Sophie Edwards – Urban Legend, Hometown Hits Artist Spotlight
Hometown Hits is a fortnightly feature where local Canberra musicians can get their music played live on Hit 104.7. Sophie Edwards is our first Feature Artist for July 2026. We got her in the studio, heard her reflect on performing at Spilt Milk and got a bit of background on her latest single Urban Legend.
Urban Legend by Sophie Edwards, July 2026 feature
“I also haven’t really told this story. I didn’t want people to know that I actually played to, like, maybe four people.”
Sophie has been able to achieve feats many artists would consider pretty impressive. In 2023, Sophie was invited to play at Spilt Milk, an exciting opportunity and an accolade to hold on to. For so many musicians, festival performances are a dream come true. What most audiences call an awesome gig, many artists call the culmination of weeks of practice, dozens of promotional posts, years of song writing and the scraping of pennies to pay for recording sessions, but the list goes on and on. Live performances are often the much-needed moment after years of constant, focussed effort that an artist yearns for.
It’s 2023 and gig day arrives. Sophie and her band are backstage waiting for their moment. “This is our big break, this is gonna be huge!” Sophie was chosen to represent Canberra and had the opening slot to launch Spilt Milk 2023. The clock ticked down. Show time came. Then a stage manager approached Sophie and said “‘you can just go out and play on the stage to no one, if you like?’… They actually didn’t open the gates up in time, because they hadn’t finished all of the security checks that they needed to do.”
The start time couldn’t be pushed back due to all the other artists that had already been scheduled. So, Sophie and her band end up performing only to her parents and a handful of security guards.
“The band and I didn’t care, we we’re having the best day, and hearing all of my music on the giant speakers was just like the craziest experience for me… I also haven’t really told this story… I didn’t want people to know that I actually played to, like, maybe four people.”
Sophie spoke as if this was a relatively minor setback and I was blown away. As a performer and regular worker in the back line of the live events industry, I could think of nothing more disheartening or awkward. So much time and effort go into the live music industry and unfortunately, unforeseen circumstances can cause days, weeks or even months of preparation to be thrown out the window. Some performers would choose to mourn the situation, disregard their performance and demand some kinds of compensation for their wasted time. But Sophie didn’t.
After the festival, she emailed the organisers saying how thankful she was for the opportunity to perform and how much fun she had regardless of the circumstance. Moments before she hit send, an email arrived from the organisers who expressed their sincerest apology and asked if she would be willing to come back and perform for Spilt Milk 2024. Without hesitation, Sophie agreed.
But Spilt Milk 2024, never came. The festival was cancelled due to unforeseeable circumstances.
“We’re never gonna get asked to play a third time.”
We perform because we love creating moments worth capturing; a crowd singing in unison; an underexposed polaroid; the-morning-after tinnitus. It’s devastating to have a performance riddled with tech or logistic issues, it’s something else entirely to have a gig cancelled altogether.
In 2025, Sophie reached out to the organisers once again. Turns out, she was already on the artist list. Sophie was finally able to perform to more than just a smattering of security guards.
And it’s here that we see an Instagram picture, Sophie up on the Spilt Milk stage: “Best show of my lifeeee love u all.” It’s so easy to see a post on social media and be jealous of an artist or friend who is living the life you want to live. It’s equally as easy to look at that same post and over-fantasise what their life is truly like. Behind every artist’s concert pic, there could be dozens of gigs riddled with tech issues. Behind every song release, four demos that never see the light of day. Scrolling on socials, you may see a photo of a local artist performing on the stage of a nationally recognised festival and think that everything just works out for them. In reality, behind every work of art there is an intricate rollercoaster of emotion and moving parts, impossible to summarise within an image and 280 characters. Sophie’s Latest single Urban Legend brings this parasocial delusion into focus.
Urban Legend – Sophie Edwards
“I’ll keep pulling at my cheeks ‘til I resemble what I envy, gotta make up for lost time.”
On social media, someone may seem to live a life you envy. Yet in reality, you only see what they want you to see. An overly curated feed highlighting the absolute peaks while dismissing the miserable and embellishing the benign. It’s far too easy to compare ourselves to those we admire or, perhaps more accurately, our own inflated perception of those we admire.
“I think I need to remember that everything that I’m seeing on the internet is not necessarily real and it’s all just this made-up myth that people look up to. I wanted to compare that feeling to urban legends”
‘Urban Legend’ calls these curated lives we see online just that, an urban legend; something not physically real yet it manifests through a collective delusion. I sometimes find it difficult to see through the polish to the raw material underneath; I often forget that my favourite artists are, in-fact, real people and not just an account on Instagram. It’s refreshing to be reminded of the humanity out there creating art and living their lives to the fullest. When you see these posts that lead to envious feelings, perhaps it is far more valuable to acknowledge we all have our own Urban Legend we perpetuate.
Check out her Instagram, @sophieedwardsmusic to see the behind the scenes for yourself. Plus, be sure to go find a gig near you – it’s by far the best way to support local artists directly.
Have a listen to the live recording of Urban Legend performed at Hit 104.7 HQ here:
Urban Legend is out now on all good streaming platforms!
Keep a look out for our second July feature later this month.
