Four years ago, rock ‘n’ roll songstress Lilith Czar rose from the ashes of Juliet Simms, killing her former self and reemerging stronger than ever before. To further exemplify this new era, Czar released Created From Filth And Dust, her debut album under her new moniker. After years of facing misogyny and oppression from the music industry firsthand, Czar reinvented herself in the boldest way possible, releasing a body of work that was a sonically brutal display of rebellion and non-conformity. However, the story was far from over.
While Czar made it very clear she was no longer the emo rock, Warped Tour heroine she became known as, it was never fully revealed why she had to become Lilith Czar in the first place. To convey the next chapter of her tale, Czar shares “POPSICLE,” her latest single and heaviest musical effort yet. Taking her signature raspy vocals to new heights, Czar screams over ferocious guitars while incorporating trap beats and a deeply powerful message into her musicality. It is this contrast between soft and rough, light and dark, that conveys the conflict Czar continued to face in her career following her transformation.
After years of not being taken seriously by the music industry, Czar — while still under the name of Juliet Simms — was told by a label executive that she should wear a bikini and ride a popsicle on an album cover. It was in this moment that she realized, in order to become the artist she was born to be, Simms could be no more. After symbolically “killing” herself in the music video for “All American,” Lilith Czar rose as the dark and mysterious successor.
Following the release of Created From Filth And Dust, Czar rose to the No. 1 slot on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart with her song “Anarchy.” Additional songs such as “Feed My Chaos” and “King” served as biting anthems of empowerment for anyone who refused to stick to the status quo. She demanded her voice be heard as she took to numerous festival stages or toured alongside the likes of Halestorm, The Pretty Reckless, The Warning and Black Veil Brides. Most recently, she joined forces with The Funeral Portrait on their single “Hearse For Two.”
Czar’s first independent release, “POPSICLE” is a visceral declaration of her new era of confidence and strength. After overcoming oppression in the industry, as well as struggles with alcohol and disordered eating, Czar’s artistry is fueled by a newfound victory and independence. Aided by a close group of trusted collaborators and pulling inspiration from figures ranging from David Bowie to Joan of Arc, Czar serves as the epitome of the dark feminine archetype, refusing to submit when it comes to her sonic, aesthetic or personal identity.
Included in what will soon be a trilogy of new songs, “POPSICLE” will reveal more of who the ethereal Lilith Czar is while serving as an unrelenting cathartic force. Czar will go down in history as one of this generation’s strongest female figures, defining herself as the epitome of when unbridled rage is harnessed and turned into an unforgettable expression of fearlessness and power. For those who find comfort in the uncomfortable or for those who are demonized for dancing outside the confines of a patriarchal society, Lilith Czar’s musical world invites you.
There’s so much exciting stuff for going on for you, but first I wanted to ask about Created From Filth And Dust — the album that started it all. I looked it up the other day and it’s almost exactly the four-year anniversary of when the album came out.
Yeah! We were shooting to actually have “POPSICLE” come out on the anniversary, but things took a little bit longer than we expected. But it’s around the same time, so I like that there’s that connection to the birth of that record and everything that’s coming out now.
Right exactly. Now that that album has been out for some time, I was wondering how it resonates with you now or how you look back on it now as you’re continuing to enter this new era and grow as Lilith Czar.
That record is a massive reckoning of self for me. That album was the beginning of everything that I’m still planning on releasing. It was kind of the foundation of me becoming the artist and the woman that I had grown into. Lilith was an answer for me as a human and an artist. Becoming that artist was somebody that I felt that I needed to become in order to survive, in order to convey how I felt that I’ve changed as a person and evolved in all of that. And the catalyst to becoming Lilith Czar was years and years of what I’ve faced, not only as an artist but as a woman in the music industry. Because I’ve always put real life experiences and my real feelings, ideas, thoughts and the journey of life into my music, I felt that it was necessary that I become this artist to showcase that I’m now living on top of my suffering rather than under it. That is why I created Lilith Czar, and Created From Filth And Dust was the beginning. It was the introduction, and this next iteration of Lilith and the music that is subsequently coming after is a continuation of that story but revealing a bit more and why it is I had to become her in the first place.
I can’t wait to see what more of the story is told, especially in “POPSICLE.” I wanted to ask about the story behind that, but first I wanted to dig into the sound of the song. It’s something I feel like we’ve never heard from Lilith before. I wanted to ask if that change in sound — going a bit darker, a bit heavier — was planned for you?
