In the summer of 2012, the London Olympics had just begun, and Simone Biles was taking the world by storm, inspiring girls of all ages around the world to follow their dreams.
One of those girls was Sophie Mattimore, waking up every morning in her Pleasant Ridge home to do cartwheels around her room — hoping one day to soar as high as her idol.
But, as we know, childhood aspirations change, and one big change would come for Joy when she discovered singer Grace VanderWaal.
“I wanted to be her, I wanted the bob, I wanted everything,” said Mattimore, who now goes by the name Sophie Joy. “I loved how raw she was in her songs, and how even though she was only 11 or 12, she was very vulnerable. I really wanted to get into that vulnerability at such a young age [as well].”
Writing her own songs inspired by VanderWaal, Joy picked up a ukulele and began teaching herself to play. A few years later, she transitioned to guitar, starting with the Britney Spears song “Toxic.” She isn’t sure why she chose that particular song, but learning it marked the beginning of a musical journey she continues today—still using the same guitar she first picked up all those years ago.
“There’s only so many things that you can play on the ukulele,” she said. “I knew deep down that I wanted to expand my sound more. I’m always trying to expand my sound.”
Now majoring in visual arts with a focus on painting and drawing at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, Joy has continued to develop her music alongside her studies. She released her first original single, “Ceiling,” in April 2025.
“The first song I ever released was a cover of ‘Do I Wanna Know,’ and I don’t know why I decided to release that,” Joy said. “I was really proud of the production and the harmonies, so I just kind of did it blindly. Then I was looking through all my songs — I have over 300 songs that I want to release — and I found ‘ceiling’. That was one of the first songs that I ever wrote, where I was like, ‘Wow, this is really good. I could do this for a living.”
She recorded and mixed the song on her phone in her dorm room and released it soon after. The experience made her realize that sharing her music didn’t require perfect conditions or an elaborate setup.
This sparked an artistic impulse in Joy.
“I realized I might as well [release] it now, what am I waiting for?” Joy said. “That was really weird, though, because the night that was released, I was on the phone with my mom, and on DistroKid, they show you all the places where your song is streaming, and it said over 200 countries.”
Joy was astounded, thinking this was going to be a local thing.
“It’s a fan favorite,” Joy said. “People really love that song, and I’m glad they do because that was a song that I barely played because it was so sad, but now it’s my favorite thing to play at shows.That kind of pushed me into this releasing spree that I had throughout the beginning of summer. By the time I knew it, I had a fully formed album.”
With over 300 songs waiting to be released and more ideas manifesting, she kept creating, even as finals approached. With a newfound energy for creating and the resources available to her, she dove deeper into her creative process.
Joy describes her sound as the sadness of a 13-year-old girl, with the sadness of a 20-year-old, and tons of sapphic yearning.
Her ideas for songs come from everyday life. Ceiling, for example, came to be because a friend of Joy’s had told her about an ex-partner who used to hang things from their ceiling, and then he felt like he couldn’t do that now because it would be copying.
“And I was like, ‘that’s a good song idea, let me write that down,’” Joy said. “My friends know that whenever they’re around me, if I hear a really poetic line, I’ll be like, ‘Let me write that down.’”
Sometimes one of those ideas will spark a song, and sometimes it’ll just be one word.
“With my song ‘Apricot’, I just wanted to write a song titled ‘apricot,’” Joy said. “I’ll sit down, in a span from 30 minutes to a few weeks, for how long it takes me to write a song, and if I like it enough to where I can hear what it sounds like in my head, full production, I will [produce] it all myself.”
Joy released three more singles in summer 2025: ‘American dream,’ ‘Situation, Baby,’ and ‘Rite of passage,’ before releasing her debut album, taped confessions, in August. The culmination of nearly a decade in songwriting.
“It warmed my childhood heart,” says Joy. “The oldest song that I wrote on that album was ‘linger’ or ‘ceiling’ and as a kid, I had envisioned what it would sound like on a fully finished album. Now I have that, and it was so surreal to be like ‘I have an album, guys.’”
Joy said she thinks it’s unbelievable that people can hear what she’s saying and thinking on Spotify.
“Even if I’m not a big artist, it’s still such a crazy step to take,” Joy said. “My music teacher told me in high school that more people are going to be inspired by the art of me doing it rather than the lyrics themselves, and I feel that.”
After sharing her album, Joy has had the chance to perform some of its songs most recently at Strange Records, a shop in Morrow, Ohio. She has more performances coming up, most notably on March 25th at Little Art Theatre in Yellow Springs, Ohio, for their Women’s History Month showcase celebrating four generations of songwriters.
And as for what’s next for Sophie Joy? In short, a lot.
“I’m sitting on a lot of music right now,” she says. “At my Strange Records gig, I actually played a new song that I would like to release soon. I would also like to experiment with making my songs sound really goofy because I have a lot of sad songs, and I think it would be fun to make a really sad song sound not serious at all.”