Simone Murphy

Simone Murphy (born 29 July 1993) is a Scottish musician and former model. Born in Edinburgh, she started modelling aged two, before setting up several events while at the University of Edinburgh. After being scouted while working at Harvey Nichols in Edinburgh aged 21, she applied for Cycle 11 of Britain's Next Top Model, on which she placed fifth. That year, Murphy was a finalist in a competition to become PETA UK's Hottest Vegan. She later modelled for Karl Lagerfeld and appeared in music videos by The 1975.

Murphy diversified into DJing during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom. She released a remix of Lana Del Rey's "Say Yes to Heaven" in 2023 under the name Sim0ne, followed by several original compositions and a remix of Janet Jackson's "Empty". Critics usually categorise her music as house music, techno, and trance music. She has also presented PGTV, a music show broadcast on social media.

Early life and Britain's Next Top Model
Murphy was born 29 July 1993 in Edinburgh, Scotland, and was named after Nina Simone. Her mother was a stylist and owned a dress shop, and her father was a photographer. She attended George Heriot's School. Aged two, she modelled for The Scotsman fashion magazine, before modelling for local clothing brands as a teenager. She read Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Edinburgh, during which time she worked as an events manager and ran club nights. She also spent time on the door of Fly Club and helped set up Fly Festival. Her first job in the fashion industry was a job in Hollister Co. aged nineteen, which she walked out of after three weeks. After graduating in 2014, she worked in the hospitality and events industry, and took a post on the third floor of Harvey Nichols in Edinburgh, at which she was scouted as a model aged 21. Initially signed to an agency in Glasgow, she moved to an agency in Manchester on the grounds that Manchester was a bigger city, with more work available down there.

In 2016, after another model from her agency appeared on Britain's Next Top Model and booked lots of jobs as a result, she used a spare hour to apply for the series' eleventh cycle. She got most of the way through filling out the form before deciding she could not be bothered to film a video for the application, only for the producers to email her back reminding her to do so; she filmed her episodes late that year. Murphy's participation was announced in early 2017, at which point she had spent the previous three summers working in Ibiza. The only Scottish contestant in the lineup, Murphy left the competition during episode eight after ending up in the bottom two, ultimately finishing in fifth place. She stated in a May 2022 episode of the Navigating the Modelling Industry podcast that she struggled to find work after appearing on the competition until she spent a winter living in Cape Town, after which she found it easier to obtain work. She later modelled for Karl Lagerfeld and appeared in music videos by The 1975.

Music and presenting
Murphy spent the first four months of the pandemic in Bali, having moved there with a boyfriend just before lockdown, and having signed with an agency in Sydney with the intention of travelling. After returning to Scotland, she broke up with him via FaceTime, and after struggling in Scotland, she moved to London with a friend. During the pandemic, modelling work dried up, and Murphy realised that she wanted to make music, so spent lockdown teaching herself; she also came out to her followers as bisexual during this time, and quit the modelling industry after finding success as a DJ. She told Yazzi Gokcemen of Notion in February 2024 that she was proud of being able to withdraw from the industry on her terms, due to the industry's practice of withdrawing from models. In 2022, after being scouted via her TikTok, she presented PGTV, a music show jointly produced by Pure Groove, an independent music shop in London, and Locked On Recordings, a record label; the show was broadcast on Instagram and TikTok. Around this time, she played a set at Snowbombing in Austria.

In 2023, she released "Say Yes to Heaven" on SoundCloud, a glitchy techno remix of the Lana Del Rey track of the same name, which she had premiered at HÖR Berlin. Around this time, she began a residency at Rinse FM, and released a further track, "Star Sign". That July, she was selected by SoundCloud for their "First on SoundCloud" program, and then the following month, she performed a set as part of a day rave organised by Nia Archives for her single "Bad Gyalz", which comprised entirely female and genderqueer DJs. She then launched Club Zer0, a club night. At the end of that year, Andrew Ryce of Resident Advisor wrote that her SoundCloud bootleg version of Janet Jackson's "Empty" had converted "a lament for loneliness" into "a sweaty, almost athletic celebration of togetherness". After being named BBC Radio 1's Future Star of 2024, she released "Halo", a collaboration with Remedy Club.

For International Women's Day 2024, she and other women and non-binary DJs performed a set at The Thekla in Bristol. Laviea Thomas of Skiddle described her set as a "concoction of mainstream pop hits, OG club classics and a whole lot of spontaneity", and observed that Murphy got "straight to the point, diving into bouncy club music with EDM-inspired drops" in contrast to "most DJs" preferring to take punters "on a journey to [a] climax". The following month, she released "Work It", a combination of techno and trance. In June 2024, she released "Number One Lover", a track inspired by 1990s eurodance, which she produced in response to comments criticising her practice of dancing while DJing. The track was premiered at a nail pop up and karaoke session at Shoreditch's PickPic, in which punters would have their nails annotated with artwork containing a scannable NFC tag.

Personal life and artistry
Murphy is dyslexic and has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. She lived in Camden Town. She spent time on Hinge in 2022 after a long dating pause after dating people in the modelling industry. In April 2023, Megan Wallace of Planet Woo noted that she had over 120,000 followers in Instagram, with her social media content comprising humorous videos, modelling looks, and advocacy "on the pressing political issues of the day – from the injustices of Conservative party austerity, to the need to advocate for trans rights amid a context of increasingly overt hate and discrimination". She adopted a vegan lifestyle after being horrified by a social media clip; she noted in May 2022 that she had done so "overnight" "six [or] seven years" earlier. In July 2017, she was a finalist in a competition to become PETA UK's Hottest Vegan, a contest won by Mark Goodwin and Casey Rider.

In March 2017, The Scotsman reported that Murphy had described herself as being influenced by the flower power movement. In April 2022, she told Mixmag that many of the DJs she looked up to were in both the music and fashion worlds, with Peggy Gou starting off in fashion and Virgil Abloh and Dimitri from Paris starting off by mixing for Chanel shows. In July 2022, she told Gay Times that she was inspired to become a DJ by Peggy Gou and that she took inspiration from the fashion choices of Alexa Chung and from the way Jameela Jamil "uses her platform and her voice to speak up for what she believes is right". In January 2024, Tmrw wrote that she was inspired by Gou and Nina Kraviz.

Writing in April 2022, Becky Buckle of Mixmag wrote that a normal day for Murphy involved "playing mixes of camp icons such as Kylie, Lady Gaga and Charli XCX while dressed head-to-toe in Fiorucci". Yazzi Gokcemen used a February 2024 Notion interview to note that her sets "sprawl[ed] techno, hard house, trance and other pulse-raising genres", which Murphy explained as being made out of a desire to make punters move. AGZ of Guettapen wrote in January 2024 that her sets were inspired by hyperpop, hard house, and trance, while Chiara Maculan of Bricks wrote in June 2024 described her productions as "high energy blends of house, techno, trance, and even acid".