Singer-songwriter MILCK, aka Connie Lim, first came to fame in 2017 with her anthem “Quiet” — a deeply personal song, which she’d originally written with Adrianne Gonzalez about the sexual assault and abuse she had suffered as a teenager, that took on wider meaning when her performance at the Women’s March in D.C. went viral. A contract with Atlantic Records and the protest songs “If I Ruled the World” and “Somebody’s Beloved” followed, but after leaving Atlantic, MILCK had to find her own voice again, in different ways.

While MILCK did just drop another political anthem, “Still a Fire,” for election season, she’s currently going viral all over again with a cover of another artist’s song. Her version of the Postal Service’s “Such Great Heights” was just prominently featured in Netflix’s No. 1 film Uglies, which racked up 20 million views in its first three days of alone. But MILCK has her sights set on a different sort of stage and storytelling, as she workshops her largely autobiographical musical, The Family Album (set for a 2026 premiere), inspired by her experience with sexual abuse and being raised in Los Angeles as the daughter of Hong Kong immigrants.

MILCK recently sat down with Lyndsanity for a wide-ranging chat about her major-label experience; how she struggled with sudden fame; how her traditional parents finally came to accept her unconventional career choice (and how they might react to her The Family Album musical, once they see it); increased Asian representation in pop music; aging as a woman in the music business; her brief run on the very first season of The Voice; and how everything is connected and has finally led to this moment.

LYNDSANITY: Congratulations on your cover of the “Such Great Heights” being featured on Uglies. That is amazing exposure for you.

MILCK: Yes, I’m so excited! I’m a huge fan of that genre, like dystopian sci-fi, that kind of otherworld-building fiction. And I just love looking at the metaphors of life. I had heard that my song was getting used for the movie, but you never really know if the placement’s going to be impactful or not; it could be really in the background lightly while there’s a bunch of dialogue happening. But this placement was one of those where you dream of.

How did this come about?

The music supervisor, Rob Lowry, has been a champion of mine before. I met him through the Atlantic Records days ,when I was signed to a major. So, it was just a sweet moment to be like, “Oh, I’m indie and I haven’t been with Atlantic for years, and this guy’s still championing my music,” which is heartwarming.

That’s an interesting full-circle development — the fact that you went through this major-label whirlwind, which may or may not have been everything you’d hoped or may have been disappointing in some ways, but then you still made a connection there that’s helping you on your indie path.

It’s pretty cool. And I would say that journey just taught me so much. I feel like my ego doesn’t want this to be true, but sometimes life provides really hard lessons. And I think for me, I had to learn to forgive myself for not having the knowledge and the wisdom it would require to succeed in a major-label scene. But the lessons I learned I take with me now and just make me a really strong indie artist. … You kind of see what’s possible and what you dare to ask for, and the professionalism that comes with certain jobs and expectations.

Many people who are reading this interview probably became are of you went “Quiet” went viral in 2017. And then the Atlantic deal came shortly after that. What happened, exactly?

I hit a lot of roadblocks because I think at that time there were no Asian artists. People didn’t really know where to put me. I was even told, “Go back to China!” This is all old stuff. But that was what was happening then, and it was acceptable at that time. And so when “Quiet” went viral, the audience had declared, “This song is worthy of being listened to, and this voice is the voice we like singing the song.” Atlantic had actually heard that song before and passed on it, but because of the virality of it, they were like, “Well, there’s context now. There’s a story. There’s energy we can work with.” And I think for me, the things that broke me open to right “Quiet” were also the same things that fostered a healing path that I had to go on of how to not people-please, how to trust my own instinct, how to even know what I want outside of what other people want.

