Emerging alt-pop powerhouse and Vegas native, Sizzy Rocket, deserves to be on everybody’s radar. Her unique soundscape of rebellious, punk-tinged dark hyperpop is a bold combination that music consumers like myself have been starved for.
Her sophomore album, Grrrl–one of my absolute favorite releases of 2019–was a trap-infused dark pop album about self-discovery, heartbreak, and sexuality. The title was influenced by her love for Riot Grrrl and the production invoked shades of modern hip hop acts like Travis Scott and Denzel Curry. Her iconic raspy falsetto, and the emotionally-wrought soundscapes of each song coupled with her messy and unfiltered lyrics that detailed her life of excessive partying, touring, and fleeting romantic relationships with men and women was awe-inspiring, gritty and fresh.
Her newest album, ANARCHY, is a much more bold, definitive, and liberated body of work. Rocket has described the album title as “a nod to [her] punk roots and [her] own personal chaos… [Anarchy] is a state of disorder due to non-recognition of authority. Nobody can tell you what to do or who to be.”
Recorded in an “eight-day creative outburst” last winter, ANARCHY is the chaotic, messy, and unfiltered soundtrack to Rocket shedding an old skin after a breakup, obliterating old ideas of who she thought she could be. If Grrrl was the product of a star emerging from underwater, ANARCHY is her bursting to the surface.
Her punk attitude and unapologetic rockstar bravado on two of the album’s opening tracks, “That Bitch,” and “Running with Scissors,” is contagious. The repackaged trap-punk instrumentatals are also extremely fresh and gritty. “& It Feels Like Love” is an ode to the ’70s and ’80s, complete with nods to “Strawberry Fields Forever,” and Janis Joplin. The distorted bass also sounds like it could easily be a riff that was plucked from PJ Harvey’s Rid of Me.
Her dark humor is another massive highlight. The most reviled type of person in our society is often a woman who acts out for attention. “Crazy Bitch” sympathizes with this archetype and unpacks the spectacle of the “crazy bitch.” The song is told from the perspective of the “crazy bitch,” allowing her to control her own narrative outside of the horrendous jokes and comments people make at her expense. The lyrics take shots at the people who claim to hate her, when in reality they are the same people who depend on her antics for entertainment (“I would die just to be someone/Ain’t that exactly what you want”).
The sonic outbursts on the album’s closer, “Queen of the World,” perfectly mirror the pure chaos in the chorus as she paints a picture of herself hanging out the window of a speeding car, screaming at the top of her lungs “I could live forever in this moment!” Her mission statement for this album was to take back her power, to be reckless, and unapologetically own her stories without having to water down her identity. And it’s very clear that the process was extremely cathartic for her.
Listen: