Talking to Billboard over Zoom from Los Angeles a week before the release of her third studio album, Slayyyter looks fresh faced and pretty while laying in bed talking about music. It’s thus counterintuitive when she reveals that she wanted the aesthetic for this LP, Wor$st Girl in America, to be, as she says “Really gross. I wanted this album to look ugly.”
But in the context of her trajectory this creative instinct makes sense. Landing in the music industry after growing up in a “very, very, very, very dysfunctional household” in St. Louis, in her earlier years Slayyyter often presented herself (intentionally or not) as a party animal in blonde extensions, the messy girl crying in the bathroom at the end of the night. The heaviness and swagger of her music paralleled these tendencies, with the work developing a significant cult following even as she judged herself for not abiding by the metaphorical “charm school lessons” other pop stars seemed to have had.
Coming after a period where she seriously considered quitting music, Wor$t Girl In America is a rejection of trying to be something she’s not, with the music and corresponding visuals trading polish for rawer, rougher, darker and more emotionally vulnerable themes. The music also slaps, synthesizing industrial, electro-pop and iPod party music into a work that feels honest and the right kind of raunchy.
Ahead of a 30-date (and largely sold out) North American and European tour behind the project — and her Coachella debut next month — Slayyyter talks about the new music with Billboard below.
This part of your bio stood out to me: “Leading up to her third album, Slayyyter was sick of the music industry and of herself, or at least people’s ideas of her. A crisis of faith was purged in Miami during a stint split between the studio and nightclubs.” Want to unpack that a bit?
I went to Miami for a month with a friend, and was thinking about where I stood in music and everything I’ve done, and how my last album didn’t really do what I guess people thought it was going to do. I had a come-to-Jesus moment of, like, “You know what? I am just going to make a really crazy last project, and I’m going to make it cool to myself, and not try to make it sound appealing to anyone but me.” I wanted to reference things that inspired me when I was a teenager.
Then what happened?
When I came back from Miami, we started work on this project, and I just kept saying, “I’m going to go back to school after this. I’m done. This is going to be my last project. I’m going to do one last rollout and give it my all, and then I’m going to tell my team that I’m over doing this and shift gears, because it’s not working out.” Then I rediscovered my love for making music while working on everything, and ended up signing to Columbia for this project, and everything has been so great. I really felt hopeless, so I think all of this music came from a place of wanting to make a project that fulfilled me, and then to move on with my life.
Did having that idea that you were going to move on with your life when the album was done affect what you were making?
The biggest mantra I had going into the studio was, “If I die tomorrow, would this be a song I’d be proud of or think was cool, or would it be a song that if people put it on at a party, I’d be embarrassed about?”
I have a lot of songs that are of the time. I’m not trying to hate on my older music — because everything serves its purpose at different times in life — but I wanted to make something about more than just being a Twitter meme artist. I went in referencing things I didn’t think were going be very popular with my audience. I wasn’t working with songwriters or making music from a place of, “This is going be huge,” or, “We need to make this sound like a hit.” I was going in and making things that felt right and cool to me.
Wor$t Girl In America is out on Columbia Records, after you had initially considered releasing it independently. What were those early conversations with the label like?
I kept saying things that ended up not even being so true. I was like, “I want this to be really gross. I want this album to look ugly. I want to be ugly. I want to be myself. I don’t want to do the whole beautiful fashion thing, and I don’t want the images to feel super curated and stylized. I want to style myself. I want to wear wrinkled jean shorts off my bedroom floor, and that’s the spirit of this album. And I want to wear grills and lean on a natural swagger rather then curating something glossy and pop star.”
They were so down for and intrigued by that. And I was surprised, because I feel like when someone says “I want to look ugly and crazy,” that’s not a great selling point. But I feel like they understood my vision from the beginning, and didn’t want to dilute or override my creative decisions, because they respected the cult following I’ve built for myself. They’ve been so incredible in helping uplift my vision and giving me advice, tools and strategy to roll this music out properly, and give this album what it needs.
How much of wanting to be ugly and gross was a reaction to the very high gloss pop star image you presented with your last album Starf–ker?
