here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\nSlayyyter\u2019s next effort attempted to regain her momentum with middling success. Her major label debut, Troubled Paradise<\/em>, is uncompromising, unreserved, and to be honest, undercooked. Partially hampered by the pandemic, Troubled Paradise<\/em> seemed to exchange the terminally online sound of Slayyyter<\/em> for a more minimalist industrial sound that fizzles out by the album\u2019s second half. For a debut album, Troubled Paradise<\/em> is more defined by individual moments than a complete statement. \u201cOver This!\u201d is the only track that manages to recapture the glory of her best early work, fusing hyperpop fizz with the angsty pop-punk glory of Avril Lavigne in her prime. Beyond that, the title track\u2019s epic bridge demonstrates Slayyyter\u2019s songwriting growth, \u201cThroatzillaaa\u201d is memeable crass fun, and \u201cLetters\u201d is her first and most successful attempt at a ballad. Beyond these highlights, the tracklist is full of\u2026 nothing. Troubled Paradise<\/em> is pure fluff, lacking the distinct Y2K bent of her debut and demonstrating intention but only minimal progression in terms of musical growth. <\/p>\n\n\n\nIt\u2019s an all but foregone conclusion that much of Troubled Paradise<\/em>\u2019 potential was swallowed by the pandemic, but many other pop artists made some of their best work in their own home. Taylor Swift\u2019s Folklore<\/em> and Charli XCX\u2019s How I\u2019m Feeling Now<\/em> were both hailed as isolation icons, and it\u2019s not like Slayyyter is unfamiliar with making music in her bedroom. Ironically, perhaps the best thing to come out of the Troubled Paradise<\/em> era was Slayyyter\u2019s remix of Britney Spears\u2019 \u201cGimme More\u201d, a Soundcloud exclusive that found new life on TikTok (due to Slayyyter being unable to afford clearing the sample). Slayyyter\u2019s carefree voice floats bitchily over one of the most tightly crafted pop songs ever made, immediately demonstrating her aptitude for dark, glossy pop meant for driving around in Grand Theft Auto. Britney has been perhaps her most prominent influence since her debut, and there\u2019s something that elevates Slayyyter when she fuses trashiness with glamour instead of playing it straight.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAnd so we arrive at Starfucker<\/em>. Slayyyter\u2019s sophomore soir\u00e9e, dropped on September 22nd, is clearly the star\u2019s favorite project so far and the one with the most distinctly recognizable Pinterest board. The album cover almost resembles one, as Slayyyter stands in a havoc-stricken hotel room complete with faux-panther chaise, telephone off the hook on the carpet, empty martini glass, bouquet arrangement, cigarette in hand, and cleavage on display for a touch of tackiness. It brings to mind an image of James Bond\u2019s nightstand in Goldfinger<\/em> if it were rendered by Ert\u00e9. More than anything else, it\u2019s a complete world. Compared to the tanning bed of Slayyyter<\/em> and the green-screened poppy field of Troubled Paradise<\/em>, Starfucker<\/em>\u2019s album cover feels like an expansive and expensive cinematic vision.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThis sentiment applies to the rest of the album as well. Slayyyter has spoken at length about Starfucker<\/em> being inspired by her time in LA on the celebrity bubble, sometimes being starstruck and sometimes being the star in the room. This dichotomy informs almost every aspect of the album, and tension between dualities becomes an overarching theme \u2014 class vs. vulgarity, intimacy vs. detachment, hedonism vs. temperance, past vs. future. Starfucker<\/em> is swinging big with these ideas, bigger than any of Slayyyter\u2019s previous works. Cathy\u2019s not in Missouri anymore, and it shows better than it ever did on Troubled Paradise.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nBefore delving into the album itself, however, I want to think about the space Starfucker<\/em> occupies in the internet pop landscape. Slayyyter is a musician, but first and foremost, she\u2019s a POP STAR. She\u2019s the product of an interesting trend that started happening in the late 2010s. For years, music fans have had alternative pop stars to stan. The 80s had Kate Bush, the 90s had Bjork and PJ Harvey, the 2000s had Robyn, and the early 2010s had Lana Del Rey and Marina, diamonds included. These artists resisted mainstream success outside of their audiences primarily because of their sound, either for being too unconventional or too raw or some other off-putting factor. However, around 2013, something interesting happened to mainstream pop. The bright, colorful, carefree landscape began turning darker and moodier. This shift can be traced back to figures like The Weeknd and the aforementioned Lana Del Rey, but the big light switch moment came with the release of Lorde\u2019s \u201cRoyals\u201d. Lorde\u2019s cutting takedown of pop\u2019s materialistic, outlandish stylings (despite her embrace of them) shifted the needle away from mania and towards downtempo mood destabilizers, laying the groundwork for the biggest pop stars of the late 2010s and early 2020s: Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo, even SZA. Now, mainstream pop is pivoting back towards the retro-shine of the 80s thanks to Dua Lipa and Doja Cat, but for a while, it was all heavy bass and moody whispers.