Kim Petras: “It was hard to find anyone who believed in me”

Kim Petras is saying “sluts” in the restaurant of The Langham hotel, London, in earshot of men who look vaguely like landed gentry. It’s mid-September, and a strangely out-of-place jumbo television on the wall plays rolling news coverage of the Queen’s death. Kim, a pop star of the proper definition, sits in their midst in plaited pigtails, hot pink eyeshadow and PVC boots, like a Powerpuff Girl dressed for the club. 

When you’ve spent the past several years lighting a fire under the pop industry by way of sex-positive lyricism and a penchant for lipsmacking dance pop, at a time when “whisper music” is all the rage, how do you keep up that reputation? “At this point, it’s not exciting for me to drop a techno record,” Kim — who released a grinding Eurodance EP called Slut Pop a few months ago — says. Instead, she’s switching it up, taking her fans and the public by surprise. Her next single, “If Jesus Was a Rockstar”, sidesteps her glossy stylings: it’s a big guitar-led track that has the anthemic feel of a 90s stadium ballad. “Stripping it back for the lead single and making a song with a message that means something to me was probably the most punk thing for me to do right now,” she says, her accent a broken mix of Germanic and Californian, like a Valley Girl exchange student. “It feels more daring for me to go more conservative.”

When Kim Petras was a child growing up in the German city of Cologne, she envied those who were bound by religion. “I liked the idea of believing in something bigger than me,” she says. Her friends would go to church camps and services, but, as a trans teenager seen as femme or gay before her coming out, she’d feel displaced and  left behind. “I remember going to church and thinking that these people act like they’re okay with me but they’re really not. In religion, being gay and transgender doesn’t fit into it.” Years later, those memories would return to her, becoming the inspiration for “If Jesus Was a Rockstar”, a song about a deity she could comfortably worship at the altar of. She calls it her “repent moment”. 

“Rockstar” was produced by her idol, Max Martin, a man so elusive and mostly unattainable that many artists spend their lives vying to make music in his company. The pop super-producer, responsible for everything from “…Baby One More Time” by Britney Spears to 1989-era Taylor Swift, has been Kim’s white whale collaborator for a while. (She once told Out she was “obsessed” with him). 

Kim entered Max’s inner circle via ILYA, the producer of her collaboration with Sam Smith, “Unholy”, after proving herself during a session at Capitol Records earlier this year. “It was six guys in the studio and Sam,” she recalls, “and I started freestyling. They were like, ‘You should try sticking to the original structure and melody’, but Sam stood up for me and said, ‘Let her do her thing’.” Her verse on “Unholy” is a salacious and gutsy ode to designer brands, pop stars and shopping on Rodeo Drive (“Give me love, give me Fendi, my Balenciaga daddy”, she sings on it). “ILYA told me he was impressed by that session, and how [Sam and I] took control,” she says. Her songwriting style stuck with him: “Then I slid into that little crowd.”

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Months later, having found her flow, she walked into a session with ILYA and Omer Fedi (the 22-year-old songwriter behind Lil Nas X’s “Montero (Call Me by Your Name)” and found Max sitting on the couch with them. “I was freaking out,” she says, with a grin. As well as co-writing and co-producing the track, Max sang background vocals on it; the ultimate fantasy for a pop girl raised in the 2000s. It marked the beginning of Kim Petras’ new chapter. Since her pop breakout in the mid 2010s, she’s made catchy club pop and viral sounds her staple. When she was unsigned, she would drop singles whenever she felt like it. Now, as she joins a major label, and after a series of choppy false starts, a new strategy has emerged. 

She’s entering a new phase musically, but, part of that, at least, was against her will. Throughout lockdowns, Kim was holed up in a house in Laurel Canyon with friends and producers Aaron Joseph and Alex Chapman, writing as many as three sledgehammer pop songs a day. “I went back to Euromusic cause I was stuck in LA and couldn’t come home,” she says, crediting artists like Uffie, Justice and the artists of Ed Banger Records as the inspirations for these sessions. In the end, they were left with around 80 songs, which they then whittled down into a record, Problematique. By 2021, Kim had signed her major label deal with Republic Records, and her usual incessant release schedule had been stripped back. There was a game plan where there hadn’t been before. “Future Starts Now”, released in summer last year, was supposed to kick off a new era. But any sign of it arriving dissipated soon after. In August of this year, the record leaked in its entirety online. Its release was scrapped; she gave fans permission to stream it anyway. “I really think the label just didn’t believe in it and didn’t want it to come out,” she says. “And here we are.”

