Slayyyter for ‘Worst Girl in America.’ Kait Muro; Alexa Zeliger “For me, it was always either this works, or I’m fucked and I’ll go move in with my mom again,” Slayyyter candidly explains on a call from New York.
The 29-year-old Missouri-born singer-songwriter is just hours away from her major label debut, Wor$t Girl in America, and admittedly, she’s nervous. After grinding for the past decade and releasing two albums at the Fader Label, Slayyyter’s been upfront about this album feeling like a last chance of sorts, a project she’s poured everything into.
But those pre-release nerves were all for naught, and the album is already sure to create a distinct before and after period in her professional life. Wor$t Girl in America became her first album to chart on the Billboard 200 chart with 26,900 unit equivalents, opening at Number 22. It’s a modest but promising opening for a long-bubbling pop act, and it’s already 20,000 units more than the debut for her last record Starfucker.
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“My family had no money. I don’t have music industry ties, so I feel like all of this felt very random in the first place to happen to me, but I didn’t really have a backup plan or any financial cushion in doing this whole music thing,” Slayyyter explains to The Hollywood Reporter.
“I was kind of over it and over being called an up-and-comer and over trying so hard to not lose money on tours and all of this stuff,” she adds about her mindset before Wor$t Girl in America.
Slayyyter says she told herself she would make “one last album” and if it didn’t work out, she’d go back to school or figure out another career path. “I went into the studio treating it as if it was the last album I’d ever make,” she says. “What do I want that to sound like? What would I want to leave behind? What would I want to say? What would I want to talk about?”
The singer says she ditched the idea of following a trend and opted to make an album that just felt like her. That mindset resulted in Wor$t Girl in America, an electropop mash-up of vulnerability and nostalgia. Slayyyter says she channeled the things she’d see on Tumblr as a teenager for the album’s visuals. She emphasizes everything about this album came from a pure place.
Slayyyter had no desire for outside influence on Wor$t Girl in America. She says she wanted these songs to be her as the songwriter and her producers helping her write and craft the songs. “I didn’t want anyone to edit my thoughts and edit who I am,” she says. “I feel like over the past couple years, I have edited myself to try to feel like I am a legitimate artist next to everybody else, which is such a stupid thing to do because I feel like this album is more legit than anything.”
The album’s first single, “Beat Up Chanel$,” is an example of a song only Slayyyter could pull off. In a throw back to the old days — you know, 2010 — she combines dance music with pop vocals and a hint of rapping.
It’s easy to try to compare Slayyyter to some of the dance-pop artists making party girl music before her — Kesha in particular seems to be a frequent comp — but Slayyyter is forging her own style, sonically and in her album visuals. “I’m not trying to emulate anyone else. I’m not trying to compare myself to any other artist,” she says.
“I feel like sometimes it’s not even a specific song or artist reference,” Slayyyter explains when asked what some of her influences on Wor$t Girl in America. She says she’d find inspiration from articles of clothing she owned or movie trailers.
“I had this Chanel bag where there’s plastic cracking off of it. And it was this dirty old, really cheap bag I got off of Vestiaire Collective that I lowballed someone for,” she says. “I would tie this Supreme scarf to it and that inspired me. I was making music that sounded like sparkly in pink or the color purple.”
The suggestion that Slayyyter was at a make-or-break moment due to external pressure to have broken through by her age feels ridiculous to say when you remember she’s yet to hit her 30th birthday. But it’s a real pressure put on young women throughout the music industry. “I feel like in music, as a woman, there’s this unspoken pressure that you have this expiration date on you for how young and sexy you can be for however long,” she says. “I totally do not give a flying fuck about that now.”
Slayyyter says she’s excited to turn 30. “I used to dread it,” she admits, but notes that she thinks she’s cooler, more confident and her taste is better than when she was younger.
“I think the pressure to make it happen so young can be really stressful and really jarring because you don’t even know who you are yet,” she says, adding that it’s “just kind of bullshit” to be expected to pop when an artist is very young.
The singer says every song she’s made or time she’s performed has helped her skills get stronger and led her to become the artist she is. “I don’t think a young person could make an album like this,” she says. “A lot of it has to do with my specific kind of perspective of 2010’s indie electronic that I was very much in middle school and high school for.”
This weekend, Slayyyter’s set to make her debut at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. She’ll then head to Governors Ball and Lollapalooza later this summer. “I’m super excited,” she gushes. “I’ve been touring for so long at this point that being on stage feels like such a natural thing for me. I’m doing this next era of my music.”
She’ll perform at Coachella with a band, a new element for the singer. “It almost feels like I’m starting all over again, in a way, just because I’m so used to performing in one certain way or with a DJ,” Slayyyter says, noting she feels “so alive” performing on stage.
“I’m glad that I’m getting these opportunities now just because I feel ready,” she says. “I know what I want to do with it. I know what it needs to be, how it’s going to look and what makes sense for me now and what makes sense for this music, rather than trying to do something that wouldn’t be authentic to me just because I think that’s what you’re supposed to do because I’m 22.”
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