I think it had a lot to do with it. All the imagery for Starf–ker was very glamorous and Hollywood starlet, a lot of makeup and fashion and everything. It was fun to play with that, but it also doesn’t feel true to me. It definitely married the music very well — and, like, I love that album. I’m not trying to talk s–t on a previous project just because this is the new thing I’m doing. But I was sick of not only my own over-stylized imagery… I feel like everything we see these days is just so over-stylized. Big makeup, big hair moments. Nothing feels loose or effortless. And even when people are doing effortless visuals, there’s still a lot of stylization and curation that goes into everything — and I just felt so disconnected from where I was when I started making music, which was a very DIY approach to everything. Sometimes I would look crazy, but there was a charm to it.
I laughed at the line in your bio that described you as “Midwest core tweaker core.” Tell me about who that is, and how much of it is drawing from your childhood and young life in Missouri.
Oh that is 100% me, honestly. Whenever I tell people about my musical beginnings, I always says how I was, like, plucked out of St. Louis and dropped into this world without charm school lessons on how to walk and talk, and like, “Hey, maybe don’t have 10 drinks at a party and go berserk.” I feel like I came onto the scene with crazy looking platinum blonde hair extensions, and I was a hair salon receptionist, and always felt like I was too much.
I just felt so nervous and out of place that I would overcompensate with being drunk or crazy. I’ve honed it back over the years, and I’ve matured a lot, but it’s funny to look back on, because I was just taken from this townie bar culture and dropped into this very other place — not by mistake, but I wasn’t like, prepped for it.
Have you changed?
I’ve grown out of it a lot. People are always shocked when I say this, because I know this album feels like a fever dream party trip — but I do not really like to drink that much anymore. I try staying out of trouble as much as possible. I stay home and do little hobbies and watch my movies and whatever. The tweaker energy is a funny thing looking back. I really used to feel like the party clown.
There’s some sensitive stuff on this album, particularly in the second half. To what extent if any is this music a reckoning with that party clown past self?
I have had a reckoning with my past, and have become a little more self-forgiving about issues I might have or why I am the way I am. A movie that inspired me a great deal for this project was Uptown Girls, which is my favorite movie of all time. since I was a little little girl. Re-watching it as an adult, there’s a lot of themes about maturation and how your childhood conditions you to be the way you are.
I used to be so hard on myself. Like “God, why do you have to drink so much? Why are you so crazy? Why can’t you just be normal and not have freak outs in the bathroom?” As I’ve gotten older, I’ve been more self forgiving, because I had a difficult time as a kid.
Do you want to say more about that?
I grew up in a very, very, very, very dysfunctional household. I don’t really have a relationship with my father, and he affected me a lot from a young age. That all kind of conditioned me to be the way that I am now. It’s not an excuse for acting crazy or being whatever, but I think I have matured and grown a lot, and I look back on my past self, and don’t cringe as hard. Me being drunk on the mic at someone’s DJ set who doesn’t want me onstage, that’s okay. It doesn’t really matter. Like, nothing matters. We’re all gonna die. I think if people understood more about where I come from or what my childhood was like, it wouldn’t all seem so embarrassing or crazy or out of place.
Is this project then a sign of maturation?
Definitely. I tapped back into my high school influences, and some of the songs have an immature, teenage angst. But it feels like I’ve grown into my skin and into myself as like an artist. This project feels like my final form and who I am at the core as an artist.
Now that’s you’re on the other end of making it, are you still ready to go back to school and leave this part of your life behind?
I honestly don’t know if I would go back to school. I would love to. I have pretty severe ADHD and get really fixated on hobbies and things like sewing and costume construction. I feel like I’m too old to go back to school for that, but maybe I’m not. I’d love to take classes and lean more into that, because I am obsessed with clothes. I love constructing my own costumes, which I’ve done a ton during this album cycle.
But really, the biggest lesson I’ve learned throughout music and through past projects is to not put expectations on anything. I feel very grateful that people are paying attention and resonating with this music, and I don’t really need some big breakthrough to sleep at night.
