Artistry Embodied: Imogen Heap

Imogen Heap, an English singer-songwriter, has contributed so much to society. Seriously. Her most notable song, Hide and Seek (with over 96 million listens on Spotify alone), is a song that I think every person has heard at least once in their life. A vocoder vocally powered track is beautiful and unique in its composition, despite becoming a bit of a meme. This song went on to receive a gold certification from the Recording Industry Association of America. Her career was kickstarted when she joined British experimental pop group Acacia in 1996. Since then, she has made an excellent name for herself. Her solo music and music made while she was in duo Frou Frou, alongside record producer and songwriter and previous member of Acacia-Guy Sigsworth, are timeless and are interwoven into music from popular artists even today. A$AP Rocky, Ariana Grande, Mac Miller, Jason Derulo, LIL B (to name a few) have all sampled/paid homage to Heap. Songs like Ghetto Symphony, Whatcha Say, goodnight n go would simply not exist without Miss Imogen and her artistry. From the release of her first album, she was compared to other female alt-rock artists at the time, like Alanis Morisette and Kate Bush (talk about holy trinity). After Frou Frou’s first and only album, Details, her sound transformed into something more in the electro-pop/synth-pop realm. 

Heap is known for her genius and unique music production. She began writing music at the age of 13, but she was musically inclined even from a young age. In terms of production, Heap says she doesn’t really even listen to music all that much, and her inspiration comes from TED Talks. Like, are you kidding me? Heap has gone on to give a TED Talk of her own about the creation of Mi.Mu gloves-an innovative and expressive way of composing music. Heap even earned an honorary Doctorate of Technology for her work on the Mi.Mu gloves. Basically, there are sensors on the gloves that measure your fingers/hand movements, and each signal corresponds to a specific task or sound (set by the user). Heap worked alongside computer scientists for roughly 10 years to perfect the gloves-after much trial and error and prototypic performances, the vision finally came to fruition. Ariana Grande has used them a couple times on stage, too. The main idea was to make music more human rather than existing and creating entirely behind a computer. 

She’s won two Grammys; one for Best Engineered Album (non-classical) and the other for her work on Taylor Swift album 1989. She received a Drama Desk award for Outstanding Music in a Play for her score of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. It went on to be nominated for another Grammy for Best Musical Theater Album. Pioneering new ways to compose music and embodying artistry, she also created a blockchain-based platform, Mycelia. Functioning as a means by which artists not signed to major record labels can share music and serve as a decentralized database for listeners and creators. What a woman. She’s genius in many ways, not to mention how it’s an experience all on its own to even listen to her creations. We don’t deserve her, but I sure am glad we have her. 

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