Kim Petras’s debut album is her most personal release yet: ‘Do what you do best and feed the beast’
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When you think of Kim Petras, you think of bubbly pop, a Halloween album that’s accomplished the impossible of being more terrifying than cheesy and her famous tag, “woo ah.”
Petras, who grew up in Germany and learned English from watching Britney Spears interviews, wanted more for her career. She wanted to be a star. While she’s been active in the music scene since 2008, her songs had developed a devoted fanbase but weren’t necessarily finding mainstream success.
Then, in February, Petras found that break when she became the first transgender woman to win a Grammy Award, for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance for the song “Unholy,” which she collaborated on with Sam Smith.
Now she’s working to further solidify her stardom with her debut album Feed the Beast, which comes out on June 23. After years of releasing music independently, Petras is dropping Feed the Beast, the first album she collaborated on with a record label and the release, she told In The Know by Yahoo, that feels the truest to her.
In The Know spoke with Petras at the Motorola event launching the third generation of the Razr — a flip phone that Petras was more than happy to demonstrate has an up-to-date touchscreen and still lets you snap it shut when you want to angrily hang up on someone.
“In creativity, it [only] matters: Are you good?” she told In The Know. “Not who I am, what gender I am, what descriptions people — you know, what box I’m being put into.”
While Feed the Beast is Petras’s first major-label album, she has about 48 songs or “projects,” as she refers to them, that she’s independently released over the years. By starting out independently releasing her songs, Petras felt like she had more control in shaping the path she wanted to take with her music. But as she started to get big, the responsibilities became too overwhelming for her to handle on her own.
“I get to focus more on just being creative now and just doing what I love,” she explained. “It’s really all about the team and I really waited a long time to find the right team.”
Part of that team is Petras’s A&R rep Wendy Goldstein, who even gave the artist advice that would inspire the title of her debut album. When the singer’s Problématique leaked and she decided to scrap the album, it was Goldstein who told her to lean into the chaos.
“She was like, ‘Go back in, make more music, do what you do best and feed the beast,'” Petras recalled. “For me, it means do what you’re afraid of. … For me, that’s making big pop music and not wanting to be afraid of being on the biggest stages and making the catchiest music because I was a little [too] comfortable being loved in gay clubs.”
In addressing that discomfort, Petras also admitted this was her most personal release. She’s previously talked about putting on characters and writing from different perspectives for her other projects, but Feed the Beast is all about her.
“This is the most ‘me’ project that’s really just how I feel and describes the different sides of my actual, personal self,” she said. “This one’s a bit different from the EPs and stuff, so I hope you like it.”
Feed the Beast drops on June 23. The Motorola Razr+ will be available for preorder on June 16.
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The post Kim Petras’s debut album is her most personal release yet: ‘Do what you do best and feed the beast’ appeared first on In The Know.
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