Poppy: “I want to get closer to understanding myself. I think that’s my only responsibility”

Five days after the 2025 GRAMMY Awards, Poppy is at home in LA. At least, it’s probably Poppy. Her camera is switched off for this interview, so all that’s showing is a black screen with an abbreviated version of her name: Pop.

While there’s no image to verify that it actually is the artist born Moriah Rose Pereira, it definitely sounds like her. But interestingly, it also sounds more like Moriah, rather than her android persona that so often makes an appearance in interviews, and which was omnipresent at the beginning of her career. Indeed, she even lets out a very human sound when asked if Kerrang! should call her Poppy or Courtney, following the GRAMMY red carpet mix-up in which an interviewer mistook Spiritbox’s Courtney LaPlante for her, leading to a LOL-some viral clip.

“You should call me Poppy,” she chuckles. “But yes, that was pretty silly. I think it’s a shame people don’t do research into the subjects that they’re expected to know something about. But I thought it was handled well. She’s excellent.”

It’s the second time that Poppy has been nominated for one of those prestigious awards, but this was the first year she actually went. When her song BLOODMONEY, off third album I Disagree, was up for Best Metal Performance in 2021, she didn’t attend.

“I wasn’t able to go the first time I was nominated because of the state of the world,” she says. “So I’m glad I got to go and get dressed up, because I think that’s the most fun part about the whole evening.”

When K! suggests that getting dressed up is something Poppy does quite a lot anyway, regardless of awards shows, she agrees.

“That’s my favourite part of this whole thing, other than making the music, of course,” she proclaims, with something approaching excitement – however restrained – colouring her voice. “Getting dressed up for it.”

Poppy was able to get dressed up for it – with a red poncho-style top over an immensely puffy pink tutu – because this year she was nominated alongside Knocked Loose for her role on Suffocate, taken from the flourishing hardcore band’s acclaimed third album, You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To. It marks another landmark in a career that’s becoming increasingly full of them, and it also led to her performing the song with the band on massive U.S. talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live!. They played on an outdoor stage as the rain – very visible on the cameras – poured down on them.

While TV live performances can be notoriously turgid, this one was incredibly visceral. Poppy’s parts, in particular, were full of an untamed, breathless energy that really bursts through the screen when you see it.

“That was really exciting,” she says. “And very last-minute! Bryan [Garris, Knocked Loose vocalist] texted me: ‘What are you doing next week?’ It was really exciting to see a hardcore band in that format and on that stage. The whole day went pretty fast. I remember walking in after the performance with my friend. He was a couple of steps ahead of me and he was like, ‘I think that was really important.’ And I said, ‘I think it was, too.’ It felt very electric and exciting. And the rain came right on cue.”

Who does Poppy feel it was important for? Herself? The scene? Both of those things? It’s a simple question, but one she answers with deep consideration, speaking with care and intention to ensure her words properly articulate her thoughts, even as they meander in a few different directions.

“Both, I’d say,” she answers. “I think putting heavy music on a stage like that in a place that’s usually where the pop stars go is important. For me, it symbolised no compromise. Anybody that knows anything about my career would say that that’s been the ethos and direction from the beginning – always doing what I want to do. Even if I’m the only one it appeases, at least I feel good about it. It’s never a straight shot, because I think if something’s a straight shot, it probably isn’t right. There are certain things that are easier than others, but if something’s obvious to put your finger on and call it what it is, I think it becomes disinteresting quicker.

“As far as the communal experience,” she continues, “in regards to the ‘scene’, I always have a strange time trying to describe what the ‘scene’ actually is, because I feel so many people have a different definition of it. To me, it’s heavy music, and what I get from it is probably something different than what somebody else gets from it. But you’re allowed to love and appreciate and adore whatever you want. So I do!”

Suffocate is a song that actually wouldn’t sound all that out of place on Poppy’s latest album, Negative Spaces. It’s exactly what you’d expect from Knocked Loose – a breakneck, uncompromising blast of rapid, abrasive hardcore – but it would also slot in perfectly next to her own bangers, they’re all around us or the center’s falling out. Those are two of the most ‘hardcore’ songs on her record – produced by former Bring Me The Horizon keyboardist and percussionist, Jordan Fish, with help from House Of Protection’s Stephen Harrison, formerly of FEVER 333.

