Sophia Galaté: For Her Own Entertainment

Sophia Galaté is no stranger to the entertainment industry. Raised in the suburbs of Los Angeles, growing up near the entertainment industry made her dreams seem closer in reach than most. “I feel like being close to the entertainment industry when I was growing up made it kind of seem like being an artist was attainable in a delusional way when I was a young girl.”

Her world was surrounded by music. From joining musical theater at six to singing in her middle and high school choirs, music defined most of her life. Influenced by the sounds of 60s and 70s musicians introduced to her by her father and singer-songwriter artists from her mother, music became something she couldn’t escape.

Her most defining musical moments came when she was 10 years old and began visiting Chicago to visit her best friend. From those visits, she found her spirit, ultimately moving to the city to study music. Her journey there ended with her deciding to venture into the business side of music, but eventually she found her way back to the center stage.

Now with her new album "For My Own Entertainment" releasing on October 24th, she’s ready to step into a new era all for herself.

K: Let's start from the beginning. What was your musical introduction, and who are some of your biggest inspirations?

S: I vividly remember my parents playing Sade growing up, but I feel like Sade was kind of like the only artist of that realm that I listened to because of them, but when I was like eight, I remember so vividly seeing Ordinary People by John Legend, the music video, it's a black and white music video just playing on my TV. John Legend was kind of how I discovered R&B that was a little bit older than me, in a way. Obviously, growing up, we all listened to the R&B that was popular at the time, like Chris Brown and T-Pain and all that stuff, but I wouldn't really categorize that music as being influential to my music. John Legend really influenced me to play piano or learn how to play piano and sing, and it kind of was one of the main reasons why I still love classic R&B ballads. Like, my favorite songs of mine are the ones where I'm just playing piano and singing. One of my favorite artists ever is D'Angelo. But I feel like through John Legend, I discovered The Roots, which kind of led me to try listening to other artists like Lauryn Hill and all that type of stuff.

K: What can you say about their music specifically that really stood out to you and made you want to stay within the R&B Neo-Soul realm?

S: As I've gotten older, I feel like I'm such an old soul, and music is the safest place where I feel emotional because in my regular life, I don't really allow myself to feel things that deeply. Unlike when listening to music, it allows you to yearn because you're yearning with the song, if that makes sense. Inherently, Neo-Soul music is, I would say, sensual. I think I love that feeling I get when I listen to that music.

K: How did you end up working in the music industry?

S: I started working in the music industry because I was too scared of pursuing an artist career. The reality of chasing the dream of being an artist felt super vast and daunting. By the time I graduated, I was like, Okay, I'm just going to work in the music industry. It'll be just as fulfilling. I won't have to try as hard to be an artist. So I fully quit singing, and when I say fully quit singing, I didn't even sing songs in my bedroom or practice music. My first job was at a concert touring agency. [I was making] $12 an hour and worked like 15 hours a day. The workload is crazy. It's a really intense, high-strung environment, but you learn so much. I was super dedicated to that job, and I learned so many organizational skills that I have now as an artist. I'm constantly studying fan engagement. I'm constantly studying other artists. My backend of my data is so organized.

K: How did you transition back into making music?

S: When I started working in the industry, nobody knew that I had a background as a singer, but since I had moved back to where I was from, I would run into people that I knew growing up, and everybody would ask me, "Oh my god, how are you? Are you still singing?"  I would get asked this like hundreds of times over the course of a couple of years, and I would always say no. After a while, it's just like, damn, this actually really is sad. So I quit the agency job, and I always had my artist voice deep, deep down inside me that wanted to be a singer, but I kept trying to suppress that urge because I was just like, damn, this is going to be too overwhelming to try. So when I left the agency job, I was at a point where I was like, okay, I want to be closer to artists who are making music. That led me to accidentally become a manager for a DJ 

During that time when I was a manager, I was like, okay, I can't be an artist now because I'm a manager. But I told myself, I really miss singing. It's been years since I've allowed myself to sing. I never wrote music in my whole life. I was always just a singer. So during this time, I would write songs for myself alone in my bedroom. I started doing that with no intention of ever releasing them. It's interesting because I told myself not to be an artist before I even tried to be an artist. I told myself I couldn't be an artist before I even wrote a song. Then once I wrote a song, I showed it to a couple of friends, and their reaction was super emotional. We were all very moved by the experience. I was like, Oh, this feels right and I want to have a show. So I had a really small show. I had an amazing turnout, and it went so well.  

