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TeaAt the launch of her new album, musician Mikaela Strauss, aka King Princess, pulled a 200-pound steel coffin onto a stage in Brooklyn. And she lay there, eyes closed, in an open coffin, and her fans paid tribute to her. It symbolized his rebirth, and was a wake-up call to his older age: in 2023, Strauss took a break from making music and left Mark Ronson’s Columbia imprintZelig Records, for independent label Section1. She also left Los Angeles and moved back home to New York and saw the end of a four-year relationship.
“This is the beginning of me rediscovering music and loving it again,” the 26-year-old woman told me. He also said that the commercialization of his art was beginning to “stink”. “I grew up writing music as therapy,” she says. “And then it’s monetized. You sign it and then you don’t put it out.” [music] Now out for yourself.” Overwhelmed by the numbers and statistics, she began to feel numb. “Now I feel like I’ve let go – it’s a really good practice of detachment,” she says candidly.
is the result of the same period girl violenceStrauss’s first album in three years, and his most definitive album to date. It was so purifying that she compares it to giving birth to a baby. “It felt like I burst,” she says. “The baby was 15 pounds.” “P***y and asshole Are one. Doulas have come and gone.” This is signature Strauss: she fluctuates between a kind of studied carelessness and a furious brazenness. Today, she’s sitting at a boardroom table in Section 1’s London office. Her pale, elf-like face is framed by a shaggy, brunette mullet. She leans back in her chair to drink her smoothie, a fuchsia under the black, oversized Wearing a polo shirt and a blazer with Frankenstein-style shoulder pads.
i can see how the release is happening girl violence Has been cathartic for him. The record is rockier, grittier, and more emotional than her previous material – solidified by roaring shoegaze guitars through “Cry Cry Cry”, throbbing heavy snare drums on “I Feel Pretty”, and sincere vocals that lead a former lover to “fly into a glass” on “Jaime”. It’s almost unrecognizable from their platinum 2018 single “1950”, a lush indie pop song about a complicated queer relationship. This was the track that ignited his career (it peaked at number 17 on the US charts, led to Harry Styles co-signing, and making an appearance) Saturday night Live,
girl violenceConceptually, the unconscious is related to the war that Strauss suggests women wreak on each other’s lives. This is a contradiction of “the fundamental masculine violence that exists everywhere in the world right now,” she says. It’s about women who weaponize their emotional intelligence and empathy for “good or bad.”
I tell Strauss that the term is incredibly accurate – and that he should consider officially coining it. She shrugs. “I’m the gay Shakespeare,” she says, as if it’s common knowledge. “I guess I’m an accidental gay professor. Obviously not a real one, since I don’t have a degree, but I guess I could teach a class on it.” I mention that “brat summer” – from Charli XCX’s hit record last year – was chosen by the Collins Dictionary as the 2024 word of the year. Strauss comically turns to her publicist: “Do you know anyone who can get me into this?”
girl violence It’s Strauss’s first release in three years – and she’s re-emerged at a moment where queer sexuality and heartache have become chart-topping subjects for some of pop’s biggest names. Chappelle Rhone’s “Good Luck, Babe!” – about a closeted lesbian who tries to escape her true feelings – while amassing over 2 billion streams Billie Eilish ranked fifth on the US Billboard charts For “Lunch”, their 2024 song about cunnilingus. and there is reni rappingWho sang about “Pretty Girls” on their hit records bite me,
Strauss, who is non-binary (she uses she/they pronouns) And she came out as gay as a child, saying that when she released “1950,” there was a lack of music written from this lens. Now, however, she thinks that the nature of queerness is sometimes transformed. “The people you named are incredibly queer artists, but you can totally tell that people are like, ‘It’s cool to be gay now, so let me write a song about kissing a girl in the club,'” she says. “You know the dial has been turned when it becomes profitable to keep an identity or try to generate interest in your music.”
