Flower In My Shoe

Way back in 2015, when viral videos were still all the rage, the internet was taken by “I’m Poppy,” in which a strange, robotic girl repeats her own name over and over for ten minutes straight. Her YouTube channel was full of oddball videos just like this one, and everyone everywhere wanted to understand just what this girl’s deal was, myself included.

I’ve never been so delighted to discover that something was all one big ruse. Poppy’s videos were a marketing tactic in order to draw listeners to her music, and her music was very good. She made pop music that was as bright and colorful as her persona, and her debut EP, Bubblebath, contained songs that became some of my favorites.

Poppy’s music was so important to me because it felt like it aged with me. As I got older and was becoming more of a fan of rock and metal music, Poppy’s music was also moving in that direction. Her first real metal album from 2020, I Disagree, is still my favorite album to this day. Poppy was good at making pop music, but she was great at making heavy music.

Following the success of I Disagree, Poppy released a deluxe album and an EP for the WWE NXT soundtrack, Eat. After this, she mostly took a step back from the world of hardcore. In typical Poppy fashion, she jumped from genre to genre, with an EP of Christmas songs, A Very Poppy Christmas, a 90s-style grunge album, Flux, a pop-punk EP, Stagger, and an industrial pop album, Zig. All of these releases were great in their own right, but I couldn’t help but yearn for Poppy to return to the heavy style she so excelled at.

My prayers were first answered this past spring when Poppy collaborated with metalcore bands Bad Omens on “V.A.N.” and Knocked Loose on “Suffocate.” Not only are these singles both great, but they also announced to the world that Poppy wasn’t done with metal. When the first single off of Negative Spaces, “new way out,” was released in June, I was giddy. Because Poppy is BACK.

Negative Spaces gives me everything I could ever want from a Poppy album. It’s a return to form, but it’s also so fresh. It’s also, in my opinion, a testament to just how revolutionary it can be to find collaborators that you work well with. This entire album was co-written and produced by former member of Bring Me The Horizon Jordan Fish, and the pair is clearly a match made in heaven. Every choice, whether new, old, or returning, that they made suits her so well.

Going into the album, I was so ready for a full-blown scream-fest from start to finish, but clearly, I should have known Poppy better than that, as this record is wildly versatile. Multiple tracks are heavy and screamed all the way through, such as the single “they’re all around us,” as well as “nothing” and “the center’s falling out,” and it’s awesome to see how much Poppy’s technique has improved in just a few years. But, I found that there was a surprising amount of goth rock and punk influences alla Evanescence or Hole, which is very prominent in tracks like “the cost of giving up” and the title track.

Because it wouldn’t be a Poppy album without a host of flip-flopping genres, track 5, “crystallized,” is a major left turn into hyperpop clearly meant to imitate the sound of her early albums. It’s ironic, as Zig was clearly built around doing just that, sporting the blonde wig, aesthetic and all, but this attempt does it just so much better, and I do truly believe that much of that credit goes to the people she surrounded herself with, both as collaborators and inspiration. Even the shorter interlude tracks “yesterday,” “hey there,” and “tomorrow” are perfect cohesive fits, with seamless transitions into the songs that follow.

Negative Spaces is a release that I absolutely plan on playing on repeat for the very long forseeable future. This album feels like it has been years in the making and it feels like Poppy is finally in the place she was always supposed to be.