Queer Punk Extravaganza: Sizzy Rocket Channels Hopefulness and Angst in “Live Laugh Love”
Queer punk rockstar Sizzy Rocket is living, laughing and loving on her fourth studio album as she reclaims her personal power and love for punk influences. Live Laugh Love seeks to inspire the underdogs, outcasts and misfits. The songstress seamlessly blends her most intimate reflections, transformative stories of empowerment and amplifying the beauty in her inner and outer worlds. Rocket challenges what it means to be a pop artist in 2022 with her independent DIY approach, unapologetic queer lyricism and her genre-blending musicality.
What started as a two year project in the making has transformed and redefined Rocket’s “voice of reason” and artistic maturity throughout the beauty, pain and growth. For Rocket, punk has been a source of creativity and inspiration, but lacked queer feminist icons. Rocket’s Live Laugh Love is a safe reclamation space for women and queer individuals in the punk scene. Punk’s DIY aspects saturate Live Laugh Love as Rocket captures “hopefulness, angst and punk” in her storytelling, additionally expanding on the dichotomy of angst and hope and how both can co-exist at the same time.
The title track “Live Laugh Love” is accompanied by a DIY music video that was inspired by Rocket’s childhood growing up in suburbia. The "Live Laugh Love" music video was made with long-time collaborator Worst November. The two road-tripped to Laughlin, NV with a bag of cameras, a handwritten shot list and a duffel bag of indie-sleaze-inspired looks (cue the bedazzled shades and gas station trucker hat). Shot in a desolate outlet mall in her home state of Nevada, “Live Laugh Love” centers a carefree Rocket employing a photo booth and a portable karaoke machine for her own version of a wild night out. Hearkening back to her childhood performances in Nevada strip malls, she blissfully rocks out to her most punk song to date, embodying the “make the most out of what you have” mentality.
Rocket has long been known for her DIY approach to creating her visual universe as an independent artist who relies on the strength of her originality, creativity and authenticity to build the Sizzy Rocket world without a major label budget. Owning her sexuality as an important part of her identity, she released a Playboy-certified sex-tape music video for her 2020 single “Smells Like Sex” (a reclamation of a woman’s power in leaking her own scandalous video), which went viral on YouTube.
Guided by emotional storytelling, electronica soundscapes and a rebel attitude, Rocket’s message radiates as she taps into a power within her vulnerability. “[Live Laugh Love] is a positive energy, which I think is really true to my love for punk, especially today with the pop-punk resurgence that’s going on,” Rocket says. “There's a lot of negativity and like self deprecating messages, but to me, true punk has always been uplifting, positive and hopeful.”
The art punk extravaganza that is Live Laugh Love serves as an ode to modern-age queer female powered rock and the future of punk. “Once the album's out, it exists forever and it'll find its own life and it'll be there,” Rocket says, “I'm excited to see where it takes me and how it affects people in this current landscape of music.”
[UNPUBLISHED]: Thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to speak with Unpublished Magazine. For those readers who may be unfamiliar with you. How would you describe your music?
[SIZZY]: I've been saying it's punk for the gays. I feel like the queer scene doesn't really have punk icons. I feel like historically it's been very white male but, we're gonna change that. This is punk for the gays.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Your latest release, Live Laugh Love is described as an art punk extravaganza. Can you talk to me about the inspiration and creative process behind the album?
[SIZZY]: We've been working on this record for two years now, and the process was actually very simple. It was just me and my collaborator, my producer, and we showed up at his studio every day and just wrote how we felt that day. I was lucky enough that he moved from New York where we met to LA at the beginning of 2021 into this beautiful house with this backyard studio. I feel like having that space to just sort of express myself every day was so important to making this album. Some days we would show up and I would cry because I was going through a breakup, and we would write a really heartbreaking song. Other days, I would show up and just be so angry at the world and the way the COVID pandemic was being handled, and just having that space to express that range of emotion and having a collaborator who was willing to follow me wherever I wanted to go was so important. That was sort of our process and I think about finishing the record this year, and wrapping it up and starting to do the videos. I sort of realized that it's about hope, and that being able to make my art every day. It's sort of this act of hope, this act of survival, and so that's what the Live Laugh Love phrase is about.
[UNPUBLISHED]: You've been taking a DIY approach since literally the start of your career with Thrills. The title track for “Live Laugh Love” was released alongside the music video. How was your experience filming that and what was the inspiration behind the music video?