Strauss’s work has never been ambiguous about his sexuality. She says matter-of-factly, “My music isn’t really about being queer or the possibility of being with someone who could possibly be gay, or trying to be gay. My music is about expert-level homosexuality.” “I write music about love, loss, and messiness, and it’s from the perspective of someone who has been gay and out since childhood.”
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He believes that it is now easier for queer musicians to exist and should not be defined by their sexuality. Strauss remembers several uncomfortable interviews early in his career, which he says would not happen today. “The questions were like, what’s it like being gay and making music? I was 19. It was crazy, they wanted to know who I was fucking with, there was so much emphasis on the sex part. The weird thing was, ‘Oh, you eat shit.’ And looking back now, I can mourn how it was, but also feel really happy that people aren’t approached that way anymore.”
In his short break from making music, Strauss got his first acting role in the second season of the mystery series Redemption nine complete strangersStarring Nicole Kidman as a sinister Russian doctor. She will also star opposite Hugh Jackman in Craig Brewer’s upcoming musical Sang the song blue, About the rocky life of a Neil Diamond tribute act. Strauss says he became a “King Princess stan” after giving Jackman an unreleased vinyl Girl violence.
She describes the actor as “the kindest” on set; He greeted everyone politely every day and was always the last to leave. “I just thought, ‘Wow, this is a great example of how you don’t have to be a dick,'” says Strauss. The pair’s friendship blossomed; He invited her to join him on stage at his Radio City residency, where they sang a duet of Sonny and Cher’s 1965 love song “I Got You Babe”. She learned a lot from Jackman – so much so that she’s already booked another acting gig. “I really want to push myself,” she says. “So anyone who wants to allow me to wear full prostheses and be, like, cuckoo bananas, I’m disappointed.”
Strauss’s father is a recording engineer and her mother has long worked in fashion, and she tells me she grew up watching her father work in his recording studio—which led her to record her first song at age five (a 12-bar blues about the escape of her childhood dog Jackie). Strauss is also the great-granddaughter of U.S. Congressman and Macy’s co-owner Isidor Strauss, who died on the Titanic while traveling in first class with his wife Ida. In James Cameron’s 1997 disaster film, they embrace and cry in bed as the ship sinks.
Strauss doesn’t hesitate when addressing her family history. When a group of wealthy businessmen went missing Oceangate submersible in 2023 – on a mission to locate the wreck of the Titanic – he criticized the wealthy for “making terrible decisions”. “I think there’s a cycle of billionaires who want to invent sex and then die,” Strauss said in a TikTok at the time. “Like, look at my f***ing family, right?”
This sentiment has never been more relevant, now thanks to Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin company, celebrity space missions are a regular occurrence. “I’ve always thought it’s an interesting phenomenon that rich people like to go places they shouldn’t,” she tells me. “They think they’re invincible because they’re rich, then it explodes and it’s like, ‘Oops!’ This is very insane to me.”
Strauss is keen to point out that his line of heritage had passed long before he was born. “If you look at the bullet points of it and you hear like Macy’s, Titanic, First Class, you’ll be like, ‘Napo baby.’ That’s the natural connection,” she says defensively, adding that she “hasn’t seen a dime of my family’s money.” However, she appreciates what she has learned about her great-great-grandfather. “I’m proud of what I’ve heard about the way Macy’s employees were treated,” she says. “They seemed like cool people.”
As a tribute to his past, Strauss and his mother designed a new T-shirt for merchandise for his upcoming tour. It depicts Strauss completely naked apart from some strategically placed tape on intimate areas, with “KING PRINCESS” imprinted in the iconic Macy’s serif font and star logo.
“It’s really like c***, my p***y is themed at Macy’s girl violence T-shirt,” she says. She pauses and glances at my blouse. “Forgive me, but you need that T-shirt – it will look great with your little gunny shirt.” I promise to oblige.
‘Girl Violence’ is now available via Section 1