With “Girl Violence,” King Princess makes her own queer drama

“I think I have dependency issues,” King Princess told American rock magazine Spin .

At just 26, Mikaela Straus has built a reputation as a self-made pop star and provocateur of a new kind, according to The New Yorker .

This Friday, September 12, the American returns with Girl Violence, an album of love, tears and breakups which, according to the New York weekly, “confirms her status as a virtuoso provocateur, but also as a talent of her generation.”

“Despite what its title suggests, the album is full of happy endings and hilarious and well-received queer dramas.”

The American monthly Paste , a specialist in pop culture

Mikaela's family history is romantic. Or at least cinematic.

On April 10, 1912, her great-great-grandparents, Isidor and Rosalie Ida Blun, boarded the Titanic. Refusing to be separated from her husband, Rosalie abandoned the lifeboat. It is they whom James Cameron depicts in his film, entwined in their beds, in tears, as the ship sinks.

“I think about it often, ” the singer confesses to Spin magazine. “That’s probably where I get my obsession with true love.”

Mikaela, “a delicate face, a tousled haircut, a heart-shaped mouth, a mischievous nose and hazel eyes underlined by dark circles that give her a slightly edgy look,” grew up in a family marked by “centuries of addiction, estrangement and premature deaths,” recounts the New Yorker.

She grew up in Brooklyn in a house filled with music and patched-up lives. In the basement, her father founded Mission Sound, a renowned recording studio. Her mother was the director of a drug rehabilitation program.

“I love twisted people. I always think they're good people, even if they're completely crazy.”

King Princess in the American magazine The New Yorker

The artist began flirting with fame in 2018, when 1950 , a pop and gay anthem she wrote in her dorm room during her first semester at the USC Thornton School of Music in Los Angeles, earned her a platinum record, an invitation to Saturday Night Live and the attention of Harry Styles, reports the American magazine Paste.

“Overnight, Straus found herself propelled to the top of lesbian music and seen as an artist who could connect all queer generations.”

The American monthly Paste

On the new album, “besides the sultry lead single, RIP KP , which Straus says is about 'that state where you're so in love you're willing to do anything, where you love everything the other person loves and are willing to give up all personality,' there's also the breakup revenge track, Cry Cry Cry, and the doo-wop homage to [the TV show] Girls ,” Spin describes.

“Through thirteen very danceable tracks, where sensuality flirts with the dirty, Girl Violence tells the story of these women who sow chaos in the lives of others,” adds the New Yorker.

The cover, a blurred close-up of the artist's face, pays homage to a famous Blur album.

“Violence has always been considered a masculine concept. And often, the basic violence is masculine: fights, war, weapons… all these things that men have appropriated. But what interests me is intimate war.”

Mikaela Straus at the rock magazine Spin

“As a queer artist, Straus takes on this role seriously but in her own way, that is, with an infectious joy, because she hasn't forgotten that she was once a lonely gay teenager who mostly wanted to have fun,” continues Spin magazine.

“Queer people have never been safe in this country [the United States]. That's a fact. And we've never really been respected.”

King Princess in American rock magazine Spin

Speaking to Spin , the artist added: “The art is ours. We own it. If you take away LGBTQ, there are no more artists. […] We are all creations. We are the ones who make the style. We are the ones who make the fashion. We are fucking geniuses of makeup and hair, of song, of dance. Without us, art would not exist.” —