Biography

Nashville-born singer/songwriter That Poppy -- also known as just Poppy -- emerged on YouTube in 2014 with a video of her eating cotton candy in silence. Viewers were baffled, yet it was just the start of Poppy's brand of smart millennial theater. Wide-eyed, platinum blonde, and decked out in precious throwback outfits, Poppy gained a substantial following on social media, with fans awaiting each new video, the subjects of which grew ever more absurd and bizarre. Like surreal modern pop art, Poppy's calculated wholesome persona, budding style icon status, and tongue-in-cheek clips -- wherein she filmed herself reading the Bible for nearly an hour, repeating her name for ten minutes, or inflating a plastic rabbit -- combined the satirical, the subversive, and the just plain weird. In early 2015, she began releasing music, starting with a Lana Del Rey-ified version of Mac DeMarco's "My Kind of Woman." Her first official single, "Everybody Wants to Be Poppy," arrived months later. Signing with Island Records, she released the follow-up single "Lowlife" (and a remix featuring Travis Mills), a reggae-tinged jam that would serve as the first track from her debut EP, Bubblebath. Released in February 2016, the four-song set of catchy dance-pop showcased her musical range and sensibility, attracting comparisons to Grimes, Icona Pop, Melanie Martinez, and Charli XCX. That October, she issued the ambient album Music to Sleep To, a collaboration with Titanic Sinclair and polysomnographists from the Washington University School of Medicine that was designed to promote healthy sleep and dreaming. A year later, Poppy's official debut album, Poppy.Computer, arrived. ~ Neil Z. Yeung, Rovi