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat\u2019s interesting about this trend is that alternative pop stars took the opposite route. The alt-pop icons of the late 2010s trended towards kinetic and sugary: Charli XCX, Kim Petras, Carly Rae Jepsen, and of course, Slayyyter. Outside of Charli\u2019s more abrasive textures, there was almost nothing stopping these artists from being mainstream solely based on their musical output (one could make an argument for Slayyyter\u2019s tackier tendencies, but even then, she wasn\u2019t that far left-field of Kesha\u2019s biggest hits). There was very little about any of them that read as alternative at that point in time, even if they used their niche status to try things that they probably wouldn\u2019t have otherwise (Kim\u2019s Halloween LP comes to mind). The reason they weren\u2019t mainstream was solely because they weren\u2019t operating in the mode that radio pop was at the time. There\u2019s no reason that Slayyyter and Kim couldn\u2019t have achieved mainstream relevancy 5 to 10 years earlier, and Charli and Carly had flashes of it. In the cases of Kim and Slayyyter, this was primarily because their artistic references WERE mainstream. Slayyyter pulled from Britney and Gaga, and Kim\u2019s musical DNA lay with her main producer, who shall remain nameless here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The point of these observations is that these pop stars belong to a new lineage of artists who make strictly pop music without the roaring commercial success that assuredly comes along with it, instead finding life on the internet through stan culture. Without a snappy term for them, we can think of them as Internet Pop Stars. Other examples include but are not limited to Muna, Chappell Roan, Caroline Polachek, Rina Sawayama, and Allie X. There\u2019s something about each of these artists that has prevented them from becoming fully mainstream, even though they make by-and-large digestible pop. They often inspire extremely dedicated online fanbases, get put on Spotify-curated playlists, and become concert openers for pop\u2019s biggest players. Muna opened for Taylor Swift, Chappell Roan is opening for Olivia Rodrigo, Caroline Polachek opened for Dua Lipa, and of course, Slayyyter opened for Tove Lo. One could argue that Tove Lo is also an Internet Pop Star, albeit a much more well-known one thanks to her radio stint in the mid-2010s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These artists all gained prominence in the wake of poptimism, a movement arguing that pop music is just as worthy of critical praise and artistic merit as other genres. The fact that Internet Pop Stars exist, are inspired artistically by mainstream pop, and continue to create work without the insane commercial gain of the 1% is a vote of confidence for poptimism, and although plenty of them make bad music, so do many rock outlets. As a trade-off, these artists get to stick to completely controlled creative visions, but without the massive budgets of their A-List peers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s a very prominent theory in the world of film studies that seems applicable here. In 1950s France, a group of film critics and fanatics including but not limited to Andre Bazin, Francois Truffaut, and Jean-Luc Godard began publishing on the idea of the director as a visionary in reaction to the Hollywood studio system. In their eyes, certain directors displayed not only a streak of technical mastery but also a distinctive personal style, the combination of which led to more interesting films that were also more worthy of study. This theory became known as Auteur Theory, and it gained widespread popularity through the bolstering of Andrew Sarris. Auteur Theory is now widely taught and debated in film studies classrooms, with some endorsing it as a guidepost for cinematic literacy while others dismiss it as reductive and ignorant of the collaborative nature of filmmaking. For all its faults and shirking of complexity, the positioning of the director as the mastermind of the film, with each decision being a symbol of their creative intent, is a prevailing school of thought in film academia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although it lacks a name, this school of thought also looms large over pop music. It has become increasingly important over the years for pop stars to write their own songs; Taylor Swift is the biggest pop star in the world right now, primarily BECAUSE she is the author of the Taylor Swift brand. This idea has become so dominant that it\u2019s basically a prerequisite to pop stardom. Gone