Collier Schorr
King Princess: changing the narrative.
Identity is complicated. But every now and then there’s a sound or a figure that comes to define it for millions. King Princess, the alter ego of Brooklyn-born singer/songwriter Mikaela Straus, provides that sense of identity to many through her music.
King Princess’s tour in support of her sophomore album, Hold on Baby, comes to The Sylvee on Oct. 14. The music expresses the joy and sorrow that come with discovering self-worth and character.
“Just growing up as a person my music has kind of shifted to singing about heartbreak and singing about myself and my mental health,” King Princess tells Isthmus in a Zoom interview.
King Princess’ songs layer clever lyricism with beats that vary from soft and somber to rough and chaotic. In “I Hate Myself, I Want To Party,” she presents herself as a person who chooses distraction over self-help, with the instrumentals invoking the emotions of self-reflection.
In other songs like “Cursed,” “Little Bother” and “Let Us Die,” King Princess speaks not only for herself but a generation. “I don’t want to sugarcoat the experience of being a young person, a queer person, a person in this world,” King Princess says. “It is challenging — depression is real.”
In addition to singing, songwriting and producing her music, King Princess plays most of the instruments on her recordings.
Hold On Baby reflects the intense highs and lows of being young, and more specifically, being young and queer. King Princess shows generally offer a space for queer and youth communities to let go and share in their experiences. Or, as she puts it, “do that live therapy.”
“I think it’s a beautiful, beautiful opportunity for people to have some fun and cry and laugh together,” says King Princess, who identifies as non-binary and uses both she and they pronouns.
The artist’s past work laid the groundwork for it. King Princess’ first single, “1950,” incorporated the often unspoken stories of the queer community; it hit several Billboard charts and earned Platinum status in the U.S. and Australia. She followed that with her first album Cheap Queen. A continuing theme in her work is coming of age in worlds that are both real and digital.
King Princess has a strong following on social platforms. Her personas onstage and online are different yet complementary — she adopts a sensual, godlike androgyny during her shows, but adds silliness to social media.
“I’m good at expressing my feelings in music and I’m good at being funny,” King Princess says. “Sometimes people need a break from the memage and they need to be told that everything’s okay…”
But King Princess says there’s a cost to spending too much time on the internet.
“There are days when social media makes me feel ill,” she says. “It’s really hard to be a young person right now, anywhere, especially with social media.”
Much of King Princess’ music reflects her life and experiences as a queer-identifying person, which can be a difficult position in the music industry.
“It’s tougher to be queer because you’re pigeonholed into these queer pop genres. You’re put into these boxes,” King Princess says. “I try to ignore it and make music for myself and for the people who need it.”
She doesn’t feel she appeals only to a queer audience; queer pop is, after all, still pop. But the singer's experience with pigeonholing reflects a larger problem in the music industry, especially among feminine-presenting creators. Artists like Lil Nas X, Tyler the Creator and Troye Sivan are more often identified as pop before queer pop. But those like King Princess, girl in red, Clairo, and Fletcher are commonly found in Spotify-generated queer pop playlists. King Princess wants her work to change that narrative.
“I try not to think about the societal limitations on what queer people are allowed to do in music and what’s deemed acceptable, what’s deemed mainstream,” King Princess says. “I make the music that I make, I sing about what I want to sing about.”