I realized over time is that it was very easy for me to release music associated with movements, because it wasn’t about me. It was about the movement. And that’s why I released “Quiet.” If you look at my history, there’s a little bit of that patterning where I’m like, “Well, who cares about this part of my life, when there’s this political upheaval happening?” But when the political upheaval happens, and I have a song that’s right for, I’m like, “Oh, this can serve us as a whole.” So, even within my practice of releasing music, I had this sense of it has to be part of a bigger context for it to matter. And I didn’t have that thought of I matter, just me. That’s enough. This is something that I am healing towards now. It’s taken me years and that type of philosophy and coping mechanism of growing up as a survivor, a woman of color, an immigrant child. It just did not prime me to succeed in a major-label scene because of my personality too — I can’t blame it on all the external, but how I took it all in and processed it. It made me shaky because there’s a lot of opinions that come at you and artists who will want to work at that scale; it really requires a really, really staunch belief, almost this blind confidence in what you’re doing. And my strength and my weakness is that I consider all sides.I don’t think I’ll ever let go of that.

Where did this lack of confidence come from?

It’s a combination of so many things. It’s gender. It’s also my cultural background, of coming from a traditional culture that also has really deep-seated patriarchal beliefs of what women need to be like to be acceptable, to be pleasing. And then being a survivor of — and this is trigger warning for anyone, but I’m going to talk about sexual assault. I’m not going to go deep into it, but I was in a domestically violent relationship which led to sexual assault. And then not having the support system that was educated to say, “It wasn’t your fault, and being told it was my fault for 14 years, holding that shame and all of that creates a lack of trust in self. There might be some artists that will just fierce and be like, “Fuck it, I believe in me,” but I took it all inwards. And so, me taking the leap of faith, of leaving the safety of a major label, I had to figure out who I am again, or maybe for the first time. That was really important for me. Now I feel more rooted.

That brings us to your in-development musical, The Family Album, which is more overtly personal. Tell me about that.

It’s such a non-linear process, but the musical is a story about an Asian family. It’s comedy, it’s drama. It’s a beautiful story. I’m really, really proud of it. It’s a work of art created by four really strong and intelligent women coming together. The family is fictionalized, but the process of getting assaulted and getting blamed for it as a 14-year-old, that is the crux of the story. We’ve created a new family, inspired a lot by my life, but it’s fictionalized. And ironically, the fiction has allowed me to tap into the truth very deeply.

How much of it is fictional and how much of it is based on your real-life family?

I would say that the core of what happened to me and how the parents didn’t have the cultural language to process that with me is very autobiographical. The characters themselves have taken on lives of their own, so they’re different. But I think if I brought my family to go see it, they would see a core truth there, a child yearning to be seen and parents yearning to be seen, siblings yearning to be seen. Everyone’s yearning to be seen but doesn’t know how to connect until one person breaks that silence. And then it all kind of rips open. Whether it feels good or not, there’s a lot of love underneath.

I know you’ve been workshopping it with the La Jolla Playhouse. Has anyone seen this, and if so, what’s been the reaction? Most importantly, has anyone in your family seen it, or read a script, or heard any of the music — and what’s been their reaction?

We’ve had friends and co-writers and collaborators come and watch, give feedback, but I made it a point to not have the family come in yet. But I have started planting the seeds with them. For now, I need some freedom and space to experiment with the characters because it’s a really vulnerable place, because it’s based off of truth. Now we’re kind of stretching, so it’s like, “How far do we stretch?” All the names are different and stuff, but they’re going to see themselves in it, for sure.

Is that daunting to you?

One-hundred percent. And then there’s elements of language barrier. My parents speak English fluently but when I sing, they don’t fully understand everything. But now it’s going to be a musical, so with that much speaking, they’ll be able to understand. It’s just going to be a new level of intimacy. But I’m really more eager to see what my brother and my sister think, because they were in it with me and experienced this generation. I’ll definitely be sitting with them and taking care of them as we watch for the first time.

You mentioned the word “patriarchal.” I imagine your parents, who are immigrants from Hong Kong, were traditional in some ways. How did they feel in general about you pursuing music, which is hardly a conventional or safe, stable career?

I think they really struggled with it, and it was really scary for them. And it makes total sense to me because they came from a whole different continent. And even on that continent, there was a lot of history, a dark history with governments persecuting artists and independent thinkers. And so that’s in their blood. So, it’s like, I get it. There’s that element within my lineage of just processing that governmental persecution of artists and free thinkers, that [makes my parents think this career is] unstable and potentially even dangerous. It took a lot of years of me just persisting and not complaining, and they were like, “OK, you’re clearly going to keep doing this.”

