Who is LIZ?

“I feel like that whole R&B space got really over-saturated and I kinda did it when I felt it was the right time to do it - and now I’m on to something else”, says LIZ. We’re talking about her track “When I Rule The World”. The song is a collaboration with PC Music producer SOPHIE and it represents a drastic switch for LIZ. Two years ago she was making heavily commercial R&B. Now she’s making near-diabetic pop - the kind that’s in fashion. The video for “When I Rule The World” is bright and colourful. It features teddy bears, luxurious light blue and pink tracksuits, balloons and bubbles. Sonically and aesthetically, it’s everything we’ve come to associate with PC Music - and different to LIZ’s previous work.

Debuted by SOPHIE at PC Music’s “multimedia reality network” (read: a branded blow-out sponsored by Red Bull), the track then aired in an assumedly expensive commercial for the Samsung Galaxy S6 phone before being released online in July this year - with an audio video, a music video, and a behind the scenes video. Next year they’re taking it to radio. It’s her most high-profile release so far. Yet, depending on taste, “When I Rule The World” is either the most infuriating shit you’ve ever heard or it’s a massive pop tune - or it’s both.

On the one hand, LIZ’s music is heavily derivative (her profile page on Mad Decent says she “unapologetically displays a thoughtful play on Y2K R&B pop) and she’s worked with SOPHIE at a time when the producer’s sound has been popping off - in the same way that major label pop stars ape current trends. On the other, LIZ isn’t a major label popstar and PC Music don’t just support the release, they’re involved with it. So is LIZ an artist with agency who has organically grown alongside the underground? Or is she a translucent popstar of yore who swooped in at the right time, like a seagull feasting on easy-to-find junk food? This is the question on my mind when LIZ and I meet.

LIZ grew up in the San Fernando Valley, California, in a town called Tarzana. “It’s kinda like golf courses and country clubs and stuff like that – super cute and super serene”. Her parents were “crazy hippies”, she was raised as a vegetarian, and did some acting at “nine/ten years old”. She lives on margaritas; when she’s not working she volunteers at a dog shelter; her favorite thing is going out to eat. When she talks, her voice has a dry excited lilt that, to my British ear, comes straight from Sweet Valley High or The Hills. In many ways, she’s a stereotypical Californian.

LIZ's desire to pursue music came when she saw Britney Spears’ video for “…Baby One More Time”. “That’s when I was like…” - she readies her voice into a raised whisper, squeezes tight, and then excitedly gasps - “I could be a pop-star too!” From here, the short story is that teenaged LIZ auditioned for the girl group No Secrets - who were signed to Jive Records - but lost out because “they were really good at hip-hop dancing and I was still a ballerina - I didn’t fit in”; she played piano at coffee houses and clubs on the Sunset Strip; she started being home schooled after she found a manager and was “getting sessions with really big songwriters and producers” and couldn’t always make school; she started toplining with artists like Switch and Rusko. Then she met Paul Devro, A&R and self-confessed “spiritual guru” at Mad Decent. The long bit is the continual back work she put in over that ten year or so journey. LIZ’s story is hardly a major-label snaps up artist tale - it’s very grassroots.

“I didn’t want to be some house-diva who was featuring on stuff because I had been making my own music for over ten years”, LIZ says. “I’ve always been hustling”. In that time, the music industry has changed. There was no iTunes when LIZ started out and she’s seen support come and go as all the big labels merged back in the early 2000s and A&R’s and management teams were made redundant. Her career, she concedes, has been a series of “almosts”. And it still is. “Every day I’m clawing to get something to work”.

LIZ’s introduction to SOPHIE came in 2014, when she caught A.G Cook, SOPHIE, and QT playing at SXSW. “I felt like I was on drugs - the show was so cool”. She knew she “had to work with them”. A month or so later her label boss, Diplo, was working with SOPHIE at the Mad Decent studio in LA. So LIZ, a Rick Ross level hustler through and through, made sure she was there.

“I was like…” - she adopts a rushed, panting and out of breath voice - “’What?!! SOPHIE’s there?! OMG?’ I was in my work out clothes. ‘Hi! I’m a huge fan!!!!’ I was totally nerding out to him. He was so sweet. We worked the next week and wrote a song from scratch together”.

On a surface level, it’s easy to see why the collaboration with SOPHIE on “When I Rule the World” feels contrived. Yet it’s perhaps even easier to see why the two were drawn to each other. SOPHIE’s music takes its cues from early 2000s pop, which LIZ also adores. “The day I walked into the studio I had a Britney backpack on. Her face was all over it. He looks at the bag and he’s like… ‘I want to write a song about that’”. The result is a track called “High School Love”, which LIZ describes as a “totally cute, naïve pop song”. She also has an unreleased track with PC Music head A.G Cook - supposedly taken from a forthcoming PC Music release.

As LIZ and I talk, it becomes more and more clear that she is less like the glossy, fully-formed high-budget popstar that “When I Rule The World” presents her as. Her last mixtape, which has racked up an impressive play count in the hundreds of thousands, features production from Soundcloud wave luminaries like Lido and Mr Carmack. She’s worked with Wave Racer and Djemba Djemba. LIZ says that’s down to her desire to (a) pluck out artists who haven’t worked with a vocal artist before (“there’s something really fresh about it”) and (b) to be “involved in the progression of pop music”. And I think I believe her. Unlike her idol Britney Spears - who had A&Rs cherry pick her Neptunes influenced sound - or indeed some of today’s biggest pop stars, LIZ has taken her career into her own hands, on her own terms. She’s a different breed of pop artist. One that, for all intents and purposes, is aesthetically presented as huge, but wants to push things forward and champion underground music. It’s difficult to imagine a Katy Perry or an Ariana Grande doing the same thing.

“I hope that the stars align at some point and timing works out in my favour and I can really manifest certain things with that sensibility”, LIZ says. “It’s hard, because I am competing against these huge pop stars who have these huge platforms and I get buried. But we’ll see”. LIZ may not be the biggest thing in the world, and she may never be. “When I Rule the World” may be a pop smash, or it may be an annoying, rage-inducing blip. She could be a massive star. In LIZ’s world, perhaps that’s important, but really none of that will matter - at least not to us. What’s important is that LIZ is doing things her own way. She’s hustling. She’s doing pop a little differently. That may work or it may fail. But we can’t fault her for trying. She won’t stop until those “almosts” turn into a hit.

You can find Ryan on Twitter.