Sophia James is taking it all in stride: viral fame, love lost and found, and navigating life in a society that seems to be moving at warp speed.
On her new EP “Sleepwalking at 65 MPH,” the California singer-songwriter blends pop, folk and jazz with a worldview that is at the same time humorous and vulnerable.
“Most of my favorite songwriters are very cynical,” says James. “Gosh, I mean my lyric game will never be anywhere near Leonard Cohen’s, but that is my sarcasm legend. I resonate with his attitude about a lot of stuff, and the same with Rufus Wainwright. I listen to a lot of Wainwright — his sort of sarcastic lens of the world around him and just sort of taking it in and being like, ‘what the fuck is going on?’ And like Thom Yorke, I’m having a very Radiohead fall right now, getting back into ‘OK Computer.’
“I guess I can’t help but be sarcastic, and I listen to a lot of those writers and those voices because it is comforting to me that like, oh, I’m not the only one that feels this critical and cynical and is trying to take it as a joke for survival’s sake.”
The six-song EP includes “Ryan,” a fan favorite when it was released as a single earlier this year, “Never Write a Love Song Again” and “Gun in the Garden,” which has a music video launched today as part of the EP release. The collection follows her previous EP, “The Wrong Shoe Theory,” also from 2026.
“Never Write a Love Song Again” was inspired by James’ experience promoting and performing a track that was written about someone she was by then no longer with.
“I was just thinking about this recently, just about my writing style and why I write and how I write, and I realized many of my songs are in conversation with other songs, whether they be my own or somebody else’s, mostly somebody else’s,” she says. “But this time I happened to write a song that was in conversation with a previous song of my own, which was a fun experience and just kind of further made it hard to home in on one sort of philosophy or sound or, you know, pick one attitude to write from. I think it was a really enriching experience to just sort of be able to write from different angles about the same subject and track growth or lack thereof.”
Last fall, James started a viral phenomenon known as “Group 7” while promoting her song “So Unfair.” She posted seven consecutive videos on TikTok to push the song, assigning a group of viewers to each clip. Members of the seventh group banded together and inspired a viral moment. Celebrities ranging from San Francisco 49ers players and tennis star Naomi Osaka to singers Bebe Rexha and Sophie Ellis-Bextor got in on the trend, and James was invited to perform on the TODAY show and “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”
Asked if she was now firmly in her post-Group 7 era, James wasn’t sure.
“I would very much like to not be defined by the Group 7 phenomenon, but it will always be a part of my story and trajectory of my career in a really hilarious way,” she says. “It was one of the most wonderful and random and absurd things that I’ve ever been a part of, and that experience will always stay with me and I think inform how I promote the music and how I look at marketing and how it doesn’t have to be that serious. So in that way, I’ll always be in my Group Seven era, to borrow a phrase, but at the same time, I don’t want to be, I guess, like identified as the Group Seven girl, right? But also if I died and that was my legacy, then that’s hilarious too, and whatever.”
She takes a similar view of another somewhat funny experience as a performer on LA’s “steakhouse restaurant piano-playing circuit,” which she did for about two years.
“I had gotten in trouble before, because I’m a big Billy Joel fan and I like jazz standards, I went to jazz school, so I love like the Great American Songbook and stuff, so I would try to sneak some of that stuff in. But I got a very stern talking to, a la ‘La La Land’ in Ryan Gosling’s character, because they really, really wanted like upbeat, top-40 pop songs, which is great, I love top 40 and I love pop. But in a steakhouse setting, I was just like ‘you gotta be kidding me, man.’ Like, is it classy for me to be playing Sabrina Carpenter’s ‘Espresso’ at this steakhouse right now? Like, you know, fabulous song, I love to dance to it at the club, but what are we doing here? Like, I can’t play ‘New York State of Mind.’ I don’t know. It was a good gig. I got to make money from playing music and kind of home in my craft a little bit. But also at the same time, it was like, God, it kind of made me hate it a little. It kind of made me hate music a little too.”
Photo by Emily Entz
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