dozen characters. According to the audition pack most characters will be involved in scenes with elements of intimacy, but not nudity. This year's director's Ryan Brennan, who's had over a decade's experience in Hollywood as an assistant director for multi-camera sitcoms — he was in the adult ensemble of Showbiz Queenstown's musical School of Rock in 2022. Auditions, each around 15 minutes, take place at Te Atamira on Saturday between 10am and 6pm, with callbacks, if needed, on Sunday between 2 and 5pm. For further information or to book a time, visit
Otago Daily Times
16 hours ago
- Otago Daily Times
If at first you succeed
The creator of the decade's most-lauded TV drama, turns his satirical eye to tech bros. He tells Andrew Anthony about his debut feature film. Where you go from the top is a question that very few writers ever have to confront. The typical struggle is all about trying to get there. What happens afterwards is, in nearly all cases, deliriously notional, because success is so seldom realised. But two years ago, when Jesse Armstrong brought to a close the triumphant fourth and final season of Succession , his satirical drama about a warring billionaire media family, the road ahead was one he could survey from what was by any reckoning an industry pinnacle. Exhausted after the efforts of the whole enterprise, he didn't know what his next move would be. Although he had a few ideas, he just wanted to take time off and return to some kind of normality. Then in January this year, the 54-year-old began writing a feature film that he quickly went on to direct. Having explored the super-rich in such brilliantly scathing fashion, he had now turned his attention to ... the super-rich. Again. Mountainhead , which was filmed in March, is a story about four tech bros who meet at the eponymous mountain retreat to share a night of fun and relaxation. Beyond this vast and well-protected eyrie, owned by Souper (Jason Schwartzman), the least wealthy of the foursome, the world is undergoing a series of violent convulsions as a consequence of a new app released by Traam, a company owned by another member of the group, Venis (Cory Michael Smith). It features AI software that creates convincing fake images and the kind of false newsreels guaranteed to provoke civil unrest. As the weekend unfolds, a power struggle ensues within the house, as some of the group persuade themselves that they should take over global governance. The obvious question is that, having scored a bullseye on the billionaire class, what made Armstrong want to return to the same subject with his very next project? "Yeah," he says, shrugging on a video call from New York, "maybe if I'd sat down with an agent and strategised, I might have done something different. But I think Succession was a show about media power, really, and this is a show about tech power." The point Armstrong makes is that power is his concern; fabulous wealth just comes with the territory. Although it's a reasonable point, many viewers may struggle to distinguish Mountainhead 's lavish material trappings and slangy deadpan dialogue from Succession . Armstrong realised he was interested in getting his teeth into the world of big tech after he read Michael Lewis' book about Sam Bankman-Fried, the cyber-currency entrepreneur who is serving a 25-year sentence for fraud. Armstrong followed up with a small library of biographies of other tech giants, and he'd also written the Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skarsgard) character in Succession , widely thought to be modelled on Spotify's Daniel Ek. But it was after listening to podcasts featuring major tech figures that Armstrong found that he couldn't get their tone of voice — "completely culturally dominant and self-confident" — out of his head. One satirical challenge is that it's this voice that occupies all of our heads in one way or another. Whether it's Elon Musk giving faux fascist salutes or pontificating on X, or Mark Zuckerberg sloughing off any pretence of progressiveness and celebrating the "masculine energy" of Trump 2.0, these people are at the forefront of our culture. So it's hard to hit them anywhere but on the nose. We know that Ayn Rand, the defender of ethical egoism, is their favourite philosopher: one character asks Souper whether the name of his Alpine mansion is a reference to The Fountainhead , the novel that is Rand's paean to world-shaping individualism. We know that they're obsessed with space travel and immortality: the eldest and straightest of the four, Randall (Steve Carell), has terminal cancer and is desperate to live long enough to have his consciousness uploaded. And we know that, by virtue of their algorithmic domination, they think they have all the answers to humanity's problems. It's in the gap between this stance of presumed omniscience and the flawed execution of ideas beyond their remit (see Musk and his Doge excursions) on which Armstrong focuses his caustic imagination. "As a comedy writer, your antennae prick up at the lack of self-knowledge, the arrogance of misapplying your expertise to another area. It felt richly comically available." The characters in Mountainhead talk of the future in grand terms, it's post-Earth, transhuman possibilities. "I just feel if, like, if I can get us off this [expletive] rock, it would solve so much," Venis says at one point. "Well, you know, it's a solid starter planet," Randall replies, "but we've outgrown it." We don't need to ask if tech bros really talk like this because it sounds almost like verbatim Musk. Armstrong is particularly alert to