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\n Photo-Illustration: by The Cut; Photos: Fiona Garden, Retailers\n <\/p>\n
When Imogen Heap set out to make her second album, Speak for Yourself, she was 27 and in over 10,000 pounds of credit-card debt. A classically trained prodigy who taught herself music production as a teen, she\u2019d signed her first solo record deal at 18. A few years later, she joined forces with Bj\u00f6rk producer Guy Sigsworth to form Frou-Frou<\/a>, a dreamy electronic-pop duo that achieved moderate cultural prominence after their single \u201cLet Go<\/a>\u201d appeared on the Garden State soundtrack. But their label dropped them after disappointing sales. Heap was left with no paycheck or institutional support. So she remortgaged her U.K. flat to fund the creation of Speak for Yourself, which she wrote, arranged, and recorded on her own. A rich tapestry of club beats, pop melodies, and production twinkles, the record is about the ecstatic possibilities of love and what can happen when you open yourself to the unknown.<\/p>\n Twenty years since its initial release, it is arguably more popular than ever. Heap has become one of the most quietly influential artists<\/a> of the 21st century, an early \u201cdownload diva<\/a>\u201d \u2014 as the Guardian called her at the time \u2014 resilient to the sea change from MP3s to streaming and short-form video. Her Speak for Yourself songs have soundtracked teen soap-opera episodes, SNL spoofs<\/a>, and viral TikTok trends<\/a>. Several generations of pop artists, from Taylor Swift and Ariana Grande to PinkPantheress, have cited Heap as a formative inspiration. Chatting with me from her home in Hackney, Heap says the reception of her work has been unexpected. \u201cBack then, I didn\u2019t know if anyone besides the people on the message boards would like anything I did,\u201d she tells me. \u201cIt feels like the universe is constantly going, \u2018Here you go.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Right now, Heap lives with her 10-year-old daughter, Scout; Scout\u2019s father, her ex; and a Ukrainian videographer named Daria who fled Kyiv at the start of the war. Writing and recording music doesn\u2019t interest her so much anymore; she says she\u2019s turned down some high-profile requests for collaboration. \u201cI\u2019m just out of sorts with perfecting something that will later go into the noise,\u201d Heap tells me. She is more interested in harnessing technology to facilitate creative expression through inventions like Mi.Mu gloves, which can generate music live (see her NPR Tiny Desk performance for a demonstration<\/a>); an AI assistant<\/a> named Mogen; and a I.P. and rights management program called Auracles<\/a> that she hopes will give artists greater control over their work, including allowing them to opt out of AI training models<\/a>. (A small army of assistants help Heap with these projects.) \u201cIn light of all the madness, I just want people to be identifying human work. How can we know that that\u2019s a human author, and where can we see the threads, and where can we see the provenance?\u201d she asks.<\/p>\n In October, Heap will release the 20th-anniversary edition of Speak for Yourself. Here, she reflects on its legacy, her current interests, and what she sees in the future.<\/p>\n When you listen to Speak for Yourself now, 20 years later, what stands out to you?<\/p>\n It\u2019s just a feeling of me: how I was, what the world was like. I was trying to prove myself to such a degree that hardly anyone came in the studio for a whole year. I rented this studio in Bermondsey in an old carpet factory that used to be Dizzee Rascal\u2019s. There was a hole in the window that finally cracked when I shut the window once. It was hard to stay motivated.<\/p>\n The biggest win was that I discovered my fans. I had a webmaster at the time, James Clarke, and he was like, \u201cLook, I\u2019ve got this website up about you, and there\u2019s lots of fans chatting in there. Why don\u2019t you tell them what you\u2019re up to in the studio?\u201d That\u2019s how I got through the year. I would send them little snippets of ideas that I just couldn\u2019t decide on, they would suggest things back, and I\u2019d finish stuff knowing they\u2019d always be there in the morning.<\/p>\n I liked my massive petticoats and huge stilettos and feather mohawks back then. But you know, as you get older, you don\u2019t have time to spend half an hour on your mohawk every day. My style now is just dark, like cyberpunk. And I\u2019m wearing jumpsuits because they\u2019re easy and look cool.<\/p>\n What does your daughter, Scout, think of Speak for Yourself?\u00a0<\/p>\n We haven\u2019t sat down and listened to it all the way through. She did come on tour with me when she was 4 and 5, but she doesn\u2019t remember it. It\u2019s strange, like everyone is experiencing this person who made CDs back in the day. But the reality is mummy is creating weird tech projects with a bunch of people in the home.<\/p>\n One of the reasons Speak for Yourself resonates so much, I\u2019d say, is that it has this giddiness and optimism toward love that seems almost unavailable now. What is your current attitude toward romance? <\/p>\n Twenty years ago, they didn\u2019t have apps, so I did fall hopelessly in love with strangers and stare at people in coffee shops. But now I\u2019m on the apps. In fact, my last video was partly funded by Feeld. Mostly, I\u2019m window shopping \u2014 just looking and chatting and just interested in people\u2019s kinks. Around five years ago, I had been largely kind of asexual. I discovered I had something called Hashimoto\u2019s. When I changed my diet, my sex drive came back. It was crazy. That\u2019s where some songs like \u201cWhat Have You Done to Me?