Poppy released Negative Spaces on November 15, 2024. Her sixth studio album arrived through Sumerian Records with Jordan Fish producing and Stephen Harrison contributing to the songwriting. Its 15 tracks put screamed vocals, clean choruses and synth-pop in the same sequence, with “The Center’s Falling Out” pushing the abrasive end of that range.
The song began with a Harrison riff and a very specific mood. “I knew I wanted to scream that day,” Poppy told Kerrang!. She had a concept ready, and the performance followed the emotion she’d taken into the studio. Listening back to the finished take, she could hear the changes in her expression, from smiling to gritting her teeth. The track also received an official performance video.
The collaboration itself had roots in existing friendships. Poppy had met Fish in a Los Angeles studio years earlier and stayed in contact after their paths crossed on tour. She knew Harrison from work on “Scary Mask” and from spending time together outside music. Their sessions for “New Way Out” in early 2024 gave the three a starting point, and they continued writing from there.
Fish’s contribution included a deliberate approach to song structure. In a December 2024 NME interview, he explained that Poppy wanted substantial rock songs, and that his task was to give her lyrics and personality a more conventional framework. He described a straightforward working process with an artist who wasn’t anxious about what she was making. The emphasis was on shaping the material into a connected album while keeping her writing at its center.
Poppy had her own set of experiments in mind. She told NME that she began with a moodboard, including plans for sustained aggression and a dance track drawing on 1980s synth-pop. She and Fish shared an appetite for both heavy music and sweet pop melodies, which gave them common ground. Having trusted collaborators in the room also meant ideas could receive immediate feedback. Poppy preferred setting aside consistent blocks of time for an album, allowing her to concentrate on its direction instead of assembling it through scattered sessions.
Preparation also helped her decide what to address in the writing. In a November 2024 interview with Dork, Poppy described taking notes about what she wanted to attempt and using that process to confront feelings she found uncomfortable. She said work ran from the beginning of the year into the summer. Her explanation of the title pointed toward restraint within all that intensity: “the space in between and the silence is just as important as the sound.” For a record built around such different vocal and musical approaches, the pauses were part of the design.
Listeners heard that range during the rollout. “The Cost of Giving Up” and “Crystallized” were released together in October 2024, before the full album arrived. “Crystallized” gave the synth-pop side a clear place in the campaign, while the finished record surrounded those melodic passages with chugging guitars and harsher vocals. Poppy handled both the clean singing and the screams herself.
“The Cost of Giving Up” subsequently took that contrast onto American late-night television. Poppy performed it on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on March 10, 2025, moving from clean singing into screams as the song built toward its ending.