“POPSICLE” — lyrically, sonically, production wise, all of it — was a result of fucking years of being told, ‘You got to sound like this. You got to change your voice. You got to be more pop. You got to show more skin.’ Years of basically having the fundamental refusal to see me at all for who I am, who I wanted to be and who I was trying to be as an artist. I got into this industry because I wanted to help people. And that was something that people weren’t really interested in me doing. It was [about] party songs…There’s nothing wrong with that. I love pop music. I listen to pop music. Those are things that I enjoy. I just don’t gravitate towards writing that kind of music, I never have. So “POPSICLE” was a result of me fighting against that for a really, really long time. The dichotomy between the verse and the chorus, I wanted to have that tug of war pull between really dramatically heavy — going as far in the direction of what I’ve been trying to do — and have this more pop sensibility to the choruses. Even in the second verse I wanted to convey that tug of war that I really dealt with in my career.
The message behind the song sparked from this label executive who had asked you to pose in a bikini on a popsicle for an album cover. Being who you are and doing the music that you do, I feel like being asked to do something like that would be almost demeaning or maybe embarrassing in a way.
Yeah. That meeting was kind of the straw that broke the camel’s back. It was actually that night after that meeting that I went, ‘I’m done being Juliet Simms. I’m changing everything. I’m dying my fucking hair black. I’m going harder. I’m blowing everything up (laughs). I’m going to kill off Juliet Simms in a music video and become the antithesis of what people have tried to make me become my entire career.’ There’s direct references to my experience there in the song, but also the song is very much telling the story of my experience in the industry and coming into that meeting. Look — sex and being sexy, I’m all about it. But when you have your own agency over it. When you feel like it’s your choice. When it’s something that you don’t feel that you’re compelled to do because somebody else is holding the purse strings. When it’s your own choice, it’s fucking empowering and awesome, but when it comes at the heels of you discussing how you can reach listeners on a deeper, more meaningful level and then being reduced to that, that’s offensive. That’s going to piss anybody off.
When it comes to a situation like that, where do you find the strength to stand up for yourself?
You know, for a long time I didn’t have that courage and that strength and that’s why I kind of found myself in situations that made me extremely uncomfortable and ultimately resulted in partaking in certain things that I could control. When you’re starting out in the industry — and this is for anybody that you know is wanting to enter — it’s really, really fucking vital and important to remember who you are. Because I feel like we have a strong sense of who we are in our earlier years, and somewhere along the way that can get strengthened and you can become more of that and you evolve and that’s how it should go, but my experience is I changed. I gave in to the pressures. I was impressionable. The strength, the resilience and the guts to disagree and voice it, that all came well after I beat a severe drinking problem and well after I beat disordered eating. And that battle, for anybody who’s going through it, I cannot empathize enough with you. It is an extremely difficult thing to overcome, and when you do — and you can — you go, ‘Nothing else can fuck with me (laughs).’ You sort of do become un-fuck-withable because it puts things in perspective. How tragic would it be to go through something like that and then not use it to possibly inspire another person or help one other person through their own version of it?
Going off of that, you’ve been in the industry for many years now and you’ve always have been vocal about feminism and being a woman in the industry [or] in rock music. I was wondering what your thoughts were on how the inclusion and treatment of women has maybe changed over time since when you first started. Do you think it’s gotten better?
Definitely gotten better. I think that when I started, it was certainly very uncommon for women to be pursuing rock. There was just not many of us at all, which is why there was a lot of pushback and years of record labels being like, ‘Well, women don’t succeed in rock. Your voice is already raspy. You can’t have live guitars or live drums behind it.’ It’s a lot of fighting that. And it was also at a time where women’s physicality was the forefront of their art. I’m sure men deal with it as well, but it is much more prevalent for female artists. I think it’s probably a lot more hidden, a lot more secret. But because of the Internet and because of social media and listeners and fans having a voice and dictating what they like, what they want to see and what they want to hear — it used to just be in the hands of these giant corporations, and now we’re living in a time where the listener gets to decide. And people want authenticity. They want to see real. So I think that it’s become a lot better for women, and there’s certainly a lot more women in rock. Women to me I feel like are at the forefront of music. So it has gotten better, but it doesn’t mean it’s gone.
Going back to “POPSICLE,” it’s still Lilith, but it’s also this next chapter in the story. I was wondering how this era — either sonically, visually or lyrically — is different from Created From Filth And Dust. What can fans expect to see that might be different from what we’ve seen before?
Well before, Created From Filth And Dust was met with resistance, which is something I don’t think I’ve really talked about. There was a lot of hands in the pod and there was a lot of opinions… and I pretty much stuck to my guns during the process of writing that record and finishing it up and putting it out. This next iteration is free from any [of that]. It’s just what I want to do (laughs). I have a core group of trusted collaborators that I love to write and work with, and it’s been extremely liberating to just go into the studio and create, write, sing, say and produce exactly what it is that I’m hearing. The last record — and this is no discredit to Created From Filth And Dust whatsoever because I’m very proud of that body of work and that record – but this next iteration…It’s harder, it’s darker, it’s got more risks, a bit more balls, I’m combining different genres. You think “POPSICLE” is a wild ride, wait until you hear the next one. You can definitely expect the unexpected (laughs).
