Kim Petras
Pop music’s most exciting star is tearing up the rulebook, one perfectly-crafted bop at a time.
After exploding onto the scene with debut single I Don’t Want It At All – you know, the one that featured Paris bloody Hilton in the music video – Kim Petras has been on an upwards trajectory that simply refuses to falter. A release strategy of one new single each month kept her fresh in the minds of pop consumers and, most importantly, on top of Apple and Spotify’s playlists, arguably the most essential promo a new artist can get for themselves in the age of streaming. It also gained her a legion of loyal fans who flock to her live shows, imitate her style, and pump out memes on an unprecedented scale – she’s affectionately known as “that wooah bitch” to many of her followers on Twitter, paying homage to the infinitely quotable soundbite that pops up in all of her songs. But, as she tells us, the image she fostered for her debut isn’t quite real.
“I feel like my last era was me thinking, ‘If I only ever get to make one record in my life, what’s my favourite kind of music?’ And it’s that super extreme, bubblegum pop, heavily-80s-inspired, huge synths, way over-the-top shit, because that’s my favourite music of all time,” she says, taking pause before adding, “that’s also the music that, at some point or another, kinda saved my life.” Growing up, Kim says she “hated” school and struled with depression. She found solace in the escapism of pop music, and the big-budget music videos and tour DVDs artists like Britney Spears and Destiny’s Child were releasing, which she’d watch on repeat – a common pasttime for many queer kids who long for something better. But she wasn’t just consuming pop music, she was writing it, too. From the age of 13, Kim began crafting lyrics and melodies, and eventually taught herself to use audio software like Garageband. While sure of the music, she initially lacked the self-confidence to become a fully-fledged pop star. “Will people think I’m too ugly?” she used to ask herself. “Will people think I’m not talented enough?” So she did what many pop stars do at the beginning of their career: fake it until they make it. “I thought that no one would like me for who I actually am, and I had all these insecurities, so I
made this larger-than-life, super-confident character instead,” she confesses. “But I’m not that.”
As her self-belief and fan base grew in tandem, Kim decided it was time to focus on making the music that she truly wanted to make. While most artists take years off between album cycles, she waited just two months after rounding off her first era before launching straight into her new collection of singles, which is aptly named Clarity. “I’d gone through a bad breakup scenario and was really hurting, but I felt like I needed to cover that up all the time,” she recalls. “I was doing back-to-back shows, singing all of these super happy songs, and then I would go and cry in my hotel room.” From that emotion, Broken was born. Releasing a dark mid-tempo about heartbreak as a lead single is a risk for any pop star, especially one so beloved for dropping clubready bangers, but it made perfect sense to Kim. “There’s a little bit of an arc to this era, because Broken leads into Clarity, and that realisation that I shouldn’t get down on myself so much, and that I’ve just gotta focus on the big picture and I’m going to be alright,” she says. “I just wanted to set that up by explaining what had happened with my break-up and how I felt after being cheated on, so that the other songs could pick up from there and venture into different areas.”
Aside from Broken, All I Do Is Cry and Icy, a moody trifecta that tells the story of her breakup – “I’ve learned to have the confidence that it’s okay to be sad in my songs,” she says – the rest of Clarity is largely upbeat, and sees the pop star flicking between genres with ease. Personal Hell, which sounds like a deep cut from Britney Spears’ acclaimed Blackout era, channels synth-heavy 80s hits like Soft Cell’s Tainted Love and Depeche Mode’s Personal Jesus as she confesses, “Yeah I’m sad, but down to fuck”; the epic Do Me, which Kim lovingly dubbed a “slut anthem” for the ages, is simply being to be blasted at a stadium concert; while Sweet Spot sounds like the love child of Daft Punk and early-2000s Kylie Minogue, and remains the standout of the pack. There’s heavy trap influences on Got My Number – which is guaranteed to leave you
asking “What’s up, bitch?” at the start of every phone call – and a rock star guitar loop on the hedonistic Blow It All. But the thing that links them all, aside from being fucking brilliant, is that they’re markedly more mature than the cotton candy pop of her original string of singles. If the Heart To Break era was your bratty, rebellious teenage phase, Clarity is your early 20s – slowly realising who you really are, experiencing heartbreak, and (apparently) having lots of sex. “I have these club, hoe anthems because after a break-up you want to go out and have fun, so just narrative-wise I thought it was a cool choice to start at a low point and then go into all these other vibes and sonics.”