the tech bro tendency to take philosophical principles to their logical conclusions. "That can have terrifying consequences in the real world but is also very funny," he says. He cites as an example the effective altruism movement that took Silicon Valley by storm. The idea was to become as wealthy as possible so as to increase human wellbeing through philanthropy. "Musk said it was a pretty close fit for his philosophy and Sam Bankman-Fried had lots of plans for effective altruism, but I think it's pretty hard to get the receipts for when he was actually doing the giving." He laughs, and then stops himself. "You get into some extremely funny but also potentially unpleasant areas when you start calculating future lives. Suddenly, the current lives are worthless compared to the compounded multiples of subsequent lives that might be affected." The characters in Mountainhead frequently invoke these non-existent future lives as justification for their actions, but also are rather disdainful of the actual masses out there beyond their luxurious seclusion. "Do you believe in other people?" Venis asks Randall. "Eight billion people as real as us?" "Well obviously not," Randall sniggers. Armstrong has in the past quoted James Thurber's belief that "there is 1000 miles of desert between a good cause and a good play. Few people cross it alive". The Englishman is far too subtle a thinker and talented a satirist ever to place a cause in front of the comedy, but it's fair to say that Mountainhead is a much balder exposition of the themes of entitlement and unaccountability than Succession . It may have something to do with the speed with which it was made. To begin writing a film in January and have it on screen by June is almost unprecedented, especially when it involves a major star like Carell, who doesn't tend to be available at short notice. Armstrong says he didn't write the part specifically for Carell but he was the first person he asked, and his agreement was, he says, "a pretty big deal". "My pitch was to do it as quickly and cheaply as possible, so that it didn't feel like a great millstone around my neck," he says. That's a pronounced departure from the old auteurist way of doing things, in which length of time and overspend of budget were taken as signs of a master at work. When I suggest that his location of the action within the confines of a super-mansion was a personal motif, echoing the way Succession played on claustrophobic luxury to increase tension, he's quick to deny any such intentions. "No," he says, matter-of-factly, "not consciously. The unity of place and time and characters came out of budgetary necessity rather than a philosophical thing." And the haste, he says, came from the urgency of wanting an audience "to be feeling the same sort of feelings I'm feeling". "I'd also not directed before and there were lots of technical aspects I was anxious about," he adds candidly. "I knew that [given more time] I'd stew and try to read all the books I could and probably watch online tutorials about great directors and go into waves of anxiety about being able to do it." It's hard to think of anyone else who, having made the most lauded TV drama of the past decade, would be so forthcoming with self-doubt. But he's earned the confidence that HBO, the outfit behind Succession and Mountainhead , has shown in him. And while he was a veteran of the manifold responsibilities that came with being a four-season showrunner, there's a case to say that being the lone writer-director of a film is a heavier burden. It's just not a case that Armstrong is interested in making. The two roles, he says, were not that different. He felt the absence of a major collaborator like Mark Mylod, who directed many of Succession 's key episodes, but he assembled a host of executive producers from the Succession team, including Mylod, Lucy Prebble, Tony Roche, Jon Brown, Will Tracy and Frank Rich, to help test his ideas. Each day one or other of them would make the effort to get along to the set. "So they came in a kind of merry-go-round out to Utah [where the film was shot]," he says. He liked to have one of this team standing with him at the monitor to help confirm whether he had a successful take of the scene they were shooting. "Having somebody who's not going to bullshit you is a big help," he says. "I mean, they'll probably bullshit me a little bit and say 'that was great', when it was just fine. But at a certain level, a friend has to be honest, and so I kept that crutch of creative friends around me." Has the experience left him itching to take to the director's chair again? "A bit," he says, making the bit sound like one he's not exactly champing. He's first and foremost a writer, and while he can imagine directing something he writes that is character-focused, "there are other things that I'd be really delighted to hand to other people because I know that I need the collaborator or technical skill to achieve them". If he's not rushing towards the next director's job, would he consider the multi-year undertaking of another TV series on the scale of Succession , or is doing it once in a lifetime more than enough? "Being back in New York [where much of Succession was made], it feels like it was a different human being who did Succession , and that isn't even that long-running a show. It's very all-consuming but I think, hopefully, I might have one more go at it in me ..." he says, and then, before fans can get too excited, he adds a cautionary clause, "... but certainly not for a while". Mountainhead is streaming on Neon. — The Observer