[SIZZY]: I was like the DIY Queen by accident. I just never had a label or a larger team to do things for me. So I was like, I gotta learn how to do this, otherwise, it's not going to happen. So I feel like that process has just kind of been happening over the past couple of years, and somehow I acquired all these cameras. I don't really know how that happens either. I sort of became obsessed with cameras and shooting video by accident, and so for the title track, I really wanted to capture hopefulness, angsty and punk. It still has that feeling of being mad at the world, so I really wanted to capture that dichotomy of angst and hope, and how both can sort of exist at the same time. It's actually crucial that they both exist at the same time. I grew up in suburbia in Las Vegas, and the outlet mall was sort of like this. That was sort of the only place that I had to go as a kid because I really grew up in the middle of nowhere, and so me and my photographer and creative director went to find a dead mall to go shoot this in.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What is the message that you hope your listeners can take away from Live Laugh Love, whether it's just a title track or the album?
[SIZZY]: I want people to feel hopeful and inspired. I'm emotional, we've been through a lot the past two years as human beings and I feel like that's been really hard on me. I went through a huge break up. My life being flipped upside down and the chaos in Los Angeles and the city sort of falling apart. It's a lot to go through, but I just always had my art to look forward to and I just hope that that hope and inspiration radiates through the music.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Was there a specific song that was the hardest for you to write, either lyrically or emotionally?
[SIZZY]: They were all pretty easy. I would just show up and sort of let whatever was going to happen, happen. “Rebel Revolution” was a bit of a monster just because we reproduced it a couple of times. There was a demo that we had last year that I ended up asking to reproduce, and so I feel like going through the evolution of a song can be hard because you make the demo as it's changing. It's easy to get attached to that first original version, but it was an incredible process.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What is your favorite song off the album and why do you love the song? Is there like a specific lyric or message that stands out to you? What excites you the most about the song?
[SIZZY]: I feel like it changes every day based on my mood, like that is the incredible thing about this album. Each song kind of is its own universe, and it's sonically all over the place. Emotionally, it's all over the place. But today at this moment, I want to say my favorite song is “Degenerate Anthem.” It’s a positive energy, which I think is really true to my love for punk, especially today with the pop-punk resurgence that’s going on. There's a lot of negativity and like self deprecating messages, but to me, true punk has always been uplifting, positive and hopeful, and so I feel like “Degenerate Anthem” just really has that message.
[UNPUBLISHED]: It's been two years since your last album ANARCHY was released. Has the creative process been different for Live Laugh Love since ANARCHY? Have you taken any new approaches? Are you experimenting more lyrically or instrumentally?
[SIZZY]: The process has been wildly different. ANARCHY was made in eight days. I got an Airbnb and we sort of just set up a studio there and wrote and recorded everything in eight days. Live Laugh Love was written and recorded over the span of two and a half years. It's mentally a lot harder to go right over two and a half years and sort of hold on to all the moving parts of a project over that period of time. There's a lot of maturity on this album. ANARCHY is like that punky, bratty, little sister album. Just a little more mature, a little more visualized, a little more put together. She's the older sister. She's the voice of reason. It was a completely different process.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What was the biggest lesson or breakthrough you had while creating Live Laugh Love?
[SIZZY]: I'm always scared that I'm gonna run out of songs, or that I'm gonna run out of creativity, like I have that fear, that fear is present a lot. I sort of realized while we're making this, that that isn't true, and that it's never ending like, I could have kept writing for this album and I'm still writing and still pushing myself every day to just become a better artist, lyrically and visually. I think the lesson is that creativity is truly limitless. Once you can absorb that, you know, What does that mean? Where can I go from here? It truly is a lifelong journey being an artist.
[UNPUBLISHED]: If you can pick any artists to do a cover of one of your songs from Live Laugh Love, who would you pick and for which song?
[SIZZY]: There's a song called “With My Idols,” that's the last song on the album and it's kind of folky. I'd love to hear Post Malone do that, like his voice and I love him so much. I just think he's an icon and I would love to hear him do a cover of that.
[UNPUBLISHED]: How are you feeling in this current era of your career? You're about to release a 15 track album in less than two months. What are you planning for the rest of the year and looking forward to that you're excited to share with us?
[SIZZY]: If I'm being 100% honest, I feel so proud of this work in this album. I also feel really uncertain and sort of discouraged by TikTok and this current era of music that we're in. It feels like music has been reduced to this means to an end, like this vehicle for influencers and people that use music to get famous or to get rich. It feels like music is so disposable right now which just goes against everything in my soul that I know to be true about music. I'm really uncertain about where this album is gonna land culturally, but I also understand that music is forever. Once the album's out, it exists forever and it'll find its own life and it'll be there. I'm excited to see where it takes me and how it affects people in this current landscape of music.
