ROLLING STONE | COVER STORY: CHERYL STIXX IS VENUS ON TRIAL

The Trial of Venus

By Brittany Spanos

 

With her first single from her sophomore album, Cheryl Stixx turns public scrutiny into art — confronting femininity, power, and the cost of being seen.

 

Cheryl Stixx doesn’t describe her latest era as a reinvention. There’s no tidy narrative about rebirth or redemption, no polished mythology about starting over. Instead, she keeps returning to honesty — sometimes plainly, sometimes with a laugh, sometimes with the clarity that comes from being publicly misunderstood for too long.

 

“I thought I was writing about myself,” she says. “And then I realized — oh. This isn’t just me. This is about how femininity gets put on trial.”

 

That realization anchors Trial of Venus, the title track and lead single from Stixx’s forthcoming sophomore album, out Friday. The full album is due February 20. The song unfolds as a slow-burning, orchestral alt-pop confession — less immediately accessible than last year’s Cherilyn, but far more revealing. Where her debut worked like a scrapbook of the persona audiences came to recognize, Trial of Venus opens the door to what’s been happening behind it.

Sonically, the shift is subtle but decisive. Stixx remains unapologetically pop — she still believes in big choruses and emotional payoff — but the palette here is darker, wider, more patient. There are echoes of Lana Del Rey’s cinematic melancholy, Rosalía’s emotional precision, and the theatrical maximalism of Chappell Roan, alongside flashes of indie-sleaze Tumblr nostalgia and sweeping orchestral drama.

“It’s still pop,” she says. “I’m a pop artist. I love that. But this record breathes. It waits. It lets things hurt before they explode.”

 

That sense of scale is literal. This time around, the music was built differently.

 

“I had actual instruments in the room,” Stixx says, grinning. “And I had waaay more budget. So… yeah. I used it.”

 

Where her debut leaned heavily on digital construction, Trial of Venus expands outward. Live strings, piano, guitar, and full-band arrangements give the songs physical weight, grounding their emotional volatility.

 

“That wasn’t about making it feel more ‘serious,’” she explains. “It was about achieving the landscape I was seeing in my head. I needed a different language.”

 

That language is lush and dramatic, but never nostalgic for its own sake. Stixx’s electronic instincts remain foundational.

 

“My DNA is still electronic,” she says. “I love my synths. I love my EQs. That’s not going anywhere.”

Instead, organic and synthetic elements exist in conversation: analog strings swelling beneath processed vocals, live drums colliding with programmed beats. The result feels both intimate and expansive — vulnerability framed in maximalist production.

 

“It’s not about choosing one or the other,” she says. “It’s about letting them talk to each other.”

If Trial of Venus is a reckoning, it’s also a collective one. This time, Stixx made a conscious decision to work without two collaborators central to her debut — her twin brother Danny and lyricist Ey Feigh I. Their absence is noticeable, though unexplained.

Instead, she reframed the process entirely.

 

“For this album, I wanted women in the room,” she says.

 

Writing and production sessions became a closed circuit of trust and vulnerability, with collaborators including Rachel Chinouriri, Ethel Cain, Arca, Elvira Anderfjärd, Luka Kloser, ROSALÍA, BANKS and Caroline Polachek — whose influence threads through the album’s emotional precision and architectural approach to melody.

 

“It wasn’t about excluding anyone,” Stixx clarifies. “It was about protecting something.”

 

That sense of protection is audible on the title track, which opens with piano arpeggios, vinyl crackle, and a ghostly choir — more ritual than radio play. From its first line, Stixx situates herself inside a public courtroom where beauty, femininity, and silence are treated as evidence.

 

“They built a mirror on the altar, called it truth and told me kneel,” she sings.

 

Throughout the song, spectacle becomes survival. Lipstick turns into armor. Heels become proof of endurance. Judgment becomes fuel.

 

“Welcome to the Trial of Venus,” she declares on the chorus, her voice layered with female harmonies that swell like witnesses rising from the pews. “I turn their fire into heat.”

 

The metaphor is expansive but precise. Venus isn’t just Stixx — it’s femininity itself, endlessly scrutinized and disciplined for its visibility.

 

“There’s this idea that vulnerability disqualifies you,” she says. “That being emotional, sensual, dramatic makes you unserious. I wanted to challenge that.”

 

That challenge peaks on the bridge, where timpani and choir collide as she sings, “If being soft is my sin, then let them find me there.” It’s one of the album’s most exposed moments — inseparable from the environment in which it was made.

 

“Being surrounded by women who understood that feeling changed everything,” she says. “There was no posturing. Just honesty.”

 

The album began as a conceptual exercise — a trial, a public reckoning — but quickly became something more intimate. Written during therapy sessions and long nights unpacking insecurities, the songs are emotionally naked in a way Stixx hadn’t previously allowed.

“For a long time, these thoughts were just for my therapist,” she says, laughing softly. “Now they’re art.”

 

What’s on trial isn’t just Cheryl Stixx the public figure, but femininity itself — how it’s judged, policed, dissected. When asked who the judges are, she doesn’t hesitate.

 

“Men,” she says. “Not individual men — but men’s established perceptions. What’s acceptable. What’s valuable. What’s allowed to exist without punishment.”

 

At first, Venus felt like a stand-in for herself. Over time, that framing shifted.

 

“I don’t think Venus is just me anymore,” she explains. “She’s everyone who’s experienced femininity through that lens. That’s what made it political, even when I wasn’t trying to be.”

 

That political charge isn’t slogan-driven, but it’s unmistakable. Stixx has long been candid about body policing, industry hypocrisy, and cancellation narratives, and Trial of Venus doesn’t soften those edges. If anything, it approaches them with vulnerability instead of defiance.

 

“This isn’t about myth-making,” she says. “It’s about survival.”

Trial of Venus arrives less than a year after Cherilyn, but Stixx bristles at the idea of a comeback.

 

“Bitch, I never left,” she says, smiling. “This isn’t a pivot — it’s a doubling down.”

 

If her debut captured how the world came to know Cheryl Stixx, this album documents how she feels now — stripped of cover stories, less interested in spectacle for spectacle’s sake, and more committed to telling the truth, even when it’s uncomfortable.

 

“I made this record for the girls they love to punish,” she says. “Always.”

 

In a moment when femininity is endlessly surveilled, litigated, and disciplined under the guise of discourse, Trial of Venus refuses restraint. Even with only the lead single heard, the thesis is clear: this isn’t reinvention. It’s escalation. Cheryl Stixx isn’t waiting for absolution.

 

She’s already standing.

 

Stixx up.

 

 

Stream The Trial of Venus now:

 

 

Edited February 14Feb 14 by Cheryl Stixx