Most fans embraced Kim’s new musical direction, but as with any change, some found it more difficult to adapt, instead attempting to drag her back to the bubblegum pop she used to make. We saw it with Lady Gaga’s Joanne, we saw it with Rihanna’s Anti, and now we’re seeing it with Kim’s Clarity. “I’m so happy my fans love those songs, but those songs are out there and you can still listen to them. I’m gonna grow as an artist, and I’m gonna do what feels right for me,” she says with assurance. “Writing for me is therapy, it’s what I’m going through and it’s what I want to hear. I’m a songwriter first before anything else, so it’s gotta be authentic, and it’s gotta be what I wanna talk about.” Of course, Kim does care about what listeners think – she’ll be releasing music videos for the songs that her fans like the most – but when it comes to the songwriting process, it’s all about her. “I can’t really think about other people’s opinions when I write. Once you consider other people’s opinions before your own, you start getting scared, you start watering it down, you stop being inspired, and you lose what’s great about you.”
This new era has also seen Kim dial up her strategy from releasing one song a month to dropping a new track every week, something most pop stars – who’ll often promote a lead single for months – wouldn’t dream of doing. She compares it to watching a season of your favourite series. “I love watching TV shows, and I love getting a weekly episode, it makes it really special because it builds anticipation and you spend all week thinking about it,” she says. “I kinda love that I can give my fans that experience.” For a new generation who have the world at their fingertips and crave immediate gratification, it seems like an obvious strategy, so it’s surprising no one has done it before – certainly not with such a consistent level of quality. When we suest she’s changing the game for pop artists, Kim’s hesitant to agree, but she does acknowledge it’s a unique strategy that’s worth following. “I’m still in the building stages, I’m not even close to where I want to be, but every time I drop a new song it takes me to a new place and new people hear about me, and in the streaming era it’s a really good strategy to do something all the time, to keep being on top of people’s minds, especially if you’re not a huge star with five number one singles,” she says. “Anything that’s new or unexpected excites me, so that’s always what I wanna do. And I do think for up-and-coming artists this is a great concept, and if people wanna do the same thing then I’m all for it, because I think it’s a really cool experience for the fans. I feel like they’ll remember the time I was dropping a new song every week. And they’ll miss it.”
If you’re already anticipating what’s next – and in the comedown from her weekly release schedule, we wouldn’t blame you – then you’ll be pleased to know Kim’s currently “pretty deep” into crafting the follow-up to her infectious Halloween EP, Turn Off The Light Volume 1, which she promises will “pick up right where it left off” when it drops later this year. “I’ve spent the last few months watching every horror movie there is, listening to every horror movie soundtrack there is, and so there’s a lot of material to go over,” she says. It’s another example of Kim breaking the mould – while most pop stars rush to release mediocre festive albums every December, she’s focusing on the holiday that’s actually fun, taking her signature pop hooks and shoving them into a blender with dark synths and industrial sounds. “I know it’s so narcissistic to listen to your own shit, but I listen to Volume 1 all the time and I love having the dance tracks in between, because I want it to be a party. When Turn Off The Light finishes, I want it to be the perfect Halloween party soundtrack.”
When we spoke to Kim last year, she opened up about the discrimination she’d faced in the music industry for being trans; some people refused to work with her, others asked if she was trans because it was ‘trendy’ right now, and back home in Germany, people continued to ask her invasive questions about her identity. A year later, as we once again enter Pride season, does she think things are getting better? “I don’t necessarily think that people are very openminded in the music industry yet. The creators are, the producers are, and the artists are. But the corporate part? No. They’re not down,” she sighs. “I have no idea how that’s gonna change, but if I can really do the damn thing and become a real pop star then I think that’ll mean a lot to a bunch of people, and maybe they’ll be like, ‘Yes, it can work’. But from what I know, a lot of people still think that just because an artist is trans, they can’t be lucrative and they can’t make money for the label. I think it’s also to do with religion in America, people are like, ‘If you work with her you’re going to hell’. It’s that kinda vibe. So yeah, it’s weird. But the trans girls in music are kind of doing it for themselves anyway. Me and Sophie are doing it on our own terms.”
As our conversation comes to a close – Kim has to get ready for the first night of her Broken Tour, which is travelling across America and Europe through the summer – we ask what she wants her legacy to be. It’s a big question for someone so early in their career, but Kim’s confident, and unsurprisingly she knows exactly how she wants to be remembered. “I want my legacy to be that I’m a great songwriter, a great performer, that I give it my all, that I’m crazy and out there and unapologetic about who I am, but also being kind and nice to people, being a good friend, being a good person, and most importantly being a down-ass bitch. Oh, and I want my gravestone to just say, ‘woo-ah!’,” she laughs. “Hell yeah.”
A lot of people still think that just because an artist is trans, they can’t be lucrative and they can’t make money for the label. But the trans girls in music are kind of doing it
for themselves anyway.