2023-07-07 20:00:00
That’s why the trans singer is currently the world’s biggest German pop star
Pop.
There are people in Germany who would probably get a rough neck if trans woman Kim Petras read her favorite books in a day care center. But the native Rhinelander would hardly have time for that, because she is just stuffing her second album “Feed The Beast” into the heads of them and the rest of the world. And with maximum success: The record is currently at number 2 in the US dance charts and is about to take over the legacy of superstars like Lady Gaga or Britney Spears with gaudy hyper-hyped pop. The fact that Petras received a Grammy this year together with Sam Smith for the joint song “Unholy” is of course a perfect catalyst.
“Feed The Beast” doesn’t just sound colourful, plastic and typically American over the top: The record also stands out from the corresponding productions of recent years as amazingly edgy and unique, and yes, that has something to do with Petrs’ origin and career. First: You can hear the young woman’s songwriting experience. At the age of 15 she had already started releasing her own songs. Despite the first small successes with digital singles on the Internet, her confectionary pop in the German music industry either met with mild smiles or deaf ears. In 2011, at the age of 19, she ventured to Los Angeles, where she tried to gain a foothold as a composer without any contact. Every day, Kim Petras once said, she wrote a song back then. In 2017 she had her first hit with the song “I Don’t Want It All”, in the video of which Paris Hilton played. With retro charm, Petras worked her way along the sexy girl scam of her idol Britney Spears, which characterized the 2019 albums “Turn Off The Light” and “Clarity”. Finally, she gained a lot of attention with the EP “Slut Pop” in 2022 – as a kind of pop global version of Katja Krasavice to be taken seriously.
But Kim Petras emancipates herself from this with the new work with a lot of oomph. Because, and that brings us to second: “Feed The Beast” transports the woman’s great songwriting talent into almost bursting high-energy dance tracks, which are ignited by a violent propellant from good old Eurodance. This influence from the old homeland pushes and presses and pulsates and trembles like in the best rave times, without sounding even remotely retro. Already the start with the title song kicks the chair out from under the butt and triggers a real compulsion to move. What follows is a bulging, overflowing, hugely inflated round dance of ever new dance bombs, with Kim Petras revealing a gigantic hook potential in the choruses: A verse may sound naïve here and there – in the chorus the woman then regularly sweeps everything away. Just listen to happiness hormone grenades like “King Of Hearts” or “Castle In The Sky”.
And where normal American hit factory pop threatens to bore the insider rather quickly, Petras keeps coming up with surprises around the corner, be it the in-your-face guitar solo(!!) in “Revelations” or the cool EDM tracks. Twist in “Uhoh”. “Everything I drop is an banger” she sings – and there’s no other way to describe it, damn it! Kindergarten? It’s long gone!
So it’s no wonder that the woman who was once ridiculed is suddenly considered a child prodigy in her home country. Here, away from her family, things were made rather difficult for her: Born in Bonn in 1992 in the body of a boy, Petras has fought since childhood to be allowed to be what she is. She first gained notoriety as the youngest person to have sex reassignment surgery. The parents, who recognized and supported their daughter, prevail against skepticism and resistance. Kim Petras was therefore able to start hormone treatment at the age of 12 – which also makes her an icon of the “LGBTQ+” movement today. This may give the record an additional twist. But she doesn’t need that. The musical quality, which already plays in the Madonna or Lady Gaga league, speaks for itself!
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