Poppy has no interest in proving how metal she is

Poppy is gearing up to release her incredible, swaggering new album ‘Empty Hands’, and she is also, according to a hastily deleted post on social media, already bracing herself for an “Onslaught of questions that are the equivalent of, ‘You like heavy music? Name five bands’.”

Since she earned a cult following via a series of detached, dystopian, deadpan YouTube videos that saw her interviewing mannequins, eating cotton candy, and poking fun at online self-obsession (“I’m thankful for my friends, my family, and this photograph of me”), Poppy has had her authenticity constantly challenged.

The questions continued with debut album ‘Poppy.Computer’, a bubblegum extension of her overly polished virtual world, and reached new heights after 2020’s ‘I Disagree’ went all-in on industrial guitars and screaming breakdowns. “There were a lot of misconceptions about my contributions based on certain males that were around me at the time,” she told Dork back in 2023.

Three more viciously forward-thinking rock albums followed, but Poppy’s still being asked to explain herself, thanks to a heady mix of her music constantly finding new audiences, her unconventional origin story and good old-fashioned misogyny. “Who made them the barometer for authenticity?” she says of her doubters today before grinning. “Wait until they find out what I think about them.”

“I have no interest in proving how metal I am,” she continues. “What Metallica songs do I like? I don’t even listen to Metallica.” That playful-slash-unapologetically-honest attitude has made Poppy a bright light in a scene bogged down in nostalgia, and can be felt across her brilliant seventh album.

Poppy’s used anger as fuel plenty of times before, but ‘Empty Hands’ is easily the most furious. “Fuck your ignorant opinions,” she snarls on opener ‘Public Domain’ before promising the future is a “seething bitch”. ‘Bruised Sky’ starts with the promise that “there’s no hope to come for you”, ‘Guardian’ talks of gods losing faith and cities laid to waste, while the spat ‘Eat The Hate’ sees Poppy getting off on causing a ruckus before throwing a few barbed jabs of her own “You’re dying as a never was… you’re celibate cuz no one wants to fuck”.

“I know what these songs mean to me”

The music – an outrageously giddy mash-up of arena rock, hardcore, grunge and metal, with hammering flourishes of dance and pop – is just as aggressive. Or as Poppy puts it, “It is riled up”.

The record comes just 15 months after the soaring arena rock of ‘Negative Spaces’. “I had more to say, so we kept going,” Poppy explains, with the record created in gaps between appearances at Slipknot’s travelling Knotfest, a European tour supporting Bad Omens and her own UK headline run. “I don’t think there’s a secret [to my productivity]. The life that I’m living is very dynamic, and I feel like I have to document it. The driving force is always the same; I have something to get off my chest.” Despite the visceral purge that is ‘Empty Hands’, Poppy doesn’t feel done. “Oh, I always have something to say.”

‘Empty Hands’ is the second time Poppy’s teamed up with former Bring Me The Horizon’s secret weapon Jordan Fish, but there was no pressure to make a deliberately different album, despite her track record of constantly switching between genres.

“I don’t really think about it in terms of repeating myself or not repeating myself. I feel like whatever comes out is probably just what it was supposed to be,” she offers, preferring to keep things loose in the studio. “There are certain personal lines that I wanted to push. I always allow space for it to bend and morph along the way, though.” There was no overarching vision for ‘Empty Hands’, and the record only came together after the title-track was written towards the end of the process. “I needed something upbeat that felt as satisfying as [opening track] ‘Public Domain’. There’s just this feeling when an album’s done.”

“They’re two very different bodies of work,” she adds.

In the studio, Poppy was looking to experimental rock groups Battles and Lightning Bolt for inspiration, and also went back to some of her favourite Nirvana songs. “We were playing with more jagged puzzle pieces this time around,” she explains. The singles – ‘Guardian’, ‘Bruised Sky’, ‘Unravel’ – are more of an entry point, while the rest of the project “has more colour,” she adds. “Overall, I feel it’s more of a vocal record than ‘Negative Spaces’.”

That comes from being on the road so much. “On tour, I’m able to try new things and playing live really informs what I do in the studio. I like to create songs where the audience can sing along. I like a chorus that catches my ear and excites me. In turn, maybe it will excite others.”

Some tracks, like the venomous 90s-inspired ‘Eat The Hate’, came together almost straight away, while others, such as the gorgeously searing ‘If We’re Following The Light’, were slowly moulded into shape. “Sometimes you need to chase the idea, sometimes it comes out and tells you what it is, and other times it’s just torn from a page of a journal.”

Despite the exposure that comes with filling a record with diary confessions, Poppy isn’t a fan of deep dives that reveal what inspired each song. “I know what these songs mean to me, but I don’t want that to come in between somebody else’s relationship with the work.” Even in the studio, collaborative partners won’t ask specifics. “That’s between me and the notebook,” she explains. “I’m not the best at being vulnerable in conversation with other people. It’s just easier with music.”

Still, she describes the album as an unconscious reaction to the times we’re living through. You can probably work out the specifics. There’s no one message to ‘Empty Hands’, but the final lyric of the album (“Empty hands, can’t take it with you”) is a deliberate sign-off. “There are a couple of themes within that line: greed, peace, aggression and serving yourself. The album plays with those avenues.”

Aggression is an important tool, says Poppy. “I’m fortunate enough to be able to get things off my chest through music, I don’t know what kind of person I would be if I didn’t have this outlet.” But there’s more to ‘Empty Hands’ than blunt rage. “There’s tenderness, longing and melancholy. A bit of dissonance and internal discourse.” ‘Ribs’, which started off as a poem, is a glitching slab of euphoria, ‘The Wait’ is all pulsating optimism, and there’s plenty of hope to be found across ‘Empty Hand’, as Poppy offers “joy resolve”. 