“I’m excited that the label pushed me, and got me into the next level that I aim to be at,” she says. “While it hurts a little, the excitement of the new chapter outweighs that feeling. I really feel like this music has a completely new edge to it and a side of me I didn’t really show. That’s exciting.” Though she doesn’t reference it explicitly, the new chapter feels synonymous with a more expansive class of collaborators. Since 2016, shortly after moving to Los Angeles, she has been part of Prescription Songs, the songwriting and publishing imprint headed up by Lukasz Gottwald, the producer known more commonly as Dr. Luke. Her major label contract, agreed in 2021, was under Lukasz’s Republic imprint, Amigo Records. 

In 2014, the pop musician Kesha filed a civil lawsuit against Dr. Luke for claims of sexual assault and battery, sexual harassment, gender violence, emotional abuse and violation of California business practices. Kesha linked these claims to events she dated as far back as 2008, alleging that she was tied into a contract with the producer, and later claimed that she was offered freedom from her recording contract if she retracted the claims of sexual and drug abuse. Kesha claimed to reject the offer; Dr. Luke and his legal team denied all the claims and maintain such an offer was never made. In 2016, the allegations of sexual assault, sexual harassment and gender violence were dismissed by a judge in New York. A defamation case brought by Lukasz against Kesha is still ongoing.

In June 2018, Kim released a statement regarding her working relationship with Dr. Luke: “While I’ve been open and honest about my positive experience with Dr. Luke, that does not negate or dismiss the experience of others or suggest that multiple perspectives cannot exist at once. I didn’t communicate this clearly in the past.”

I ask Kim to reflect on her early years, when she first moved to Los Angeles with the intention of becoming a popstar. “I think people underestimate how hard it was for me to find anyone who truly believed in me,” she says. “I had a lot of great times with the people I worked with, but it’s also time for me to be my own person, and do my own shit, and explore what’s out there. It definitely took a little courage for me to do that right now.”

Dr. Luke is not featured on the credits of “If Jesus Was a Rockstar”, a first for a solo Kim Petras single in five years. She namechecks Wendy Goldstein, the co-president of Republic, as someone who helped her break new ground: “She really pushed me to write better songs, and go in with this person, and this person, and this person.” 

Work has started on an album composed of new tracks and offcuts from that summer of sessions in Laurel Canyon. Kim calls it “a really pretty skeleton. It’s got the wig on. Braids with ribbons, but it’s still a skeleton — a hot slutty skeleton!” She can see the finished product in her head now. “I know the songs, and I know the order of them, but I just have to go finish them,” she says. “It’s a very eclectic world of new people that I’ve worked with, so it’s [a case of] fitting into their schedule.” Max, of course, but also Ian Kirkpatrick — one of the masterminds behind Dua Lipa’s “Don’t Start Now” — who she’s written three tracks with.

It’s an exciting circle of people, but one valuable figure, with whom Kim has made magic with in the past, is missing: SOPHIE. A fellow trans pop pioneer, the pair worked together on “1,2,3 dayz up”, as well as a number of leaked, unreleased tracks. “SOPHIE was such a loss for me that I [still] struggle with,” Kim says. “She was the first real friend that I’ve lost in life.” Working with her “was rare and beautiful. I felt understood. And we shared a lot about the world and how we feel in it. It’s extremely sad how it ended.” There were songs the pair made that never saw the light of day, but all is not lost. Recently, she’s been speaking with SOPHIE’s brother, Ben Long: “There’s something really exciting being organised, and I’m lucky to be a part of it.” 

The past year has been a learning curve for Kim. “It’s a completely different way of doing it,” she says of her current creative situation. But it’s a game, “[One] I’m willing to play and conquer. As frustrating and heartbreaking as it is, I’m in a greater position than I’ve ever been in.” From here, she’ll head to Sweden to continue toiling at her first (properly released) major label record. Then it’s back to the States to perform “Unholy” live at the iHeartRadio Festival. She doesn’t know it at the point we’ve met, but that song will go on to be her first number one single in the US and the UK. She becomes the first openly transgender artist to achieve this. Years spent trying to break the mainstream will have finally paid off.

I ask if she knows herself better now, compared to all those years ago, when her journey first began. She’s unsure. “Every song is another try at figuring myself out,” she says. Then, Kim surveys the room of pinstripe suits and loafer shoes, and prays to a higher power in the only way she knows how. She grins: “Wish me luck, bitches!”

Credits

Photography Leif Sebastian