are the days of producers and songwriters shopping around tracks from musician to musician; Britney recording a demo of \u201cUmbrella\u201d before ultimately letting it go to Rihanna would never happen today. Sure, songwriters and producers are still integral to the machine, and some pop stars even double as songwriters on the side (Charli XCX penned several of the late 2010s\u2019 biggest radio hits before jumping into the hyperpop lane). But now more than ever before, pop stars have to come in with a vision that\u2019s their own rather than executing a vision that was assigned to them. This shift could be interpreted as a side effect of poptimism\u2014 because pop music is viewed more seriously and artistically, pop stars are no longer studio directors and actors: they are auteurs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Which brings us back to Slayyyter and Starfucker<\/em>. It\u2019s not surprising that an album with a host of cinematic inspirations feels incredibly auteurist. Slayyyter has cited films like Basic Instinct<\/em> and Body Heat<\/em> as well as albums like The Fame<\/em> and Electra Heart<\/em>, but Starfucker<\/em>\u2019s most prominent forebearer is probably Sunset Boulevard<\/em>. Billy Wilder\u2019s classic Hollywood noir is gothic, waxy, and glamorous, a perfect blend of mythologizing and satirizing. Starfucker<\/em> reads similarly; it\u2019s the first Slayyyter<\/em> project that sounds like it takes place in one location. Listening to Starfucker<\/em> sounds like experiencing a murder mystery in the lobby of the Ch\u00e2teau Marmont.<\/p>\n\n\n\nOpener \u201cI Love Hollywood!\u201d immediately establishes the album\u2019s sonic universe, with Slayyyter tossing out style signifiers over a smoky club beat. She namedrops Sunset Tower, Dr. Weiss, and Terry Richardson in the second verse alone. This is an elusive and dirty world, one that draws people in with its glittery allure before slathering them in grime. Slayyyter is more than aware of this transformation. \u201cDon\u2019t bring Cathy, she\u2019s a cunt,\u201d she casually tosses out in the opening verse, shedding her Missouri skin and fully committing to the LA sleaze of the Slayyyter persona. It\u2019s an extremely apt opener given what\u2019s to come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The songs on Starfucker<\/em> primarily serve to either flesh out the world of the album or create pop perfection; the best tracks do both. \u201cMiss Belladonna\u201d is an early stunner where Slayyyter further carves out her femme fatale erotic thriller persona as she sings about luring men into her web before spitting them right back out, embodying the Hollywood machine. The highlight is the towering chorus, which thunders like the best tracks from The Fames Monster<\/em>. \u201cHe lives for love and I live for drama,\u201d she proclaims, stretching out the last syllable for extra flair before concluding with an operatic belt that positions her as a figure of worship. She somehow manages to immediately top herself with \u201cDramatic\u201d, a slice of noir-tinged synthpop that soars from start to finish. Here, Slayyyter finds herself interested in a man who\u2019s clearly obsessed with her for shallow purposes, but she\u2019s not mad at the attention. \u201cDon\u2019t be dramatic, just say the word and you\u2019ll have it,\u201d she hooks with a towering eye-roll. The sneaky genius of the chorus is that it subtly reveals her as the one who needs something in the relationship, even though she\u2019s in the position of power. \u201cI\u2019ll give you everything that you want, touch you in the way that she won\u2019t, love you in the way that she don\u2019t\u201d reeks of desperation masquerading as confidence. She\u2019s holding this guy hostage like Norma Desmond keeping Joe Gillis locked up in her Deco million-dollar mansion (another reference that Slayyyter mentions specifically). The hooks stack up, amounting to the high point of the record.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cMy Body\u201d continues this theme of desperation with even more energy, and it\u2019s the track that best demonstrates Slayyyter\u2019s growth as a musician, possibly because it has the most obvious comparison point in her discography. You\u2019d be forgiven for initially assuming the song to be a sequel to mixtape track \u201cTouch My Body\u201d, but beyond nomenclature, the two songs are almost nothing alike. The mixtape cut featured one of Slayyyter\u2019s thinnest vocal performances and weakest melodies; neither is a problem here. \u201cMy Body\u201d pulses with propulsion, fueled by a thumping chorus and Slayyyter\u2019s extremely convictive vocals. She really sells the anguish of needing attention, particularly with an extended yelp of desperation that\u2019s so nice she does it twice. It\u2019s an impressive performance from a pop star who used to struggle with anything that wasn\u2019t Britney huskiness. \u201cMy Body\u201d does suffer a little from being the fourth track in a row to utilize a spoken word prechorus, but the song only tries it once before Slayyyter retires it for the rest of Starfucker<\/em>\u2019s runtime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cRhinestone Heart\u201d is another strong point, mainly because its glittery chorus is so addictive. It\u2019s the type of melody that feels so perfectly obvious that it\u2019s insane it didn\u2019t already exist, beautiful and tragic in equal measure. Tumblr would have eaten it up in 2013.