Toys
Sophie wrote Toys with her close friend and mentor, Angela Blacklaw. It was a turning point of the project, with the narrative allowing the exploration of internalised sexism in the songwriting process. The song is written from the point of view of 14-year-old Liberty and outlines – particularly across the spoken word middle eight – how she would see the world as a teenager.
Perhaps the most emotional and confronting track of the cycle, Toys unfolds as a dystopian vision of war and its aftermath, weaving in lines from Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Its spark came from Soraya Chemaly’s seminal book Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger, whose stories shocked Sophie with their relevance to the realities teenage girls face today in a world still shaped by male leaders who oppress, refuse to learn and wage war. Sophie imagined Liberty’s anger at such a world, and she and Angela sought to capture it in song.
Recording process- Sophie
This is the song that’s had the strongest effect emotionally on those who’ve heard it – it doesn’t shy away from looking at global misogyny on girls and teenagers. Catherine was very sensitive to the needs of this song, combining professionalism with empathy and understanding. Musically, structurally and lyrically challenging, it’s rich with literary and research references – she supported me to bring all this to the track, while maintaining the narrative and drama of the piece.
We invited young actor Saskia Watsham to be Liberty’s voice on the spoken word middle eight section. She’s the age Liberty would be now and has been raised in our small town, so has the accent Liberty would have. We were mindful of her feelings in the same way we would be with Liberty – we wanted to give her visibility of the issues Toys is discussing without terrifying her. She certainly brought a breath of fresh air, as well as both teenage angst and beauty, to the recording studio that day.