The Defiant Power Of Poppy: 'Curiosity Keeps Pulling Me In New Directions'

Mary Varvaris

With her first-ever Australian headline tour and release of her new album ‘Empty Hands’ fast approaching, the enigmatic Poppy is ready to make fresh memories Down Under... “louder ones.”

Poppy(Credit: Hector Clark)

Poppy

If there was ever an artist who should be described as a musical chameleon or an enigma, it’s Poppy.

Born Moriah Rose Pereira, the American singer has pursued multiple creative endeavours. Formerly known as the YouTuber That Poppy, the early 2010s saw the Girls In Bikinis singer post covers, skits and vlogs online. That couldn’t be further from where Poppy is now.

Following the release of her debut album, the art-pop, Japanese culture-inspired Poppy.Computer in 2017, Poppy incorporated elements of nu-metal and dance-pop on her follow-up record, Am I A Girl?. The title track, Play Destroy (featuring Grimes), and X marked her earliest forays into heavy music.

Poppy reinvented herself with 2020’s I Disagree. Her first album with Sumerian Records followed the sprinklings of metal in Am I A Girl? and turned them to eleven. The single BLOODMONEY earned Poppy her first Grammy Award nomination for Best Metal Performance, making her the first solo female artist ever nominated in the category.

Albums four and five, Flux (2021) and Zig (2023), saw the prolific artist shake things up once more. While she had become known for her explosive blend of pop and metal, Flux experimented with ‘90s alt-rock and grunge, while Zig brought forth a playful industrial, electronica influence.

In late 2024, Poppy returned with her most expansive – and heaviest – offering to date, while the hints of industrial pop of Zig sounded even more refined. With negative spaces, Poppy – working with former Bring Me the Horizon keyboardist and producer Jordan Fish – delivers terrifying screams and enchanting singing alongside crushing, raw riffs.

Before the album was even released, she became a go-to feature artist in the heavy music scene, starring on Bad Omens’ V.A.N. and Knocked Loose’s Suffocate, the latter leading to her second Grammy nomination for Best Metal Performance. Discussing those experiences, the mysterious artist tells The Music, “Every collaboration teaches me something.”

“Sometimes it’s chaos, sometimes it’s precision. The best ones feel like controlled demolition, everyone leaves changed.”

Poppy toured plenty in 2025 and shared more collabs: she featured on BABYMETAL’s from me to u, and last September, masterminded End Of You (with the aim of ‘What if we made our version of a dark Moulin Rouge, like ‘Lady Marmalade’?), performed by Poppy, Evanescence singer Amy Lee, and Spiritbox’s Courtney LaPlante.

We would be remiss not to delve into End Of You. Poppy has such a clear understanding of Lee as an artist and a clear vision of what she seeks that she wrote Lee’s verse on the track, and Lee wrote hers. “There was a mutual understanding, no over-explaining,” she notes.

negative spaces marked Poppy’s most cohesive, assured album to date. And her collaboration with Knocked Loose was the heaviest thing she’d ever worked on—until now.

Next Friday (23 January), Poppy releases her seventh album, Empty Hands. And, in the lead-up to the release, she’s embarking on her first-ever headline tour of Australia.

While Poppy opened for Bad Omens in Australia last year and performed at the 2019 edition of Good Things Festival, the Constantly Nowhere Tour marks her debut headline shows Down Under, where she’ll be joined by local rockers Ocean Grove and Inertia. And the shows are big.

Reunited with Jordan Fish, who produced and co-wrote the album, Empty Hands opens with industrial vibes on the pop-metal-charged Public Domain and the atmospheric Bruised Sky. Filled with glitchy electronics, punchy drums, and an air of mystery, Poppy’s songwriting shines immediately. “Glitches and machines stutter; they break,” Poppy muses. “Mystery leaves space for people to project themselves into it.”

Empty Hands proves once more that Poppy is a visionary – genre doesn’t hold her back when she pulls from eclectic influences, fine-tuning the metal of negative spaces, industrial elements, her long-running pop sensibilities, and callbacks to her surrealist roots, with her signature uncanny, machine-like voice bringing a dystopian vibe to Bruised Sky.

Singles Guardian and Unravel feature Poppy’s finest vocals: demanding when she needs to be, and fragile when the songs call for it. End Of You makes even more sense in her discography when you hear the sheer power of the tracks, vocally and with their down-tuned guitars and keys on Unravel.

Meanwhile, Eat The Hate lasts for just one minute and 50 seconds—and that’s all it needs to make itself known. There’s a bit of grunge flavour, particularly in the intro, and then Poppy’s screams come in. Opening up about the efforts of packing so much into such a short song, Poppy quips: “One minute and fifty seconds is enough time to say what I need to say before the song eats itself.”

Empty Hands is full of surprises. From the tender interludes to the incensed Dying To Forget and Europop tease on Time Will Tell to the alt-rock power of The Wait and Ribs, it’s probably the most unique record in Poppy’s discography.

Elsewhere, If We’re Following The Light is an example of thinking you know where an artist is going when you first press play, only to be surprised by its ultra-melodic chorus. It’s a song where she shines as a vocalist, and the poignant guitars send us off. The line “in spite of everything we could lose/I’ll cross the world to get to you” highlights Poppy’s vulnerability—a completely intentional move.

“I like letting people feel safe for a moment before showing them something vulnerable,” she says. “It’s like stepping into cold water - shocking but clarifying. Strength and tenderness can exist at the same time.”

The title track is the heaviest closer we could imagine from Poppy, with very little clean singing, neck-snapping riffs, brutal breakdowns, and her first-ever full-on death squeals. And that’s precisely what she planned for us. “I wanted the album to end with weight,” she teases. “Empty Hands doesn’t tuck you in, it lets the noise linger after the lights go out.”

If fans were worried that Empty Hands would be a retread of negative spaces (or any of her past work), one listen will prove that once again, Poppy has crafted an album that stands out in her catalogue with different genres and vocal styles throughout, while still making sense as a complete, 13-track album.

Some moments on Empty Hands seem tailor-made for fans to sing along in a live environment, while others are purely for Poppy. Elaborating on the former, she shares, “There’s something powerful about voices merging; it turns the song into a shared experience. I like it when the audience becomes part of the machinery.”

Poppy notes that the diverse sounds heard on her albums occur “because curiosity keeps pulling me in new directions.” Then, the magic happens as the songs develop: “The studio is where the album reveals what it actually wants to be.”

In an interview with Clash Magazine last year, Poppy commented that “If something I’m creating becomes unexciting, I’m no longer fond of it.” On what keeps her engaged and experimenting with heavier styles of music, she says, “Heavy music doesn’t pretend to be polite. There’s always something to explore.”

“Texture, tension, silence, violence, beauty. It evolves because it has to.”

Poppy is aware that next week, there will be plenty of fans at her tour who have never been to a Poppy show. Dropping hints about what fans can expect from the Constantly Nowhere Tour, she says punters should “expect volume.”

She adds, “Expect moments where things feel slightly out of control, in a good way. Touring Empty Hands while it’s being released… the album is still breathing.

“Australia feels electric, like the crowd is always leaning forward. Festivals, tours, chaos, heat, it all blends together. I remember… intensity, sincerity, and loud singing. I’m excited to come back and make new memories... louder ones.”

Empty Hands will be released via Sumerian Records on Friday, 23 January. Poppy will tour Australia next week – tickets are available via the Live Nation Australia website.

LIVE NATION AND TRIPLE J PRESENTS