Picture Credit to @jspiophotography
For some musicians, music isn’t simply a career. It is directly linked to their truest identity and personhood. It’s a way to release everything they can’t simply say.
For Zoe on Venus, a 22-year-old, New Jersey-based singer-songwriter, music is a way to embrace her highest self, her queerness and her sexuality. With a retro-pop/disco sound, unapologetic lyrics and strikingly bold visuals, her artistry is dedicated to self-expression and sexual freedom. Her persona is celestial and a labor of radical love.
Largely influenced by Marina and the Diamonds (MARINA), disco queen Donna Summer and Charlie XCX, Zoe on Venus has released three singles since her start in 2021: “Everything I Shouldn’t Say,” “Dreams” and “Favorite.” She also recorded a cover of Cannons’ “Fire For You” in 2021.
While her artistry is bold and unapologetic today, it didn’t start that way. “When I was a kid and a teenager, I always yearned to enhance a part of me that I knew was creative,” she said, “but I never really knew where to start. I always knew I had to do it with music, though. I loved being a performer, but I didn’t think I was going to be good enough.”
She began her career on the business side of the music industry, working in artist management.
“I was going to school in Manhattan for a while studying (artist management), and I was like, ‘This is not good for me. I’m not feeling happy pursuing this.’ I was leaving my classes all the time to be in studios. I was just writing constantly.”
Music was secretive and personal for her, revealing what couldn’t be said through words alone. It contained her personal reflections, and it wasn’t something she was initially comfortable sharing.
“I never told anyone in my life that I wrote music, even though I had a bunch of friends who were musicians, because I always thought I wasn’t good enough. That was until the beginning of 2019, when I showed someone everything I was making. She pretty much was like, ‘What is wrong with you?’ Not in a bad way, but more so just like, ‘You’ve been keeping this in for so long and you’re not doing anything with it. You need to.’
“Hearing that made me cry, and I guess I recognized that maybe I am worth more than I thought,” she said. “I gathered that I was settling for less than what I really wanted to do. And, that’s what kickstarted me into becoming an actual artist.”
She attempted producing music under her birth name, Victoria Allen, but it didn’t have the desired impact, she confessed. She yearned for a name that expressed the totality of both her authentic and desired selves. At a certain point, she landed upon incorporating the idea of Venus.
“I wanted to use Venus in my stage name because it’s the ruling planet of love and sensuality, and also the ruler of Libras, which I am,” she said. “I just loved the idea of using music to create a world for hopeless romantics.”
She searched for months for her exact moniker, infused with the essence of Venus. She added “Zoe” when she overheard the name in her sister’s phone call.
“I looked up the name Zoe, and the name’s origin means life. So I was like, ‘Oh! I can translate my stage name Zoe on Venus to ‘life on Venus.’ That’s exactly what my artistry is about: what life on Venus would be like.”
After much thought and consultation with friends, she decided to take on the moniker of Zoe on Venus. Embracing the persona, she chopped off her hair and dyed it pink. She’s never looked back, she told me.
Her first single as Zoe on Venus, “Everything I Shouldn’t Say,” released in March 2021, is truthful and unapologetic. It embraces and defines her identity as a queer person and as a full-fledged musician, singer-songwriter and stage presence. Lyrically, she shares her unrequited desire for a woman. She confesses that “this shit is complicated” and tempts listeners with revealing everything she “shouldn’t say.”
“The first song that came out of my journey was everything, the big electro-pop sound I was really yearning for. It was very liberating. It was the first time I ever felt very solidified, like I had a foundation in the industry and within myself. I could showcase something I was very, very proud of, and I received good feedback about it as well. It made me feel like I was doing the right thing.”
The single, like all of her others, was produced by her collaborator Rob Chiarappa in New Jersey’s Barber Shop Studios. Her collaboration and friendship with Chiarappa is crucial to her creative process, she admitted. “It’s a relationship I really cherish. I’ve always solely written all my lyrics, and Rob just enhances all of that for me. He’s really understood the sound I’m going for.”
As COVID-19 restrictions have relaxed in the United States and the live music scene has returned, Zoe on Venus was able to embrace her favorite part of her job: performing. “The performance part of music is really what drives me to keep doing this,” she said. “I love writing, but performing is where I feel so full and alive.”
Her proudest accomplishment to date is a performance in Bushwick this past year. “I’m getting more comfortable just doing whatever I feel like on stage, and it’s working. At my last show (in Bushwick), it felt super natural to me,” she said.
The performance alone was not the only accomplishment Zoe on Venus felt that night. She described how after the show, “this guy came up to me, and he just started a conversation. He was like, ‘By the way, do you know Marina?’ And I was like, ‘Is he really talking about Marina and the Diamonds? Yeah. Of course I do.’ He said, ‘Everything you just did really just reminded me of her. I felt like your sound and performance was really giving Marina and the Diamonds.’”
Little did this man know that Marina and the Diamonds, the British pop sensation, was the biggest musical inspiration for Zoe on Venus. She has been obsessed with the artist since seeing her concert in 2015.
“Wow,” she said, “it was like the best thing anyone could ever tell me. That’s the energy I work to channel in my performance. It’s exactly the statement I had wanted to hear.”
Looking into the future, Victoria plans to continue creating as Zoe on Venus. “I’m still in the beginning stages of building my community now,” she said, “but I hope in the future to have built a large community with this project. I have the dream to travel with my music. I find it really enchanting when I get to see artists that I personally enjoy who started out small and their music has been able to bring them to new places.”
Reflecting on her journey as Zoe on Venus, she said it began as a personal endeavor that has now just expounded. “It started out as something I did solely for myself,” she said. “At first, that direction kind of allowed me to be oddly comfortable with being alone, considering I am the creative director and manager for myself. Then, I started to recognize the potential and the growth I could build with this project.
“I felt like I was always ignoring my true self for a very long time. When I stepped into Zoe on Venus, I felt like this higher version of myself. I felt more on track with my journey as an artist than I ever have been. It’s taught me to be a lot bolder, to take more risks and to embrace my sexuality.
“If there was any message to give with this project, it’s to always try to reach for your higher self,” she said. “The most important thing for me is being able to inspire anyone, if you’re feeling how I felt — alone — but you want to take a risk, that you can.”
Follow Zoe on Venus on Instagram, Spotify and Apple Music to stay up to date on her latest releases. Check her socials also for information on tickets to her Saturday, Aug. 5, concert at the Transparent Clinch Gallery in Asbury Park, New Jersey.