My guest today, Connie Lim, whose artist name is Milk, that's M I L c K.
She rose to widespread attention after a video of an acapella performance of her song Quiet on the street at the 2017 Women's March.
It exploded into the public's consciousness, going viral and becoming embraced as an anthem for the movement.
That moment and the impact and reach of the song, it led to a major record deal and collaborations as a songwriter that really launched the career she's been working to build for years to an entirely different level.
But that very career, this devotion, almost never happened.
Connie grew up in an enclave of LA, the child of immigrants from China, and was drawn to music from her earliest days.
She wrote her first song, actually, at seven years old, and studied classical piano and opera as a kid.
But the pressure of intense perfectionism and the expectation she'd eventually leave that behind to follow the family tradition into medicine led her into years of profound emotional struggle.
Eventually, she hit a point in college where she decided it was time to choose herself over the expectations of others, as well as the burden of perfectionism that had caused so many years of suffering and harm.
And Connie left college and went all in on music, performing as an independent artist for years, slowly and painstakingly building her skill and also her name before that fateful day in 2017 that would change everything.
She's now deep into writing and producing and performing her own work, while also writing with and for other artists and focusing not just on sharing her own creative voice, but also gathering community and shining the light on truth and inequity along the way.
So excited to share this conversation with you.
I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is good life project.
I grew up with privilege, so I didn't.
I didn't quite understand the depth of how lucky I was to be surrounded by nature.
And, you know, now, you know, I'm in touch with a community in Memphis where some kids have never seen, like a hill, like a, like an incline, a mountain.
And so my partner founded this gym called Memphis Rocks, and they're one of the beneficiaries of the somebody's beloved fund, which we can talk about.
But anyways, just meeting other people who have not had the experience and access to nature and then, like, going to nature with them and seeing the impact it has on just the whole spirit of a human being is really profound.
So, yeah, I do think about that a lot.
Yeah, it's amazing.