Was there a moment when they came around, a moment where they’re like, “OK kid, you made it” or “We get it now”?

I wanted that, and that’s why I did things outside of my purview, like auditioning for The Voice, because when I was younger, in my early twenties, I was like, “If I can show them this, then they’re going to leave me alone. Let me do this something shiny, something with a major network” and all that. But, no, it was a slow trickle. Now they’re really supportive to the point where they don’t question me and they let me do my thing.

How far did you get on The Voice?

I made it to the top 50, I think. We all lived in a hotel together, and then I filmed in front of the judges and they ended up not airing my performance. That ended up being, I think, a blessing in disguise. I was still figuring myself out. But that experience taught me to embrace cover songs, which interesting. I used to be a songwriter/poet. I was super-stubborn, but my mom was like, “You need to sing other people’s songs!” And then I started seeing the artistry that went into making cover songs, and I was like, “All right, I’m going to lean into this. I’m actually kind of enjoying it.” And now it’s led to “Such Great Heights” being on Netflix.

There you go. Another full-circle moment. One door closes and yet another door opens. Going back to The Family Album musical, I know that’s also been a long time coming, like so many things in your career. It seemed like things happened overnight for you in 2017, but wasn’t it around that time that you started working on this musical?

Yes. Basically, I wrote a song that I didn’t realize was going to birth the whole musical, literally. The song was called “Oh Mother.” It got shelved when I was at Atlantic, but I always knew it was special. I was like, “There’s something about this song.” I was working with this one guy who had worked with Idina Menzel’s team, and he was like, “Your songs are like narrative pop. It’s almost like musical theater, but not quite.” That just planted a seed in me. I had never worked in musical theater, not since the 6th grade when I was being the tree in the background. But I started showing it to people and asking for any references, people who have worked in musical theater. It just so happened my roommate sang lead for Hamilton and then for Broadway’s Chicago production, so she introduced me to the director of that, Jess McLeod. It was in 2021 when we jumped on the phone, Jess and I, that was actually, maybe it was 2021. It was when the Atlanta shootings happened, when all the Asian women were shot at that massage parlor. Jess McLeod is mixed Asian, and she was like, “I really need to tell more Asian stories.” And so ,I came at the right time. I was like,I have this song.” And she’s a genius, so she’s like, “Look at this song and see what other songs you can birth from it.” I looked at “Oh Mother,” took all the lyrics and birthed other songs from it. And then we brought on Sam Chanse, who’s this award-winning playwright, and she’s also a genius. I showed her the music, and we just proceeded to have many, many long conversations about my life and started sculpting the story together.

It’s interesting that you mentioned wanting to tell more Asian stories, because you also mentioned earlier in this interview that even though it wasn’t that long ago, at that time you were signed to Atlantic there weren’t a lot of Asian artists in the pop scene. I feel that has changed bit.

It’s changed a lot, actually.

Do you have any theories as to why that is?

Well, I think to become a great artist, it’s not just about talent. It’s about the buy-in from the community surrounding. You can be an incredibly talented performer, but if you don’t have a community of people buying into the idea and believing that you can succeed, that’s a really hard road to go down. So, now if you have the Black Lives Matter movement that helps to shake things up and really expose our blind spots, you’re going to have a lot more people wanting to take a chance. And it’s amazing because these [Asian and Asian-American] artists are embodied and free and they’re in their element ,and they’re making a difference. I did not know that this was going to happen. I was hoping it would happen in my lifetime, but I wasn’t sure it would. And it’s surpassing my expectations with flying colors.

Do you ever wonder if the whole “Quiet” phenomenon and the Atlantic deal had maybe happened just a few years later, that maybe there would’ve been a different outcome for you?

