In my last article covering Kim Petras in September, I made the comment that I hoped to hear something riskier and less polished from her. In what is not the first instance of my articles on the websites acting as a monkey’s paw, she’s released a new ep titled “Slut Pop” that, well… it’s definitely less polished.
I’m the editor here and even I’m confused as to whether I can post the lyrics to any song on this album here, so here’s my attempt at a NCSU appropriate version of some lyrics, just so you get a feel for this ep’s tone:
“Treat me like a [redacted]
Little [redacted], I love to [redacted] I wanna go harder
I wanna [redacted] faster
I wanna [redacted]
I wanna [redacted] it, [redacted] it, bite it, get [redacted] it
Come on, touch my body”
Yeah the whole “Slutpop” theme is not just an aesthetic choice for the album cover, this whole ep is a concept album of “trashy, but make it self-aware.” The model for this style of music, especially in the concept of dance and electropop, is clearly Ke$ha, which brings us to the other notable feature of this album, it’s produced by Dr. Luke, a man most famous these days for alleged abuse against his signees, Ke$ha in particular.
This association would probably overwhelm the ep’s reception even if it was Kim Petras’ best work, but either fortunately or unfortunately depending on your perspective, this is far from her best music. The album seems almost like unintentional parody of Dr. Luke’s M.O. in the 2000’s: taking a generally likeable and intelligent female singer and decking her out in enough misogynistic tropes to make her persona insufferable, except when he did it to Ke$ha, the music was actually good.
As to why Petras decided to make an entire ep with Dr. Luke, I can’t begin to tell you. Her career was doing well before his involvement, and considering her main single at the moment is the bright and cheery “Coconuts” it seems unlikely that this is a drastic image change. The ep’s relative commercial failure is a saving grace as well, while #freeKesha has made some waves in response to this album, it’s so far been too small a blip to meaningfully hurt Petras’ reputation. All I can say is I hope this whole debacle will end Dr. Luke collaborations for good, at least then we will have gained something from the album.
