1ycia Is Electro Pop’s Sharpest New Voice—and She’s More Than Just Main Character Energy

Written By: Julia Fu

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Behind the music that’s drunk with static 808s, funk breaks, pixelated synths and dreamy autotuned one-liners (occasionally in French) is an artist that’s soberly aware of the world she’s building. 1ycia lets us know her musings on party girl apathy, Gen-Z’s digital footprint, and heartbreak. 

Photo From Spotify

There is a simulacrum of 2010s culture that’s re-invoking what it means to have Main Character Energy. Skinny menthols and even skinnier scarves are becoming increasingly inescapable, the indie sleaze revival is beginning to feel more like the Second Coming, and the Rio De Janeiro filter on Instagram looks unironically… good? In part, we’re nostalgic. Naivete felt good when we were aspirational of living out Katy Perry’s TGIF music video (ft. Rebecca Black). But as a whole, we’re escapists. It feels better to mimic a time where we were naive about the VMA results rather than the fallibility of the USA or the unknown repercussions of AI. What better way to navigate the iron fist of digital capitalism than to don it as your gay apparel, clad in irony? So while this cultural zeitgeist may very well be approaching cheugy status within the chronically online community, the rumors are true – Electro Pop is back.

Enter 1ycia, whose Algerian-Bay Area based musician’s “bubble gum electro pop punkist” artistry reflects exactly the cyberscape us Gen-Zers were born and bred through. It’s this profoundly intangible game of branding oneself through social media where the historical revision is being indoctrinated into. Lycia Yousfi is acutely aware of this separation, or lack thereof, between the character (our IG handle) and the one choosing the character (us, but IRL). Her tracks are often a diametrical opposition that is sonically the ghost of recession pop’s prime with lyrics that are sage reflections of loss and love. Take the music video to her most recently released single, Feel Like Charli. It’s riddled with Frutiger Aero nostalgia – Pop Art filters, iMac candy-colors, greenscreen carscapes. And when asked what influences her music, Lycia lets me know it’s the whole “theme of our generation”. 

“You know, digital life and digital persona versus human persona. When does that end? When does you end, and your username begin?” 

The whole 30-minutes I’m with 1ycia on Zoom, it feels a lot more like I’m with Lycia – in person. Or rather, like I’m with the “maker” of said username. Lycia is cognizant of this digital panopticon we all post our thirst traps and social commentaries on. “U can truly never dance like nobody is watching because there are literally cameras everywhere,” she texts me the day after our conversation. Like a Sim meeting its fellow Sim’s 4D author. There’s a blasé rationale one would expect to have to sing lyrics like, get in the fucking car!, but Lycia is whip-smart, calm and introspective during our chat. “In my head is a video game. 1ycia is the main character of that. And she’s always in the game. Maybe it’s a little more exaggerated, maybe it’s a little over the top. It’s like posting a picture of your face after you’ve just cried, and you’re doing it in an alluring way.” And therein lies the beating heart of her alias: One that marches to the dual beat of irony and vulnerability. 

I’m not too surprised to hear that 1ycia’s most base inspirations, pre-XCX, are Panic at The Disco, Fall Out Boy, and The Strokes. Despite her hyper-pop facing tracks, Inhaler (exclusive on SoundCloud) is unmistakably a 2000s pop punkist anthem. “Even with The Strokes, there’s the simplicity of melodies. It almost feels like the more simple it is, the harder it hits because,” 1ycia emphasizes with her most distinguishable adlib, “Like, woah. You’re telling me something I already knew.” The call to obvious profundity is rampant in her lyricism. 

In any universe I will find you, I will love you, I will hate you - b-cycle (2024) 

If you saw my thoughts, you would see our faces. If you saw my face, you would see what you wasted - game on (2024) 

They’re club classics for the heartbroken. Like all of us who enjoy the toil over all matters of the heart, she’s no stranger to the torment of love, and of the self. “I write heartbreak songs. When we talk about losing other people, we in part lose a part of ourselves, too.” 

Even the more frivolous songs are drenched in foresight. I bring up Feel Like Charli, the song where Brat Summer is all about fast cars, laughing with the girls, purple weed, shitty speakers. “It went through a million iterations. There were points when I was like, this is so ridiculous. It just sounds ridiculous. But it became, in a way, humorous. It’s aware of itself. It’s cheeky – a teenager becoming an adult. Very bright bubblegum imagery, and this IDGAF attitude.” 

It doesn’t take long before I realize the song is less of an homage, and more a critical analysis of Main Character egotism and the political apathy that comes with it. “Part of it is making fun of not caring about anything. I’m not really for a human with an IDGAF attitude toward the word because I’m a human with a politique. I kind of snuck that in there when I said Fuck Starbucks because,” she jerks her head and waves her hand in blatancy, “support unions and don’t fire your employees for caring about Palestine.” So, despite the mimetic British accent and the vocal fry and the hedonistic signaling, 1ycia tells me that she will never be Charli. “That’s why I just feel like Charli”. 

While the term has generally been utilized to romanticize mundanity and excuse crash-out behavior, 1ycia ultimately has her own definition of Main Character Energy. Of course she visualizes these moments where she skips a line, gets a Grammy (“Like, woah,” she affirms), and is escorted through the aéroport. But it’s also about being trusted to teach people about something larger than herself (in her spare time, she gives talks at the Algerian organization led by the matriarch of her community). I ask what Main Character Energy means to her. It’s simple: “Loud. Focused. Brilliant.”

LINKS: SPOTIFY // IG // SOUNDCLOUD // YOUTUBE