Not Your Princess: Ziggy 2000 Speaks on the Art of Reinvention

Written By Jules Elizabeth

Photography by Ethan Griffin-McCleary

Huge guitar sounds. Airy vocals. Wicked style. That’s Ziggy 2000 in a nutshell — a woman full of contradictions, treading the delicate boundary between spark and explosion. And listening to her new single, Telescope, this contrast truly shines. Wild shoegaze guitars crackle around an intimate central vocal; creating a chaotic calm that just works. Despite being a world away from her most recent Needles EP, her new single still occupies the same space — a testament to the universe that Ziggy has built for herself and her fanbase. 

“I want to be on stage with huge drums and a huge guitar sound. I've always wanted to do that. I'm such an emotional person.”

Skyrocketing onto the music scene in 2021 with her Obvious EP, Ziggy quickly found widespread recognition for her distinctive style and impressive vocal hooks. The EP’s title track now sits at over a million streams on Spotify, and Ziggy is determined to bring the same infectious energy to her newer tracks and live performances. I was curious to know about the evolution of her overall sound, as her Needles EP that followed her debut release showcased a more stripped-back, acoustic style. When asked about the choices that inspired this pivot, Ziggy recognised the flip in style and described how “Needles was kind of the complete opposite of [Obvious]... It was super stripped back, just me and an acoustic guitar. And I loved it, but it was a bit of a disconnect.” Since then, Ziggy has shifted towards heavier tones, and emphasises this not just as a new sound, but instead a reconnect with her roots: “I want to be on stage with huge drums and a huge guitar sound. I've always wanted to do that. I'm such an emotional person.”

Skyrocketing onto the music scene in 2021 with her Obvious EP, Ziggy quickly found widespread recognition for her distinctive style and impressive vocal hooks. The EP’s title track now sits at over a million streams on Spotify, and Ziggy is determined to bring the same infectious energy to her newer tracks and live performances. I was curious to know about the evolution of her overall sound, as her Needles EP that followed her debut release showcased a more stripped-back, acoustic style. When asked about the choices that inspired this pivot, Ziggy recognised the flip in style and described how “Needles was kind of the complete opposite of [Obvious]... It was super stripped back, just me and an acoustic guitar. And I loved it, but it was a bit of a disconnect.” Since then, Ziggy has shifted towards heavier tones, and emphasises this not just as a new sound, but instead a reconnect with her roots: “I want to be on stage with huge drums and a huge guitar sound. I've always wanted to do that. I'm such an emotional person.”

Speaking of huge guitar sounds, we discussed Ziggy’s live setup and safe to say, I was obsessed. Playing a beautifully unique Danelectro Dano Pro, affectionately named “Peaches” (short for Peaches and Cream), it’s clear that Ziggy’s eye-catching style extends far past her zany fashion sense. Paired with the guitar is a Strymon Cloudburst (aka, the king of shoegaze reverbs), and both weave together to form an eclectic and captivating live sound. Ziggy’s style lends itself well to world-building, although this is completely coincidental — as she recounts her fashion choices as a kid being exactly the same: “There's a picture of me on my Instagram if you go back far enough, and I'm wearing long stripy rainbow socks and this checkered dress. And it's just an outfit that I would wear now. And I think growing up and becoming Ziggy, essentially, it was just going back to that. I've always loved that.”

There’s a real sense of childhood nostalgia within her music, that no doubt stems from this genuine connection to her youth. Her new single Telescope feels like a long-forgotten summer, a dream that slipped through your consciousness. It’s a hazy day in August, where the air is rich with the scent of flowers and sunlight. It makes perfect sense, then, that the song encompasses falling in love. Within the song, you’re swept up into a daze and feel, essentially, like you’re crushing hard. It just so happens that in my case, I’m not crushing on a person, but a song. 

“It was really fun to write a big emotional song about a positive thing, because that doesn't happen a lot for me.”

Speaking with Ziggy about her influences feels like piecing together a colourful puzzle, as we go back and forth between seemingly unconnected parts, but somehow end up with a beautiful scene. At the moment, Ziggy is having an EDM phase — think Ninajirachi and Tiffany Day — but she also cited Disney stars Selena Gomez and Demi Lovato as her OG inspirations (not just for music, but for her style, too). We love a Y2K queen, and Ziggy is about as close to that as you can get. Fun fact: the “2000” in her artist name refers to the year she was born. 

It’s been a whirlwind of a journey for Ziggy so far, especially within her live performances. Around the release of her Obvious EP, she was playing with session musicians. Now, however, she finds herself in a band with her “best friends”, and seems somewhat emotional as she explains to me: “Sometimes I'm in my house and it's like, oh my god, this is everything I've wanted, and it's taken quite a few years to get there. But it feels really special.”

It’s an honour to be able to talk to Ziggy at such a pivotal moment in her career, and with the release of a new single, things are only looking up. Written about Ziggy’s partner of nearly two years, Telescope encapsulates what it means to fall in love quickly, yet deeply. She describes that, once meeting her partner totally by chance at a Shrek-themed party (yes, you read that right), they were “joined at the hip for weeks”. For Ziggy, it seems like this is a refreshing shift from her usual song topics, which are often about “bad things happening in a relationship”. Her eyes light up as she realises the depth of this change, and it’s heartwarming to see, as she describes how “it was really fun to write a big emotional song about a positive thing, because that doesn't happen a lot for me.”

This feeling translates through the song, too — a fabulously catchy verse hook blends with deliciously shoegaze guitars to form a twinkly, love-fuelled masterpiece. When I asked Ziggy which animal she thought best represented her music, she went with arctic fox: “because I think it's fluffy, frosty, slightly crystally; but also cute.” I couldn’t have said it better myself. Ziggy 2000’s music sits delicately in the space between fluffy paws and claws out, and you never quite know which you’re going to get. But honestly, it’s a fantastic kind of tension. 

Telescope is out now on all streaming platforms, and once you hear it, it’ll be stuck in your head for weeks. You’re in for a treat.