It’s living, breathing proof of Poppy’s “straight shot” philosophy. For while those songs are particularly intense and primal, it’s not at all easy to pin down the album’s sound – it also contains hints of pop, synth-pop, metal and industrial music on it, among other sounds and genres. Still, it’s probably Poppy’s most confident and aggressive record to date, and something she feels represents who she is right now pretty perfectly.

“It’s a very diverse album, and it felt like a combination of all the things that I like and would want to hear,” she says. “And without speaking for him, I feel like Jordan would probably say the same. Whatever that gets defined as is what it is. But to me, it’s a collection of my favourite things.”

It’s an approach that rings true to Poppy’s previous thoughts about her ethos and direction. That’s something that echoes the late, iconic and iconoclastic director David Lynch’s attitude to filmmaking: do and make what you want and what you love; if people like it and connect with it, then they’ll be drawn to it. Don’t pay too much attention to convention, and don’t just play it safe.

“I think if you put too many rules or guidelines and guardrails around, it ruins the whole experience. And then you clam up and you can’t do anything else. But if you go into any project that’s creative thinking, ‘I just want to do something that I haven’t done before,’ then you’ll get a different result – and the right people will come and the right people will listen.”

There also seems to be something new taking form lyrically on its songs, an acute self-awareness and acknowledgment of the difference, distance and distinction between Poppy the persona in 2025 and Poppy the person in 2025. There’s a profound questioning of identity on the record. And that’s without even bringing the idea of Moriah and her role in all this into the equation. On new way out, she sings ‘I’m in too deep, I’m make-believe,’ then later asserts that she’s been ‘forced to face the who I’ve become’. And then the title-track begins, ‘At the world, I’m amazed / But you’ll never tell by my face.’ Put that to Poppy, however, and she isn’t entirely convinced.

“I think identity is a popular topic across the board, just in culture and also growing up,” she ponders. “But something journalists have done throughout my career is talk about me breaking free of something. I think I’m always breaking free of something. I think it’s kind of unspoken and it sounds a little bit silly when it gets written in black and white, but I’m always breaking free of my past self. I do pore over the lyrics on my albums, I do care about how they read in terms of the story and what they’re saying, so that’s something that’s close to me. But there are many themes in place throughout each and every song. I don’t think there’s just one per song.”

She goes on to explain that new way out came to life lyrically because she had the title written on a single page by itself. From there, she picked up on what that meant to her at that very moment in time. She does concede, however, that there is a lot of reflection in it.

“I don’t go into a session thinking, ‘I’m going to write a reflective song,’” she continues with a little giggle, “but when you think about who you’ve become and every iteration of yourself, and what that means to you at that specific moment – it could be good or it could be bad…”

Poppy trails off for a brief moment.

“I just want to get closer to understanding myself,” she says. “I think that’s my only responsibility.”

Ahead of what looks to be another mammoth year, then, Poppy continues to both assert her identity and obscure it. The Poppy behind the black Zoom screen seems more sincere – and much less of a character or caricature – than she’s played in many interviews. Certainly compared to the comedic and irreverent role she assumes in her recent Improbably Poppy web series.

There’s also a real and very human vulnerability that seeps into some of the songs on Negative Spaces. For while it’s been touted by some as a return to her more ‘metal’ sounds, it’s actually a little more nuanced than that. But isn’t that just like everything? The album, just like the person who made it – just like all of us – contains multitudes. So how does Poppy decide which facet to be when, for example, she’s sitting behind a video-less Zoom screen?

“I just feel like I am who I am at that given moment,” she says.

Short, sweet and simple as that. Whoever Poppy is, it’s clear she understands herself very well indeed. Unless it was actually Courtney LaPlante talking the whole time…

Poppy plays The O2 in London with BABYMETAL on May 30, and at Download Festival in June – get your tickets now. This interview originally appeared in the spring 2025 issue of Kerrang!.

Read this next:

• Poppy: “Every day I wake up, I want to push myself to do something that I haven’t done the day before”
• Poppy: “There’s self-development, reflection, and messages that I have held close to me that have rung true”
• Poppy: “People are always trying to get ahead as opposed to living, it takes a lot of work to fight to be in the present”