K: I see that you’ve opened for several artists, including JoJo, Kenyon Dixon, Gene Noble, and Naomi Sharon, just to name a few. What was it like getting the first opportunity to open for an artist, and what do you think each performance has taught you about yourself?

S: Well, I'm definitely a performer. It's my most preferred aspect of the business. When I'm on stage, I like to converse just like how I'm conversing with you. I'm super comfortable there. But JoJo was the first, which was like the first show that I did as an artist. I opened for her a couple of weeks before my first LA show. Obviously, it was like a much bigger venue. I loved it. I loved it. I feel like I'm a good crowd opener because I'm super engaging with the audience. I don't really get nervous for shows, but JoJo was fun because it was, like, a big stage, and I was like, big stages are just way more fun because you can walk around and feel powerful. 

K: When it comes to creating music, what is your process typically like, and how do you approach writing music?

S: I feel like this answer has changed over time. There are musicians that, you know, or artists that probably feel like they're songwriters first. I actually feel like I'm a songwriter last. I'm not somebody who's always writing songs. I'm kind of only writing songs when I'm in a season of writing songs. I haven't written a full song in probably six months. I feel like a lot of artists talk about this. The best way to write songs is when you feel like the universe has sent you a message and it comes through you, you know? Most of my songs were written while I was driving. A lot of the time, what I do in these long drives into LA is I will play instrumentals on loop that producers have sent me, because when you're driving, it's kind of like when you're in the shower and you get your best ideas because you don't have access to other things. You're only focused on one thing. You don't have your phone. It’s the same with driving. You're just focused on the road, so your brain kind of clears up.

K: Your last EP, “Room in My World,” was my introduction to you. Can you tell me a little about what led to this EP? 

S: The thing about the EP is it’s actually not really an EP. There’s this thing in the music industry called a waterfall release. I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed that when an artist puts out a single in June and in August, they release a second single. When you click on that new single, it’ll show that previous single underneath it. So rather than after that one song plays, and taking you to someone else's song, it'll play your previous song. It keeps the listener on your page or on your music. So what I basically did is all the songs that are on the EP were singles that I had previously released that are going to be on my album that's coming out. Because there is so much discovery from new people with “Room in My World”, when I put it out, you guys thought I dropped an EP when some of those songs came out two years ago. It was a cool way to discover other songs that I had and to bring new eyes to older music. 

K: Room in My World was originally meant to be someone else's, and then, after pitching it to several other artists, mainly Snoh Aalegra, you decided to keep it. Why did you originally want to shop it to other artists?

S: "Room in My World" is a perfect example of something I was just mentioning when you're writing songs for fun [with] no pressure. I think I wrote that song two years ago. This one producer sent me a bunch of beats, and I was just driving home. I was freestyling over that track, and literally as I parked at my house, I came up with the ‘For you I’ll make Room in My World, I can give you your own room', I basically came up with the chorus, and I was like, oh my god, I have it, I have it. 

I literally wrote the whole song while on Instagram Live in like two hours. I was asking the fans different lyric ideas, stuff like that. And it's funny because so often you work tirelessly on songs for so long, and the ones that you work less on become the ones that are more popular. So basically, "Room In My World", I always loved it, but I never felt like I cared about it enough to be on an album or release it myself. Also, it was like the only demo that I had that I wasn't releasing that I felt was good enough to pitch to someone. I don't really write love songs like ever, so I felt in a way it was kind of off-brand for me. So I just always wanted to pitch it to someone. Now I love the song. But it's still not my favorite song of mine. My favorite song is called “Should I Tell You?” That's my favorite song because it's super emotional, and that's my favorite song to sing live.

