Faceshopping

In October 2017, Sophie released the single "It's Okay to Cry".^[4] The song and accompanying music video marked the first instance Sophie's face and vocals appeared in the artist's own work. A second single, "Ponyboy", was released later in 2017.^[5]

"Faceshopping" was released on 16 February 2018.^[5] The album Oil of Every Pearl's Un-Insides was announced on 5 June and released ten days later.^[6]

In an interview with Jezebel, Sophie stated that the song's title was a response to people's belief that since she was a faceless artist, she was "trying to hide something".^[7] In a separate article with The Face, she described the song as "kind of a snapshot of how it felt to be in my body at that particular time, with all the pressures that are on everyone, and just existing or cultivating some kind of public persona. It’s an ongoing debate in my head, with a lot of the same questions. You consider and then reconsider".^[8]

In an interview with Vogue, Sophie elaborated that the track was "about the emphasised idea that if you’re showing more face, you're somehow being more real. But of course, there is a flip side to that, where you have false identities or different projections of yourself that you’re able to cultivate through your image."^[9]

"Faceshopping" received acclaim from music critics. Katie Olsen of Cool Hunting praised the track as a "glitchy, gloriously abrasive banger", noting it as "incredibly textured, [...] mechanical and metallic, yet has plenty of pop flourishes to keep it accessible."^[10] Stereogum called the song Sophie's best work since the compilation album Product (2015), lauding it as "filthy as fuck, with a beat like rusty scalpels, and intermittently gorgeous".^[11] Similarly, The Interns's Sam Murphy described it as "the hardest thing she's done in a while".^[12] Vice's Lauren O'Neil said that the song's subject matter might make it "her fiercest mission statement so far."^[2] Writing for the Music, Camilla Patini favored the song over Sophie's previous single, "Ponyboy", opining that:

If 'Ponyboy' was about advertising and the primacy of the image (amongst other things), the lyrics didn't do a great job at fleshing out the concept, but 'Faceshopping' does this much better. It is more thoughtful and tightly constructed. The breakdown, especially, has a raw emotional intensity that does a great job at further amplifying the song's message.^[13]

Nylon named it one of the best releases of the week.^[14] Several publications have named it one of Sophie's best songs.^[15][16]

Ranking "Faceshopping" as the fourth best song of 2018, Luke Cartledge of The Line of Best Fit lauded it for "providing a perfect distillation of everything that makes Sophie one of 2018’s most important artists. [...] 'Faceshopping' demonstrates that talent to electrifying effect". He ended its entry by calling the song "[d]efiant, cathartic and utterly vital".^[17] Calling it the 49th best song of the same year, Mixmag described its sound as "[a]n intense yet beautifully twisted combination of pop and schizophrenic sound design like no other."^[18]