Imogen Heap on Viral ‘Headlock’ Success, AI and Ariana Grande: ‘There’s a New Type of Energy This Time’

Few people have had a better start to 2025 than Imogen Heap. Over the past few weeks, the pioneering producer and songwriter has scored her first-ever chart hit with “Headlock” – lifted from 2005’s spellbinding LP, Speak For Yourself – and has found herself receiving “dozens upon dozens” of collaboration requests, she tells Billboard UK over the phone.

A combination of TikTok and a feature on viral psychological horror game Mouthwashing may be helping “Headlock” scale the charts – it currently stands at No. 98 on the Billboard Hot 100 and has cracked the top 40 in the U.K. – but it’s a newfound appreciation for Heap’s groundbreaking approach to pop music that has summoned an increasingly feverish Gen Z audience. 

Across social media, younger listeners have recently become enamored with Heap’s theatrically layered vocals and expressive production style, as well how she popularized the use of the vocoder. They are also coming to gauge the extent of her influence on global superstars such as Ariana Grande, FKA Twigs and Billie Eilish. “Imogen Heap was lowkey mother to every 2010s pop girl,” reads a comment on a decade-old clip of Grande performing with Heap’s ingenious wearable instrument, the MiMu gloves.

In 2010, Heap became the first woman to win a Grammy for engineering, while her music has since been sampled extensively by Grande (“Goodnight N Go,” “Eternal Sunshine”), as well as rappers including A$AP Rocky and the late Mac Miller. Following the release of 2014 album Sparks, however, she has aligned her output with developing technological initiatives in order to make the industry more accessible, she says. Recently, there’s been the launch of data solution Auracles, while Heap has also spent the past few years working on Mogen, an AI assistant that she hopes will deepen her creative process in the studio.

Her journey hasn’t all been art and reverence. Heap contended with a plethora of major label battles during her time in electronic duo Frou Frou, and a currently oversaturated streaming market, she says, has occasionally discouraged her from releasing new music. Since she spent time enjoying “solo jam sessions” during lockdown, however, she has slowly begun to emerge renewed: “I realized how much I needed to be back at the piano. I started to feel more free and open,” she says. 

This sense of levity has been amplified by the slow-burn success of “Headlock,” an achievement that has coincided with the song’s rights reverting back to Heap, after a 20-year license to Sony. In the coming months, she is planning to start collaborating with fans via livestream, alongside deepening her unique sound world and learning more about herself. It’s a time of rejuvenation and opportunity – with Heap preparing to set out on a more experimental path than ever before.

Below, Heap talks with Billboard about her recent “Headlock” success, working on Auracles and Mogen, being an influence on younger artists and much more.

When did you first notice that “Headlock” had started taking on a life of its own?

There’s a new type of energy this time. For so long, [my career] has been about sharing ideas like Auracles and hoping to kickstart something new for the music industry. This [virality] feels like a nice balance that’s happening in return, and I’m excited about the opportunities it’s giving me. I love taking a wildcard and running with it.

I don’t have TikTok and I don’t really understand it. I’ve never really gone into this world of hyper-fast, collaborative music but I do think that it’s amazing. I’ve instead become obsessed with blockchain, and more recently, AI, while keeping my head down for the past 10 years. I haven’t wanted to add to the problems of the music industry, and contribute to things that make sense for me.

How does it feel to look back at your earlier music, revisiting those thoughts and emotions with the perspective you have now?

I’m just really, really happy. I love that record [Speak for Yourself]. It changed the course of my independence: I was able to be free of any debts or labels; I remortgaged my flat at the time. I came off Island Records with Frou Frou and it wasn’t so great. They did an absolutely terrible job of marketing our records, as they decided that the Sugababes were worth all their money or something, meaning our record [2002’s Details] got no love. It’s really sad, you know — they just couldn’t be bothered. 

So, I wanted to come out of that deal, and I said, “Please just let me go. I want to do a record independently and I think I can do it.” Back then, we didn’t have Patreon or Kickstarter, so I was left with the question of where to get the money from. I would walk into banks and ask for the loan to make a new record, and they would say, “Yeah, sure, but what’s your job?” I would have to say, “This is my job, here’s the records I have made and here’s how much more money I’d make if I did it independently.”

I would soon learn that if you went independent and did these discussions yourself, and you found your marketing people, everything just opened up. It was just a myth that you needed a label to make something happen. 