“POPSICLE” is part of a trilogy of new songs coming out and I was wondering what those other stories or other songs might be looking like for you?
I’m assuming you’ve seen the last four weeks of my social media and how I don’t really give away much (laughs). So I do plan on being a little bit tight-lipped about the next songs. But I am releasing this independently, so given the nature of an independent release things take a little bit. There’s a little bit more time. And the next song we have already jumped into the creative aspect for that, which I’m very excited about (laughs). It is pretty crazy. That’s the next song following “POPSICLE.” It’s got a little bit of everything. There’s some EDM. It’s very, very heavy in certain parts. There’s a breakdown, there’s a little bit of rapping and big, soaring vocals with crazy Queen-esque harmonies. It’s definitely something I’m very, very excited for people to hear. This trilogy, it’s kind of got a story arc. “POPSICLE” being the fall from grace, and the next song being the losing everything, losing it all, and then the third song is the resolution and what I’ve learned from all of that. So all three songs do take you on a bit of a ride, but it lands very nicely.
Going off of visuals or sounds, you mentioned Queen might be a future influence. I know with this era you’ve mentioned artists like David Bowie who’ve had such an iconic look and sound and they were known for their eras in their music. Specifically for this era, who are your biggest influences right now?
There’s been a lot of different characters, artists and fictional characters that have inspired me throughout my writing the last two years. There’s the obvious David Bowie, and of course Stevie Nicks and bands like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Elton John, Foo Fighters, Jimmy Eat World, My Chemical Romance and all the artists that I’ve always talked about. But there’s also been a lot of inspiration that I’ve drawn from Medusa, Joan of Arc, Persephone, the Furies in Dante’s “Inferno,” banshees, the women during the witch trials, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and characters like Loki, and just taking these very inspirational both historic and fictitious characters and people and incorporating what they overcame. When it comes to the visuals for this next era, everything that I posted is just for one song. Because I’m releasing this independently and because we’re living in the climate that we are with music and how the music and the visuals just go hand in hand, I wanted to take that to the next level with “POPSICLE” and create multiple visuals telling the story through the lens of this song.
You mentioned all these historical fictional women through history, like Medusa, even Joan of Arc. I feel like they were women who, at the time, were seen as the villains or the bad guy.
We’ve always been the bad guy, FYI (laughter). The story is different depending on which book you’re reading or which religion you’re referring to, but the story of Lilith is that she was created at the same time Adam was. And when Adam tried to get her to lay beneath him and submit, she refused. She’s like, ‘What are you talking about? We’re equals.’ So he went to tattletale to God and told on Lilith for not submitting. Then she was turned into a snake, and the rest is history. She’s bad for not submitting to man. And subsequently Eve was then made from Adam’s rib, because that would make her subservient to him. Then she was the one who committed the first sin by eating the apple. So women also were the first to sin. So like you’re saying, with Medusa she was painted as this monster, as the pinnacle of a man-hating, man-eating, terrible, defiant woman and it’s so bad, but really she was scorned and then turned into this monster. That’s what her legacy was. But really she was just defending herself, and same with Joan of Arc. So it is definitely a common trope for women who are defiant and who disagree and who go against the grain to be labeled bad.
Through this massive era of change for you, you’re reclaiming yourself after a period of time where you were continuously oppressed by the industry. Through it all, through becoming Lilith, what have you most learned about yourself? Because obviously Juliet Simms is still there.
Yeah of course! She’s the woman who built this other version of me, this persona. There’s no erasing who your core is.
What have you most learned about yourself, maybe about Juliet, about Lilith?
I’ve learned to let go. I’ve learned to not let my trauma or my bad experiences or shit that I dealt with define who I am. And for a long time it did. And I decided along the way that I was no longer going to let that be something that I was carrying on my shoulders or weighing me down, and in the journey of learning to let go I found that I stopped withholding things. I stopped needing to keep things secret or hidden or locked away. I feel like when we do that, we are smothering ourselves. My best advice that I could give anybody is, if you’re dealing with anything that you’re ashamed of or afraid of letting other people know or something you might be embarrassed of, always the best thing is to talk to somebody. Tell somebody. Get it off of your chest, your shoulders. I would say that the thing that I’ve learned the most in the past few years is that letting go and not being afraid to be exactly who you are and talk about and say exactly what’s on your mind is ultimately extremely freeing and liberating. For me it’s made me a happier person.
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