“We’re here, we might as well try to be hopeful”

In recent years, that defiance and refusal to accept defeat have been recurring themes in Poppy’s music. “That comes from being disappointed and then having to find your way back to yourself,” she explains. “But we’re here, we might as well try to be hopeful… even though that’s hard sometimes.”

“There’s a lot of good that’s happening in the world, you just have to go a couple layers beneath the surface. If you’re not exhausted, you’ll find it,” says Poppy. She turns to drawing and instrumental music as well as Icelandic post-rock group Sigur Rós whenever she needs a pick-me-up. Since coming home from tour a few days ago, Poppy’s also hung out with her cat Pi and got her bake on with homemade pumpkin muffins and blood orange mochi doughnuts. “I even put gold flakes on top of the doughnuts,” she grins. Well, if you’re going to do something, you may as well go all in.

Performing live is a place to purge, as well as recharge. “I find a lot of joy in being on stage and being together with people in that environment. It’s one of the few unifying things we have left,” says Poppy. “I can feel a bit jittery inside at times, but I lay it all out on stage. Some of my favourite artists are the ones who allow you to witness their experience of music in that moment. It’s a powerful thing.”

Recently, Poppy supported Linkin Park at huge stadium shows in South America. Playing in cities she’d never visited before “gives you a different kind of understanding about what’s out there, and how important music and art actually is.”

Poppy’s always used art as a way to process how she’s feeling. As a kid, she was too scared to speak in school, which resulted in bullying and eventual homeschooling, so she turned to dance and performative YouTube videos because she didn’t need to talk to anyone else to express herself. Over the years, each album has seen her come into her own a little more. “I still feel very lonely, but it just looks different when you’re onstage,” she explains. “For the hour and a half that you’re standing up there, the feeling of togetherness is like no other. I don’t know if I feel understood, but I feel a little bit closer to something.” In 2026 and beyond, Poppy gigs will offer “a singalong, a thrash around and a pogo… but it’s all unified.”

It’s impossible to have a conversation about rock in 2026 without mentioning Poppy. In recent years, she’s teamed up with the sugary flamboyance of Babymetal and the rugged brutality of Bad Omens, while a live performance of ferocious Knocked Loose collab ‘Suffocate’ on late-night US TV talkshow Jimmy Kimmel took hardcore punk to the masses. “When I was leaving the stage, I felt fluttery. It seemed like an important moment for heavy music.”

‘End Of You’, Poppy’s 2025 team-up with Evanescence’s Amy Lee and Spiritbox’s Courtney LaPlante, was another. “Pop artists do it all the time, but for rock and metal, it just didn’t seem like that sort of thing had happened before.”

A three-way team-up between some of the biggest female artists in the scene wasn’t done to prove a point. “That was just never at the forefront of my mind,” says Poppy, who lit the fuse on the whole project between ‘Negative Spaces’ and ‘Empty Hands’. “They were just the obvious choices, and it came together naturally. The respect is there. Now we’re all doing tours together, which is pretty fun.”

It’s the same with embracing her femininity onstage and in photo shoots. “The people that are close to me describe me as one of the most girly girls that they’ve met, which I like. I’m just more myself every day.” As for the misogynistic hot takes that inevitably follow a woman unapologetically taking up space in heavy music, “It’s just really boring that that’s still happening,” says Poppy. “It’s exhausted, you know?”

She tends to avoid the comments section (“I’m quite sensitive. I can’t look at things that I know will be disappointing to me”), but will get sent things by friends. “I feel pretty fatigued with the way that the internet is. At this point, there’s just nothing that anybody can say that will make me shocked or intrigued.” Rather than dull her edges, Poppy remains as sharp and single-minded as ever. “You can come over here to see me, and if you don’t like it, you can go over there to see something else. But this is my corner that I’m occupying. It gets done the way I like it over here.”

When she was coming up, Poppy was never part of a scene because even her brightest pop music had an eerie darkness to it. “Now, I feel like everywhere I sit, I’m an outsider. At this point, I’m comfortable with that to my best ability. People mention my name as part of a certain genre, so I guess I’m part of a scene in that regard, but really, nothing feels like home.”

She goes on to say that questions about being part of a new wave put her in a headspace that feels foreign. “The music I’m making is the most me. Whatever label gets put on that isn’t my responsibility. I control what I can control.”

Still, the success of her peers Knocked Loose, Spiritbox, and Bad Omens is inspiring, “especially knowing what the landscape was prior to what’s happening now. There’s a shift that’s happening right now, which feels like a fresh iteration of heavy music. I’m happy to be in that sphere.”

There’s an uptick in music that feels fresh and exciting because, she says, “so much seems artificial now – the way music gets made, how art gets consumed, how things are run. People are exhausted and are seeking something with more depth. They want something real. In an effort to understand themselves, people are looking at other people who are also trying to understand themselves,” she says of the slow-burning resurgence of heavy music. “It doesn’t feel good to [relate] to a computer program; it’s better to experience something made by an actual person that’s got some depth to it.”

Knowing there’s a bigger audience for heavy, heartfelt music hasn’t changed Poppy’s mission in the slightest, though. “I’ve always dug deep,” she shrugs. “It’s all I have.”

Taken from the February 2026 issue of Dork. Poppy’s album ‘Empty Hands’ is out 23rd January.