K: I will say my favorite song on the EP is “My Girls”; it feels very fun and free. What was it like collaborating with Sierra Sellers and creating this girls' night out anthem?

S: So honestly, the story about that song is like actually the best story. This is another example of songwriting in the car. I was like talking to a couple of my girlfriends and we were just like discussing how so many of my song ideas are like birthed out of conversations that I have with people and my friend was like you should write a song about us like about how fun we are like wherever we go we bring the vibes we're just a good time no matter what and we just like to dance and I was like you're right because I just need to write a song that's like not about my situationship with a men so I wrote a song for my girls.

Sierra is actually an amazing singer, but she has this very sexy rap voice that she does on rare occasions. I had already written my verse and the hook. We wrote the outro, kind of together, but when I hit her up, I was like, “Hey, I want you to feature in the song, but I don't want you to sing though. I want you to do your fucking rap thing.” She came over to my house one day in January of last year, and she like wrote her whole verse, then we recorded it last summer, and then things just take forever to get done. I also decided last summer that I was gonna put together an album, even when we first wrote the song, I didn't know that it was gonna be an album or whatever. Then we shot the music video, and it was really fun, and now at shows when she's not with me, I rap her verse.

K: Your album is coming out soon! What has it been like preparing for it to be released into the world?

S: Oh my god, I don't know. It's honestly been really fun. Like, one thing that has been really fun for me is being the creative director on all the visual things. I really stepped into that role and that's been really fun to like develop my creative visual eye and build a world for myself. When I first started making music, it was a little bit slower and kind of jazzy. I wore long black dresses a lot. Or I just wore black, and I would straighten my hair. It was still stunning and elegant. But I felt like when I went into this new era, I wanted people to see my personality more. I feel like I'm super fucking funny, and I'm very blunt and I'm very bold, and I want that side of me to be expressed. So I was like, okay, I want to write songs that feel more fun. That's why the “My Girls” song was super important, as kind of like the first single to lead into this era, because I've never done a visual or done a song that felt easy and fun.

K: Do you think that has come through?

S: I think I really accomplished that, especially with a lot of these songs. They feel bigger, they feel bolder, they feel funny. Like, the title track “For My Own Entertainment” is so funny and ridiculous. When you hear the song, it's bold. That's been really fun. I feel like it's just been a really fun project for me.

K: What’s been difficult about this journey?

S: There's no time to sit and acknowledge the vast greatness of what I've been working on.

K: Your single, “Please Don’t Talk to Me,” is an introvert's theme song. What was the inspiration behind it, or was that just another moment of you wanting to write like a fun kind of song, just by how you're feeling in a moment that you were having?

S: What’s crazy about that song is that it’s such a fun song, but I never intended it to be. When I wrote that song, that was also two years ago, I was going through a depressive moment. I had some personal transitions in my life that kind of brought up so much like deep-rooted shit that I needed to deal with. At this time, too, I was in a place of feeling very stuck with my artistry. Me going through a lot of personal things also caused writer's block. My family friend calls me was trying to catch up and check in on me and she was like, She was like, "Hey, how are you?" And I was like, "Hi." She’s like, “How’s your summer? Have you been going out or talking to anyone?”  and I was like Oh, absolutely not. I was literally in a robe sitting on the couch. I was like “Absolutely not. I’m just going to therapy, and if anyone tries to talk to me during this time, I'm just like please don't talk to me.” and she goes “Oh, that's funny that should be a song”. So, that night I wasI was listening to the music I had, and in the beat, you know, the main part of the song goes da da da da da. And I was like, please don't talk to me. It just fit perfectly.

I wrote the entire “Please Don't Talk to Me” song in the car while I was driving to another session. There were a couple of months, tweaking the lyrics and stuff like that. I wrote the song like that summer, and I didn't really like it at first. This was at a time when writing to beats was new to me. I was with a couple of guy friends, and they were like, play us some unreleased shit that you have. The first few songs I played were these acoustic songs, and they were like, Okay, and then I played them "Please Don't Talk To Me," and they were like, “Wait, whoa, this is fire.” They gave me a really good perspective. They're like, we are men who listen to hip hop music. We are not the target demo for these ballads that you've been releasing. But if a guy hears "Please Don't Talk To Me", we're gonna lock into the beat. So they kind of gave me more openness to writing to beats if I wanted to expand my audience. I wrote the song when I was in depression, but it’s the most anti-depression song now because it can apply to anything.

