As the Trump administration attempts to legislate LGBTQ+ people out of existence, we know now that palatable queerness is a marketing strategy — and it won’t save us.
So we’re leaving the mainstream and we’re taking the collection of sacred twigs and jagged rocks we found at subway stops with us. You can keep your palatable pop queers and “allies.” All we need is our sapphic thirst trap nepo baby King Princess.
There’s no need to lament the end of yet another hot girl summer when King Princess’ new album, “Girl Violence,” is the soundtrack for feral femme fall. The album, which dropped on Sept. 12, is a disruptive vortex in the wave of recently released queer pop albums.
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No shade to artists like Kali Uchis or Olly Alexander, who have both released glossy, glamorous gay albums as of late, but we the queers really needed a messy album to scream-cry to during these trying times. While Troye Sivan’s synthy “Something To Give Each Other” and Hayley Kiyoko’s polished “Expectations” have given us ample dance floor fodder, King Princess has granted us the raw, rabid femme independence we need in this moment.
It takes intention; KP reportedly walked away from Columbia for the indie label Section1 in order to make the kind of chaos this era demands. And she isn’t alone in her refusal to perform palatability. Perfume Genius gave us the haunted sprawl of “Ugly Season.” Arca keeps building labyrinths of sound too jagged for radio, perfect blueprints for the queer underground. Respectability politics rewards the neat, upwardly mobile, brand-safe queer. “Girl Violence” reminds the rest of us that mess can be medicine.
Outside the studio, basement shows and DIY collectives have become sanctuaries precisely because the state and corporations have gutted our spaces — venues, shelves, budgets, attention. “Girl Violence” belongs to that lineage. It isn’t a product for consumption. It’s a makeshift lifeline. And that’s why it hits me square in the chest, dredging up my queer-disaster years, circa 2017–2020 (RIP).
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“Why does no one mention that girls can be violent?” King Princess laments in the titular track. Indeed. No one told me either. When I think back to my messy gay divorce, what hits hardest is the absolute shock I felt that we couldn’t have the conscious queer decoupling I imagined. We really had to go all the way back to almost strangers. Scholars call this disidentification, or the queer art of failure. I just called it life. Which is exactly the point. My queer messiness wasn’t a lapse in taste, it was practice for survival.
And so, for those of us who align with bell hooks’ definition of queerness — essentially being at odds with everything in the world — this is both therapeutic for the long run and perfectly apropos right now.
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“Jaime” slow-beats the tension of 10,000 secret crushes and “Cry, Cry, Cry” spits the kind of venom none of us want to remember the next day. “I Feel Pretty” lets a little light back in and by the time we land on “RIP KP,” reclamation is tender and throbbing, the kind of recovery you only earn by living through the disaster. “Girl Violence” is, at turns, melancholic, scrappy, indignant and romantic — just like the queer love it orbits.
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There’s no skipping the mess in queer life or in “Girl Violence.” It’s all wrought in exquisitely raw detail. King Princess is, sonically and professionally, choosing the mess of independence over the false promises of mainstream acceptance. Thank Goddexx. The mainstream can keep its perfect, polished queers. “Girl Violence” is for those brave enough to be messy, who know heartbreak can be holy and defection is another word for freedom.