Caroline Polachek on Dedicating Her Song 'I Believe' About 'Immortality' to the Late SOPHIE (Exclusive)

Caroline Polachek is welcoming fans to her island on her latest album Desire, I Want to Turn Into You.

After rising to prominence in the alt-pop band Chairlift and earning a Grammy nomination as a songwriter for Beyoncé, Polachek officially launched her solo career with 2019's acclaimed Pang album, which spawned a viral hit with "So Hot You're Hurting My Feelings."

Since then, she earned Pitchfork's best song of 2021 with her new album's lead single "Bunny Is a Rider" and opened for Dua Lipa's Future Nostalgia Tour. She's now preparing to hit the road later this month for The Spiraling Tour, making stops at iconic venues including New York's Radio City Music Hall and Nashville's Ryman Auditorium with buzzy up-and-comers including Magdalena Bay, Sudan Archives and Ethel Cain joining her along the way.

Created mainly with close collaborator Danny L Harle over the past three years, Desire, I Want to Turn Into You sees the 37-year-old musician dive deeper into the ethereal, electronic art-pop sound she established on Pang while incorporating more orchestral and psychedelic elements. Thematically, the record features emotional and poetic explorations of romance, sensuality and relationships with loved ones she's lost.

Polachek sat down with PEOPLE to discuss the new album, upcoming tour and collaborating with Dido, Grimes and Charli XCX as well as dedicating the track "I Believe" to the late SOPHIE, a musician and producer who tragically died in 2021 at age 34.

You've been in this industry for over a decade, but opening for Dua Lipa's Future Nostalgia Tour marked your big pop tour slot. What did you take away from that experience?

I look back on that tour with so much fondness and gratitude. I've done so many support tours over the years with Chairlift, so I was prepared to be sick of it after two weeks, but honestly, that never happened. Every single night was a thrill. It was just me and my two bandmates on this massive stage every night with 20,000 people. It became this really thrilling, athletic exercise. I could feel myself learning little things that would not only be fun for me, but bring the audience into it.

Beyond that, Dua's audience was so sweet to me and so on the level with the music, which was really exciting. I didn't expect it, honestly. She and her team were so above and beyond sweet to us. We felt so included and had so much fun with them on the road. I was so inspired by seeing Dua play every night as well. She's just such a magnificent performer.

Desire, I Want to Turn Into You is very maximalist in its genre-spanning production styles and your use of collaboration as well as the children's choir appearances on "Butterfly Net" and "Billions." How did you set out to capture that theme with this album?

In some ways, it had to do with the fact that I didn't get very many focused chances to work on this record while touring. Each song ended up feeling like its own world rather than part of a bigger thing. I got quite obsessed with all these different worlds — the psychedelic, stoned, mythological world of "Billions," the sexy, pagan folk universe of "Blood and Butter," or the really stoic, classical, mournful world of songs like "Hopedrunk Everlasting." I had so much time to sit, listen and think about these songs on the road, when I wasn't actually able to work on them. When you're working faster, you don't really have time to go into it and develop them within your own imagination.

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My favorite song on the album right now is "I Believe," which is dedicated to the late SOPHIE. Can you tell me about your relationship with SOPHIE and how she inspired that song?

SOPHIE's like no other person I've ever met. She didn't entirely seem human. She embodied so many wild contradictions — she could be so soft and so hard at once, and she could be so fast and so slow at once. Separately, while I was making this album, I was thinking a lot about the diva archetype and what that means to me. The diva holds inside her this contradiction of being able to heal and destroy at the same time. That's what we mean when we even call a pop star a diva. She could walk out on the gig at any second if you say the wrong thing, but also she could make it the most magical thing in the world.

I was thinking about SOPHIE in light of all that and how, to me, she is a complete embodiment of the contemporary diva. I wanted to make a piece of music that — even within the piece of music — holds those same contradictions. ["I Believe"] has these lightning bolt stabs, but also total softness and care, and the lyrics really flowed forth from that place. It's ultimately about immortality, the idea of someone's legacy and all the beauty they've created in the world being protected, cherished and living on as a form of them. I really like the idea that the song could be played at a wedding or at the end of summer camp, and be just as meaningful in very different contexts as well.

