On her 26th birthday, for the first time in her life, Sophia Yau-Weeks found herself alone on her birthday. A 2023 SARS-CoV-2 infection left her immunocompromised, and her ensuing COVID-19 safety precautions left her without COVID-conscious friends to celebrate with. So she pulled out her acoustic guitar and began processing her grief and isolation the same way she did when the pandemic first hit: by writing songs.
In two days, she wrote “Nobody’s Laughing,” which she released last week as the first single from her forthcoming album, Misty Mountain.
Sophia said that Misty Mountain is a “vulnerable body of work rooted in slowness and introspection.” And the first single is “a snapshot of a time that was filled with great grief and self-reflection.”
“I was reckoning with the social isolation I was experiencing as an immunocompromised person and also pondering questions of ‘Who am I when I’m alone? Who am I when I am forgotten? Who am I when my self-concept is separated from how others perceive me?’” she said. “Songwriting was the best way for me to process a changing life and changing body.”
When Sophia performs live, she reminds audiences to wear a mask and has them available at the door for people who don’t have one. “It would mean a lot to be able to perform safely,” she wrote on Instagram before one of her last gigs. “It also protects you and your community members from a disabling and deadly virus!”
You can check out Sophia’s indie pop single on streaming platforms, and the music video on her Instagram or YouTube channel. Misty Mountain will be released on April 3.
More arts & culture stories
- These artists are making concerts safer with COVID-19 precautions
- Sophia Yau-Weeks’ new single, “Nobody’s Laughing,” grapples with the isolation of Long COVID
- “Invisible Illness” could have been transgressive. Instead, it minimizes Long COVID.
- Snapshots of the unseen: How we focused Long COVID in a recent photo exhibition
