![]() Her 2018 song “Heart to Break” just scraped into the Top 40 chart (though your mom would definitely have to Google her). In another timeline, Petras might have been granted a slow roll to the mainstream and a chance to grow on her own terms. ![]() I always looked at pop music as an escape, and I want my music to do that for other people because it was so important for me growing up.” On Turn Off the Light and Slut Pop, I magnified parts of myself into larger-than-life characters because that was always more fun to me. “In my life,” Petras explains, “it makes me feel quite uncomfortable to be the main character.” But these personas, “they’re all different parts of me. The pretend-princess she played on “I Don’t Want It at All” would give way to the underworld killer on 2019’s “There Will Be Blood,” from her horror-themed Turn Off the Light mixtape, and then the semi-pornographic, man-eating club kid of her 2022 EP Slut Pop, where she dubbed herself the “throat goat” (sample lyric: “No gag reflex, I just had to flex”). And I spent a lot of time on futons writing songs about lifestyles completely different from mine, but I found a lot of inspiration in the fantasy of it.” She adds: “Moving back to Germany and giving up on pop wasn’t really an option for me.” “I only knew it from movies and TV shows, but it seemed magical. definitely wasn’t how I pictured it when I was back in Germany,” she says. to learn how to make pop music” - not to be famous, she clarifies - “and that’s a specific difference. And at 19, having saved up enough money from a job waiting tables, Petras flew to Los Angeles and essentially couch-surfed for a while. The German-laundry-detergent-to-Hollywood pipeline is a singular road. She started writing songs in her bedroom, finding success with, of all things, commercial jingles. But I felt like I was this weird monster that needed to be hidden.” At home I was allowed to wear whatever I wanted, so I would just wear ridiculous things and feel like myself. “When I was a kid,” she says, “I used to have to go to school in boys clothes. For Petras, fashion offered freedom through self-expression. Petras grew up in a small village outside Cologne, the daughter of a dance teacher and an architect, and lived a quiet life - until age 13, when her transition was chronicled by a news crew and she became something of a national curiosity, or, perhaps worse, a German punchline. On her 2017 breakout single, “I Don’t Want It at All,” she was a spoiled brat, whining about designer clothing. Kim Petras likes to play characters in her music. Marc Jacobs clothing and shoes, Falke tights Why can’t a trans girl from Germany be the world’s biggest pop star? I love making gay club music.” But in the quiet moments away from the spotlight, the Kim who likes ramen and low-key dinners at friends’ houses started to wonder if she wasn’t also hiding in those gay clubs. ![]() “People would tell me all the time, ‘Oh, you just make gay club music.’ I pride myself on that. For years, she was dismissed by executives and industry watchers as a niche artist, she says. Petras’ ascent is both unprecedented and overdue. Now, after what feels like endless delays and Internet leaks, her major label debut album, Feed the Beast - featuring the Nicki Minaj collaboration “Alone,” which samples Alice Deejay’s Euro-club classic “Better Off Alone” - arrives June 23. In February, the 30-year-old artist won a Grammy Award for “Unholy,” her collaboration with Sam Smith before performing the song live on TV - in a performance Ted Cruz later called “evil” - Madonna mouthed to Petras backstage: “Go get it, b*tch.” In May, she sat front row at the Chanel show on the Paramount lot in Los Angeles and later appeared on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue, a milestone for a trans artist. ![]() There are worse metaphors for this moment in Petras’ career than the story of a country girl with a double life as a pop star. Schiaparelli jacket c/o Bergdorf Goodman, Intimissimi bodysuit, MM6 Maison Margiela skirt, Wing + Weft gloves ![]()
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