Sophia James Talks “Never Write A Love Song Again,” Sleepwalking at 65MPH, and Writing Through the Chaos

There is something almost cruelly funny about having to promote a love song about someone immediately after that relationship ends.

Sophia James knows the feeling.

Earlier this year, Sophia found herself promoting a song she had written while deeply in love. By the time it was time to put the song into the world, the relationship was over.

“I had heard all of the classic precautions and cautionary tales of wiser songwriters before me,” Sophia tells Everyday Jams, “warning against immortalizing your lovers because you just never know what’s gonna happen.”

She points to Joni Mitchell’s famous idea that songs are like tattoos. Once they exist, they stay with you.

“You either end up with them forever and you have this song that is a constant reminder of them every time you sing, or you split up, and you have this song that is a constant reminder of them every time you sing it.”

Sophia took the gamble anyway.

Then she lost it.

The result is “Never Write A Love Song Again,” her latest single and a funny, sharp, painfully self-aware look at what happens when the song outlives the relationship it was written about.

“Never Write A Love Song Again” Came From a 30-Day Challenge

The song came together during a 30-day songwriting challenge Sophia does with a group of friends.

The challenge is less about writing 30 perfect songs and more about forcing yourself to finish something every day. Everyone sends their song to the group chat by midnight, and the stakes are just embarrassing enough to keep everyone honest.

If someone misses the deadline, the group gets to choose a song for them to cover a cappella and post publicly without a caption.

“We take it very seriously,” Sophia jokes.

That daily pressure ended up being exactly what she needed.

“It helped me a ton with my perfectionistic tendencies,” she says. “It reminds me that songwriting is literally supposed to be fun, and it’s all about the process and not the product.”

“Never Write A Love Song Again” came out in one sitting. Sophia sent the first version as a simple voice memo with guitar and vocal before eventually bringing it to longtime collaborator and producer Alex Bilowitz.

Instead of burying that original intimacy under layers of production, they kept the track relatively minimal. Sophia recorded the guitars and cut her own vocal, while Alex helped shape the final production around it.

The restraint works. The song feels like Sophia catching herself somewhere between laughing at the situation and realizing it actually hurt.

Sleepwalking at 65MPH

“Never Write A Love Song Again” is also an introduction to Sophia’s upcoming EP, Sleepwalking at 65 MPH

The title came from the way life felt while she was making it.

“I’m coming out of a very mid-20s time in my life,” she says. “Life felt very frantic and fast, and I was making a lot of mistakes.”

Sophia describes that period as “blindly guessing my way through life at a very high speed.”

That image says a lot about the songs that followed.

The EP is not built around having everything figured out. It comes from moving too quickly, making decisions on instinct, getting some of them wrong, and trying to understand yourself after the fact.

That uncertainty feels especially fitting for Sophia, who admits she naturally tends toward perfectionism. This era has required her to trust her gut a little more, both in life and in the studio.

Sophia James Is Taking More Ownership in the Studio

Sophia has been working with Alex Bilowitz for years, but the process behind this EP has shifted.

On The Wrong Shoe Theory, many of the songs were co-written and built together from the ground up. This time, Sophia brought in more songs that were already fully written and then worked with Alex to expand them sonically.

“I love having my hand in the pie when it comes to production, and I also love learning,” she says.

She describes herself as being in the “co-pilot seat” beside Alex, constantly asking questions and learning more about how a record gets built after the songwriting is finished.

That curiosity has also pushed her to take more control of her vocals.

For this EP, Sophia has been cutting more of her own vocals because, as she puts it, her voice is her “first instrument.”

She is particular about keeping that part of the music human.

“I want no trace of anything that a computer could possibly replicate,” Sophia says. “This has to be so human.”

It is a philosophy that fits the project. Sleepwalking at 65 MPH is about mistakes, instinct, vulnerability, and the messiness of being a person. Over-polishing that would almost defeat the point.

Writing Beyond the Love Song

Despite the title of her latest single, Sophia is not actually retiring from love songs.

She laughs at the idea herself.

“I’m definitely gonna write more love songs in my life because I love writing love songs.”

What has changed is the range of things she wants to write about.

Looking back at her catalog, Sophia realized how much of it centered around romance or heartbreak. That still matters to her, but she no longer wants it to be the only window listeners have into her life.

“I think this EP is sort of more reflective of who I am as a person,” she says.

The new material branches into subjects like guilt, regret, politics, and the consequences of your own choices. Sophia says she wants to keep getting “better and sharper and smarter and funnier and more dramatic” as a writer.

She also sees songwriting as something bigger than documenting her relationships.

“I think part of the responsibility of an artist is to sort of reflect or hold a mirror up to the world around you,” she says, “and weave your little thread in the tapestry of the current times we’re living in.”

That wider perspective feels like one of the clearest shifts in this chapter.

Making Music That Can Change Shape Live

The sound is changing too.

Sophia says she naturally gravitates toward slower songs, but this new material carries more energy and more rock influence than some of her earlier work.

That shift has made her think differently about how songs will move once they leave the studio.

“Ryan,” released earlier this year, has already become one of her favorite songs to perform because of the groove and the way the band interacts with it live.

She is especially curious about the upcoming “Gun in the Garden.”

“I don’t know yet how it’s going to translate live,” she says. “It’ll be a puzzle.”

For Sophia, that seems to be part of the fun.

The song does not need to stay frozen in the form it had in the studio. It can become something else once there are people in the room.

Learning the Lesson and Moving On

For all the humor behind “Never Write A Love Song Again,” Sophia still sees a real lesson inside it.

She hopes younger songwriters especially understand the risk of turning someone into art before knowing whether they will stay in your life.

“Be very careful when immortalizing people in your art,” she says. “Because you will have to inevitably sing it again and again.”

But there is no bitterness in the way Sophia talks about it now.

If anything, the song feels like a reminder to laugh at yourself a little.

“Reflection is good,” she says. “Laugh at your mistakes and carry on.”

That sentiment might be the thread running through this entire era.

Sleepwalking at 65 Miles per Hour is not Sophia James arriving at some perfectly composed version of adulthood. It is Sophia moving fast, getting things wrong, writing them down, and becoming more herself in the process.

And for now, that seems much more interesting than having all the answers.

“Never Write A Love Song Again” is out now. Sophia James’ forthcoming EP, Sleepwalking at 65 MPH, is on the way.

Photography: Stephanie Saias
Artwork courtesy of: Sophia James