K: Do you feel comfortable talking about the time period when you were depressed? How were you able to kind of come up out of the rut that you were in? Did writing this song help you come about it a little bit as well?

S: Now that I'm on with my therapist, she doesn't really want me to call it depression because these types of moments happen so often to us as humans, and as artists, we go through ups and downs, and it's like with artists, there are so many periods that feel super low and feel so down. It's like the contrast of the highs and lows of being an artist are super intense. You may feel a high, high that you get after nine months of being low, and that might only be the 30 minutes that you have on stage. So it's almost like the nine months of depression balanced out by a 30-minute performance, and it's wild. My depression wasn't caused by artist stuff, though. I had recently transitioned in terms of my living space. I had moved out, was living with my best friend, and I moved back home for a little bit, and that was super traumatizing, but it was a sacrifice that I wanted to make in order to be able to pursue my artistry full-time. Moving home brought up so much of my childhood trauma, I was faced with dealing with that, and that blocked me from working on anything music-related. On top of me feeling uncomfortable about my living space, that made me not able to work on my music because I didn't have the capacity for it which made me feel like I'm behind because I'm not working on my artistry.

Therapy really helped me at the time. But also, unfortunately, it really just is time. I’ve gone through other depressive moments since then. Even had one when I released "My Girls."  My head was not in the right space, and I was chasing all the wrong things while releasing music, and I was really nervous because I was like, "I'm about to release an album. I can't be feeling shitty like this." I just remind myself at the end of the day, this album, I made it for myself, and I don't really care what the fuck happens with it because I'm so proud of this beautiful body of work that I've made. Writing the song did help in knowing that I could still write music during a time that I felt like I couldn’t. There's always going to be very shitty times we go through. And then there's always going to be an amazing time at the end of it. 

K: “Please Don’t Talk to Me” ventures more on the pop side. I read on your website that we should expect more of a pop sound on this album. What has it been like integrating pop into your more R&B and Neo-soul sound?

S:  It's funny because it's like my version of pop, I guess. Like to me, “Please Don't Talk to Me” is a little bit of that. Would you say that you hear that?

K: Yeah, I would say that

S: I think "My Girls" is definitely like a soulful R&B song for sure, but I think some of the songs like “Please Don't Talk to Me” in terms of the bigger production and, the catchiness, and the repetitiveness of the chorus lean pop. I would say the way I sing is still a little bit soulful. Then, I would say the title track to the album is definitely more pop. The title track sonically kind of reminds me of, I guess you could say, Victoria Monet, or I think about the R&B-leaning songs that Ariana Grande has that are written by Victoria Monet. Honestly, it's been really fun. There are definitely songs that are harder to sing live. It's so funny, it's like sometimes these songs that maybe have simpler melodies are a little harder to sing because you have less freedom. It's kind of like when jazz players have to play pop songs; it's almost harder because they're so used to improvising and going crazy. It's like harder to stay simple. It's been fun. I wouldn't say so much of the album is pop, but I think that it's a cool hybrid that I'm starting to kind of mess around with

K: What do you hope people take away from this album, and what has creating it taught you about yourself?

S: That I'm fucking superwoman and I can do anything and everything. I hope that people really recognize that I'm a fucking superstar. I feel like I make and maybe I'm cocky but I feel like the music and the visuals especially that I make is beyond the level that I'm at. Some of that comes from my experience of like being in the industry. But, truthfully, I just want people to relate to it and recognize it and connect with it. That's, that's our goal with everything that we make. So it's like, sure, you can think the cover art's great, but I want you to listen to the songs, and I hope it brings me to performing at festivals and more collaborations. 

Her album will be available on all streaming platforms October 24, 2025