Who–or What–Is Poppy?
Poppy is…I’m not sure. A real person? A robot? A singer? YouTube star? A cult leader? A brand? The future?
Poppy seems to be the stage name of Moriah Pereira (maybe), a Nashville-born (possibly) woman who now lives in Los Angeles and how has one album called 3:36 (Music to Sleep By) and an EP (Bubblebath from 2016) to her credit. But that barely scratches the surface of whatever’s going on here.
Wired tried to describe her.
You see a woman in a YouTube video. She is blond and petite with the kind of Bambi-sized brown eyes you rarely encounter in real life. She seems to be in her late teens or early twenties, though her pastel clothing and soft voice are much more childlike.
Maybe you start with “I’m Poppy,” a video where she repeats that phrase over and over in different inflections for 10 minutes. That’s right. Ten minutes. She seems, by turns, bored, curious, and sweet. As it continues, you notice that her voice does not quite match the movement of her lips; it’s delayed just a beat.
The Daily Dot carries on:
Poppy seems to work inhumanly hard. She has a surreal YouTube channel that updates almost daily, where she talks in soothing robotic monotone about the things she loves: technology, social media, the internet, and her fans. She releases a regular trickle of new music, always with accompanying videos. She’s also the subject of an alternate reality game and several fan-driven conspiracy theories, many of which center around her enigmatic producer/collaborator Titanic Sinclair.
Is Poppy a puppet of the Illuminati, the shadowy power-brokers who allegedly control contemporary society? Is she a secret government mind control project? Is she “real,” or just a PR stunt? Is someone forcing her to make YouTube videos against her will? And if so, who?
These are all questions that obsessive Poppy fans feel driven to answer, working to crack the mysteries of Poppy’s real identity and the science-fiction story she and Titanic are spinning across the internet. And once you go down the rabbit hole with Poppy, it’s hard not to follow it all the way to the bottom.
The author is right. With Poppy, it gets weird real fast.
Poppy sings and makes videos. Poppy will have a new album in October called poppy.computer. Poppy is going on tour, too, where she will sing songs like this.
Beware Poppy. Yours is the next soul she may claim.
About the Author
Alan Cross is an internationally known broadcaster, interviewer, writer, consultant, blogger and speaker. In his 30+ years in the music business, Alan has interviewed the biggest names in rock, from David Bowie and U2 to Pearl Jam and the Foo Fighters. He’s also known as a musicologist and documentarian through programs like The Ongoing History of New Music.