I have thought about that, definitely, 100 percent, but then I always have to go back to believing that everything is kind of mapped out the way it is. There are so many trails that I had to blaze, and there’s so many people that came before me, and there’s going to be so many people come after me. I’m just one part of this long, long lineage. Lately, the thing that really inspires me a lot is thinking about my ancestors, thinking about who came before me and what they had to do to get me here. I get to make a living from my ideas and my creations, and that’s so cool. My ancestors were in poverty. So, it’s a bittersweet thing. We have this context now and we helped to create this as a community. I feel it’s a classic conversation about mortality and getting more years under our belt. Like, I’m 38 now. How do we deal with the fact that we’re no longer the ingenue, going from maiden into matriarch? What does that look like?

You do see older female artists breaking out, having hits well past the age of 25 or whatever the expiration date of a female pop star is supposed to be.

Right. I think of Sia, who has really broken ground. She’s played with her image and challenged how she wants to be exposed physically. She covers her face and she’s able to be in her mid-to-late forties, just doing her thing. And she really hit the radio when she was 40. And also, “hot” is in the eye of the beholder. The idea of beauty is really a manufactured thing that helps to uphold the power structure. Who is deemed “hot” is actually the thing that helps to keep systems of power in place. We’re breaking down some of those standards, which feels really nice, but I’m not going to be hot forever and I don’t want to. Yeah, I think it’s OK to not be hot. There are so many amazing things outside of hotness in life. I’ve spent way too many I hours thinking about physical appearance, and that’s actually the whole theme of Uglies. There’s so much time spent on thinking about that image so you don’t have time to think about all the other ways that you’re being oppressed by a government. It’s genius. It’s a really great movie.

Wow. Everything is connected in this conversation. I’ll wrap up, since so much of this conversation connects to “Quiet”… that was in 2017. Trump had taken office and the Women’s March was a reaction to that development. A lot of people had hoped Hillary Clinton would be president instead, obviously. Here we are, six years later, and lot has changed, but so much hasn’t changed. And now we’re coming up on another presidential election with a female candidate, and this time it’s a woman of color — a woman of Asian heritage, too. What are your thoughts about where we’re at right now and what the rest of 2024 and beyond is going to be like?

I mean, the fatigue and the exhaustion are real. I want to acknowledge that. The work continues. It goes so beyond this election season and it’s really about something deeper. It’s about us not believing that we are on the same team. There’s a lot of fear that makes us feel like we need to dominate each other. We have a lot of that’s happening, so when there’s progress, the fear of change really kind of whiplashes itself onto the current political climate, and I think that’s what we’re seeing: People are fearful of this change. That’s because we’re so in our heads, but we don’t have trust with each other yet.

I posted about my support for Kamala Harris and I got a lot of flak for it. because there a lot of people that are unhappy about the lack of speaking up about Gaza, and then there’s the complications of people wanting to feel safe in Israel as well. All these things coming to a head, and I’m like, “Right now I need to simplify the decision. I can’t solve everything through one vote, but my vote right now is just going to keep a narcissist that reveres dictators out of office, and then let’s keep doing the work outside of that.” This voting is reactive and we have to do that, but I don’t want to live in reactiveness. I want to live in proactiveness. What do I want to build? I want to build a community of female creators telling really honest stories so that we can help each other feel less shame, so we can be better to each other. That’s probably more going to create just as much impact in a different way as my vote, maybe more so. So, if people are feeling discouraged, you’re not alone. I feel all the feelings, but then I think about the power I have outside of in addition to voting, and I feel a little more hopeful.

You just said you become more comfortable making music that isn’t tied to political movements,  but do you have any new anthems about what’s going on in our country right now?

Yes, there’s one that’s just came out coming out that’s very similar to “Quiet.” “Quiet” was very personal — it was about my sexual assault — but then found its inflection point in politics. The new song, “Still a Fire,” is about me just feeling in my personal life. I’m going through a really tough time right now, but I’m navigating and adulting through it as much as I can. With the exhaustion of seeing the world and my own personal life, there’s parts of me that want to throw in the towel, but then there’s still a fire. So, I was like, “Oh, this is a good song to release during election season, when we’re all just feeling so inundated with so much information,” just to encourage people and to say, “You’re not alone.” Even when you feel like you just want to take a 40-hour nap, there’s still a fire.