Heroes featuring Imogen Heap first appears in V119, our Music Issue featuring Lizzo. V119 is available for sale!

“I don’t know if I would ever listen to myself,” says Imogen Heap. “I don’t like much music with vocals. Too many words, too much music with vocals. Too many words, too much to think about.” It’s a surprising hypothesis given the immediate and lasting impact her orchestral, vocally layered pop had on many a millennial growing up. As both a solo artist and as half of electro twosome Frou Frou, her mellifluous voice appeared on notable mid-aughts soundtracks like those of The OC and Garden State, often deployed at some dramatic climax. As a result, Heap has become associated with crucial pop-cultural benchmarks – most notably in which OC heroine Marissa Cooper, played by Mischa Barton, fired a gun at her ex’s violent brother. Cue “Hide and Seek.”

But the way many first discovered Heap seems to inform one of her most recent projects: changing the means of musical consumption altogether. Set to embark on her first U.S. tour in 10 years, the singer is using it as an opportunity to spread her start-up technology, Creative Passport. Using the block-chain as a model, Heap envisions “a shared database” that would allow for artists outside the major-label system to profit. “You might be one of those outliers who got lucky on YouTube. Or you might be discovered in some random way and that can happen,” she explains. “But these shouldn’t be the only options. It should be that the music and talent speaks for itself.”

Outside of industry reform, Heap’s 2005 track “Goodnight and Go” was remixed for the internet-generation by Ariana Grande, appearing on her 2018 album Sweetener. Heap has also been creating soundtracks of her own – namely that of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, a two-part, five-hour play. Ironically, she found soundtrack curation tougher than scoring. “It as quite a challenge to make it something enjoyable to listen to without seeing all the other [elements] in place,” she says.

At a time when comebacks seem to be taking place left and right (even Marissa Cooper has, in a way, risen from the dead on MTV) Heap’s stateside return is right on cue.