Desire also features "Fly to You" with Grimes and Dido, your first collaboration on an album of yours. I really could have never guessed we'd have this trio on a song. How did you meet those two artists, and how did the song come together?

Grimes and I have been crossing paths for years. I admire her so much as a producer and a writer, but also as a conceptual artist. When I began the song with Danny L Harle, it stuck out for me from the rest of the record. It felt more ethereal and had this speediness to it. It was laced with amphetamine and felt very floral. I sent it to Grimes over DM in a very early stage, and she was like, "I love this. Let's do it."

A few months later, I found myself sitting in her bedroom and we wrote and recorded her verse until 6:00 or 7:00 AM as the sun came up. We lived with it as a duet for ages actually, and then it wasn't until very recently that I started getting a bit hungry for opening up that world of that song even more. I wrote Dido a letter asking if she would jump on the track, and a couple days later she FaceTimed me saying she loved it and also was somehow aware of my music. She really surprised me.

Dido was so cool, so funny and so musically aware, such a brilliant writer. I went over to her house, and we recorded and wrote it on my computer. I had goosebumps hearing Dido sing that song for the first time because there is only one Dido. Her voice and her delivery and her sense of poetic simplicity is just so beautiful.

You're preparing to embark on a huge North American tour this month. What are you looking forward to about bringing Desire, I Want to Turn Into You to life on stage?

We just did our European tour, which was so fun. The Paris and London shows were some of my favorite shows I've ever played. I'm getting excited to bring it all to even bigger stages now for the U.S. I've got a killer band out with me right now. We just have the biggest friend crushes on each other. It's so fun. They're incredible players, so audiences have that to look forward to. I sing the entire new album live and quite a bit of Pang.

We're out with this volcano that lives on stage with us and is a big narrative part of the show inspired by Mount Etna, an active volcano in Italy that I actually did some writing nearby while I was making the album. I just love the idea of me being at the base of this volcano, a faceless, volatile, dangerous, unpredictable force of nature, and positioning myself next to it. It just brings all the humor and drama of the songs to life as a picture. I can't wait. My fans love to sing and they're really good singers as well. I'm really looking forward to singing with thousands of people every night. It's going to be so much fun. It really is like church.

Ethel Cain is joining you on the road, and she's been having a huge moment over the past year. How did you two link up, and can we expect any onstage collaboration?

I went through a haze last year where I was listening to "Crush" by Ethel Cain like 20 times a day. That song had hooked me so deeply, and her work has this amazing way of blending harder metal influences with shoegaze and folk country into this thing that's really uniquely, identifiably her own. It's also really unusual to see an artist having such a strong sonic identity so early in their career. She's such an incredible vocalist and lyricist. I admire her so much.

We ended up DMing a bunch last year, just fanning out over each other. I invited her to join me for a handful of these shows for the US. We haven't planned any collaborations live, but it's definitely not off the table. It would be such a thrill to sing with Hayden. I love her.

Shortly before the album came out, you dropped a remix of the song "Welcome to My Island" with Charli XCX and her boyfriend, The 1975's George Daniel. You previously released a remix album for Pang. Can we expect more remixes to come from this era?

Absolutely. There's some fun ones in the oven right now.

What was it like to have Charli and George remix that track?

When Charli first texted me that they were working on that remix, I screamed. It was like nothing I've ever heard anyone do as a remix before. She essentially took the idea of the song and exploded it out into a whole other song — to the point that there's almost no audio carried across from one version to the other. Charli is so wild like that, thinking outside the box, and that's why I find her so inspiring as an artist. Also, she has some bars in that song. The landing strip line is immediately iconic and it's so cool.

George, as well, flexing outside of a band context, who knew that he's actually the hardest dance music producer? He now has some new obligations to culture now that we know what he can do.