“I may be young, but I know what I want” is an apt opening line for “Boy,” the second single from rising pop musician Sizzy Rocket. Her first, “Bestie,” was part cheeky pop parody, part queer empowerment: atop a track that would fit in on Taylor Swift’s 1989 , she lusts hard for her best girl friend like she’s another one of her girlfriends, rather than a prop for male desire. Rocket takes it down a sexual notch with the romance of her synth-driven power-ballad “Boy,” but she’s still direct. “Boy, you’re giving me life,” she asserts on the song, which Flavorwire is pleased to premiere below.
“I think the most obvious difference between ‘Boy’ and ‘Bestie’ is that while ‘Bestie’ is so overtly sexual, ‘Boy’ isn’t about sex, it’s about feeling,” she tells Flavorwire. “I wrote it from a teenage girl’s perspective — it’s an innocent crush, it’s about someone who makes you feel bubbly, someone who can save you from your own darkness. And I didn’t originally intend to write it for me — I haven’t had feelings for a boy in a long time. But it’s such a beautiful, universally relatable song that I wanted to put it on the album. It has absolutely nothing to do with my sexuality, but that’s my favorite thing about songwriting — taking on different characters and perspectives.”
Produced by Babydaddy of the Scissor Sisters (like “Bestie”), “Boy” embodies one of many aspects — a “synth-pop electro-clash sound” — of Sizzy Rocket’s forthcoming debut. The album will follow not only “Boy” and “Bestie,” but a collaboration with Flossstradamus and Run the Jewels (“Don’t Trip“) and script-flipping cover of the Beastie Boys’ “Girls” as well.
“My LP definitely has a vast emotional spectrum and sonically it’s going to be very hard to pin down,” she says. “You’ll be able to hear ’80s campy pop, hip hop — there’s a piano ballad, a break-up anthem, a summer love song, a ‘damn I had too much to drink’ song. My biggest thing about songwriting is purpose — where and when is this song going to be played? Like, there are songs you can listen to at 3 a.m. dreaming about your early twenties, and there are songs you can play with your girls before you go out and get into trouble. Each song has its own place.”
Another constant within the Vegas native’s songs: empowerment, which reflects in her feminist pop anthem of choice, Peaches’ “Boys Wanna Be Her.” “Talk about a woman who does what she wants when she wants and gets what she wants,” she says. “I air-guitar to that song in my room when I’m getting ready for shows.”
“I just want young women to feel empowered. That’s all,” she adds. “I want to stand for the woman who makes decisions, dresses a certain way, behaves in a certain manner because it makes her feel good about herself, not because she wants to please the people around her. Something about respect that I’ve learned — especially as an aspiring, queer, tattooed, sexualized, female pop star — is that you have to demand it. And I just want to show other girls that you don’t have to be afraid to do that no matter what anybody tells you.”