\u201d and then \u201cNoise\u201d\u00a0and \u201cAftercare\u201d are from.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve largely had boyfriends. But more recently, I\u2019m just finding myself going to Pilates and looking at girls and going, I wonder what you\u2019re like. That had never happened to me before, which has always been annoying because that\u2019s half the planet that I\u2019ve been ignoring. I\u2019ve had some interesting dates, one with a trans woman and a trans man that were very enjoyable. And just like, made my brain go in all kinds of places that it\u2019s never done before, and I myself am quite masculine. Men do comment on this and feel intimidated by it, but I can\u2019t help it. I\u2019m quite excited now. I\u2019m no longer hetero. I call myself pansexual.<\/p>\n Welcome to the community!<\/p>\n I\u2019m very much a relationship anarchist. Over the last five years, I just discovered all these things I didn\u2019t know was a thing. I knew a few people that were poly, but it was just something that I thought was like over there, and weird, or not something that I could possibly get away with.<\/p>\n Yeah, how does that energy then filter back into the work?<\/p>\n I\u2019ve just become more bold, and I don\u2019t have expectations in the way that I had them. If you welcome every moment in the moment and meet it at face value, then everything just becomes so much more fun. Even with all the people that work on my team, if you don\u2019t want to work nine to five, you don\u2019t have to. Let\u2019s think about how we could divide up this money differently.<\/p>\n You have a more active vision of the future and technology\u2019s relationship to society than the average person. I\u2019m curious to know whether there are thinkers who have helped shape your worldview.\u00a0<\/p>\n They\u2019ve just been people I have conversations with in the real world. In the music industry you\u2019re so busy talking about yourself \u2014 and then you kind of go, Oh, wait, there\u2019s scientists, environmentalists, all these other people. Time and time again, when you have a sense of something that\u2019s missing, if you\u2019re really open to letting things come your way, things will happen. That could be, \u201cOh, would you like to come to NASA Goddard Space Center?\u201d And then two months later, \u201cDo you want to come\u00a0to MIT Media Lab and meet some people?\u201d I\u2019m ADHD, and I think that helps because you\u2019re constantly starting things and then not stopping them.<\/p>\n I\u2019m quite excited \u2014 one of my best friends, Rachel Millward, is running for deputy leader of the Green Party. Before she did that, I just thought of the Green Party as a bunch of eco-warriors. But Rachel\u2019s super smart, and seeing her run for that makes me think that I could be the minister of culture, and maybe I could sort this and this out. I\u2019ve been trying for the last ten years to redesign the art and IP space, because it doesn\u2019t work. I just wish I were able to help more.<\/p>\n How has your assessment of both the possibilities and risks of AI evolved over time? You were one of the early musicians experimenting with it. Now we\u2019re seeing these big tech corporations integrate AI into everything, and there\u2019s been some conversation about AI\u2019s impact on the water supply and pollution.<\/p>\n We\u2019re in this soup right now, and there\u2019s extreme wealth and huge egos that are just terrorizing us and our planet and our people. Everything is changing. But I have this emerging sense that if we are afraid, the only way to counteract that fear is to just get on with building the thing that you\u2019re afraid of.<\/p>\n There are already huge amounts of AI-generated music being uploaded to DSPs. Once we\u2019ve exhausted that, and we\u2019re all bored of the same homogenous rubbish, then there is going to be an emergence of independent direct-to-fan technologies like AI agents.<\/p>\n I imagine I\u2019m cooking in the kitchen, Scout has come back from school, maybe I\u2019ve got some glasses on, and I\u2019m making a piece of music because maybe there\u2019s an AR overlay of things that makes me be able to play live drums or whatever. But then at the same time, maybe my friend Chris, in Brixton, can chuck some drums in. Then the fans can be like, \u201cOh, Imogen Heap is live. She\u2019s on my app or on something else. Let\u2019s go tune in.\u201d<\/p>\n What is your relationship to social media and fandom these days? It seems like you\u2019re mostly interfacing directly with fans through livestreams and things like that, and then maybe some outside chatter filters into your world.\u00a0<\/p>\n I have been struggling. I loved it when it was my message board. But as you know, Twitter went mad, and there\u2019s just so many more people now. For the last six years, I\u2019ve been building the AI assistant Mogen. I\u2019ve been chatting to my fans in this chair, hundreds of hours of conversation with feedback into Mogen, and which we will be launching in a couple of months on my app.\u00a0I just hope that we can build things in time and that we don\u2019t miss a generation of great music because artists are overwhelmed and can\u2019t shout above the noise.<\/p>\n