Following a Grammy win for her Billboard Hot 100-topping Sam Smith collab “Unholy” earlier this year (not to mention a Billboard Women in Music honor), Kim Petras is on the road with her Feed the Beast Tour. It kicked off Sept. 27 in Austin and has worked its way up the east coast since then, rolling into New York City’s Brooklyn Mirage on Monday (Oct. 9) night.
Despite Petras being German-born and Los Angeles-based, the Brooklyn concert was a bit of a homecoming for her. “I’ve been thinking of how much I owe to gay clubs – especially gay clubs in Brooklyn,” Petras told Billboard earlier this year when she was honored as the 2023 Women in Music Chartbreaker. “That’s where my career started and where people wanted me to perform. It’s where I performed the sh-t out of my songs on bars and tables and anything. I feel like I owe my career to Brooklyn and the Bushwick gays. I’m so grateful, I will never forget that. It’s my favorite place.”
The fact that Petras went from singing on Bushwick tables to selling out a 4500-capacity venue just a mile and a half from one of those local queer spaces wasn’t lost on her. “You sold out this show! I’m so grateful,” Petras told the NYC crowd, an LGBTQ-heavy audience dressed (or undressed) to the nines. “I remember dancing on a bar in Bushwick and Amanda Lepore was there and all of a sudden people started listening to my music.”
While the Feed the Beast Tour is plenty transgressive — featuring Satanic imagery (sure to cause pearl-clutching among the crowd left scandalized by her 2023 Grammy performance) and a dangling mic that resembles a sex toy during “Throat Goat” — Petras’ history with the neighborhood actually left her choked up during one song. (And no, it wasn’t the latter track.)
Hearing her voice catch while performing certainly made clear that Petras is singing live during this tour – not that anyone could have missed that after watching her belt the poignant “Everybody Dies” earlier that night, which found her showcasing the peaks and valleys of her substantial voice.
“You wanna hit this high note with me, bitches?” she shouted before delivering a money note in “Icy.” Based on the crowd’s response, plenty of people tried; few delivered. No shock there – there’s only one Kim Petras. And on the Feed the Beast Tour, she’s making sure all her fans get fed.