You have amazing vocal control on “Headlock.” Do you have any rituals as far as keeping it in shape?

I’ve never done any vocal exercises, and the only thing that kept my voice good was the fact that I was using it almost every day. Recently I haven’t been — it’s not as strong at the moment. But as I’m seeing my monthly streams grow and grow, I have started to consciously sing more: When there’s nobody in the house, I’ll sing from my lungs in the shower!

For some time, I didn’t want to sing, as I couldn’t live with putting music out in an industry that doesn’t support its artists. “Headlock” is doing its thing, and for the first time, I’m seeing crazy numbers from streaming income [at 17 million monthly listeners]  – that’s never happened to me before. I’m really grateful to be able to put it into Auracles, but generally [the streaming model] doesn’t really work. Instead, I’ve wanted to invest my time in something that did make sense, so then I could relax and make absolutely tons of music and feel like it’s doing something to empower others.

Dozens of artists have covered or sampled your work over the years. In particular, Ariana Grande has repeatedly spoken of your influence on both her career and personal music fandom. Do you feel a kinship with her?

I appreciate Ariana to the point where I get teary even talking about her. She is so f–king busy, right – I thought the [Wicked] film was brilliant – but she remains consistently kind, thoughtful and open. Recently, I reached out to thousands of people ahead of an Auracles launch. When I spoke to Ariana about it, she was like, “Whatever help you need, let me know.” Having that support from someone who is so high-profile and influential made me feel really validated. People say, “Oh God, I am so busy” – but they can’t possibly be as busy as Ariana Grande!

The other day I was walking around and thinking to myself, “I’m going to write a song about her one day.” I really am. I am so grateful she found a connection with my work, and she has been so nice about what it means to her — and in a way, I want to repay that. 

No matter how big she gets, or how many things have happened to her, she remains a shining light and is so pure, funny and bright. Ariana is so genuine; there’s not many people you can point to who send such a great message and energy out there.

You’ve been working on Mogen and Auracles for a good while now. Are there any other creative models today that you see now as you did AI two years ago – ideas with potential that musicians are only beginning to scratch the surface of?

Oh God, there’s so many! I find the rate of innovation around AI and visual media to be breathless. Every single day there are these insane developments, it’s blowing my mind. There’s so many things you can do that don’t involve sitting at a computer, typing away. The thing which makes me nervous is the provenance; there’s all this amazing video, art and poetry being generated by AI as well as music, but you know, creators need to be credited and they need to tell us where they’re training [the data] from. 

There’s some cultural suspicion around the use of assistive AI in music, but you have always seemed to approach it positively. How has it felt to open up the discussion with those who may hold different views?

I think as long as we get the ground layers right, and we build from a bedrock which is supportive, then we can grow great things off of that together. If we build off a very shaky, unstable, permissionless system, which is currently what it is, then we’re going to create chaos. 

But I guess I am positive, because there are lots of things to be positive about. The more worried people are, the more negative energy will go out and come back into these things, it’s just a law of attraction. I think it’s really important to enjoy this kind of unstoppable force of creativity because that’s how humans survive and evolve – through collaboration. We need to find this common ground where we feel that humans are supporting the system consciously, so that it doesn’t create tension. 

Do you still believe that music can make a difference in these troubling times?

Yes, undeniably so! Music makes a difference in the world every single second of every single day. When you’re creating music, and even when you’re listening to music, all the structures of how we understand our reality disappear. Those tiny moments of ephemeral, continuous flow and presence offer us the pure sense of being in the moment; not having to think about material practices and money. That’s why music is just so powerful.

What headspace are you hoping to enter your next era in?

I’m in a really good place. I think before, I felt like I had control in my life, which is a complete fantasy. Every single day, things happen and impact your life to the point that you don’t really have control. That’s been the big shift that’s happened for me in the last couple of years: in order to do anything in the future, you have to do it now. 

The other day, I chatted to ChatGPT, and I said, ‘Can you find me a Tai Chi master in my area?’ It came up with this person who I then met the other day – and that just feels amazing! The future is in our minds, in our history books, it’s in our predictions, but it isn’t real life. This is all there is. 

I’ve been embracing an element of stillness. When something is hyper-good or hyper-bad, I try to regulate that, so the waves of feeling and emotion become less overwhelming. It’s really embracing what’s manageable: what’s happening here, what’s happening now.