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What\u2019s most impressive about the first half of Starfucker<\/em> is its consistency. Gone are the days of the self-titled mixtape and Troubled Paradise<\/em>\u2019s undercooked stutter. Slayyyter goes for broke on every track, and for the most part, it works. The record feels lavish and seductive, fully committed to the riches of its world, but it leaves room to explore its hollowness and superficiality. The best pop records straddle that line, and Starfucker<\/em>\u2019s opening run strikes exactly the right tonal mixture.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe back half is a little more jittery, but it doesn\u2019t feel like a derailment. \u201cErotic Electronic\u201d kickstarts a pivot into pure hedonism, one that reads like a course correction from the glitzy tears of \u201cRhinestone Heart\u201d. It would land better if it didn\u2019t feel solely like a transition. \u201cPurr!\u201d is Starfucker<\/em>\u2019s answer to self-titled\u2019s \u201cDaddy AF\u201d and Troubled Paradise<\/em>\u2019s \u201cThroatzillaaa\u201d, leaning into Slayyyter\u2019s crass, tacky side with relative success. \u201cPlastic\u201d does the same, but it gets superior results thanks to a stronger point of view. \u201cGirl Like Me\u201d feels like the record\u2019s first full-blown miss, mostly because it doesn\u2019t play into its sweetness enough. It\u2019s meant to feel like a respite, a wholesome possible alternative to the pure camp of \u201cPurr!\u201d and \u201cPlastic\u201d, but its lyrics are too nondescript to conceivably shake Slayyyter out of her self-destructive tendencies from the prior tracks. It also suffers from melodic staleness, a trait it shares with \u201cTear Me Open\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\nFortunately, the jump from \u201cTear Me Open\u201d to \u201cOut of Time\u201d wakes Starfucker<\/em> right back up again, just in time for the finale. \u201cOut of Time\u201d is sleek and nocturnal, the perfect theoretical concluding point for the record. It\u2019s unfortunate that it feels like the only song on the album that occupies the same sonic space as other pop stars; its musical DNA is very similar to The Weeknd\u2019s recent output and Dua Lipa\u2019s Future Nostalgia<\/em>, landing right in the current trend of spectral \u201880s new wave. \u201cOut of Time\u201d also goes big but not big enough. It feels like a finale, but not a grand one. The transition from the bridge to the final chorus in particular feels like a missed opportunity for some string flourishes or a similar melodramatic touch. This is not to say that \u201cOut of Time\u201d is a bad song or a bad album closer; on the contrary, it\u2019s an indomitably cool pop song that closes the book on Starfucker<\/em> without providing easy answers. \u201cShe hates herself, but if they all love her, then she don\u2019t mind,\u201d Slayyyter laments, basically spelling out the album\u2019s thesis statement. Fame is glamorously addictive and destructive, and although Slayyyter probably won\u2019t break that cycle, she can at least mythologize it.<\/p>\n\n\n\nStarfucker<\/em> feels like a major progression for Slayyyter\u2019s career trajectory, mostly because it feels like her first fully-developed artistic statement. It\u2019s a pop album with a strong musical point-of-view, but it goes one better because that point-of-view seeps into everything from the album cover to its music videos. Slayyyter was a pop music aficionado before she was ever a pop star, the Francois Truffaut of the Internet pop scene (lord, forgive me for that comparison). Starfucker<\/em> is studied and carefree, evoking the best parts of Gaga and Marina and all her other heroes. It resists mainstream absorption while also demonstrating mainstream appeal. Fortunately, it also leaves room for growth. Slayyyter\u2019s Ch\u00e2teau Marmont elevator is only going up from here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Connor Telford The world is obsessed with the grind. Between nepotism baby discourse, Twitter campaigns, and Genius lyric annotations, it\u2019s not enough for pop music fanatics, and by proxy, the entire internet, to just enjoy celebrity content anymore — it has to be homegrown, ethically sourced, intentionally crafted celebrity content. But it also has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":374,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=372"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1579,"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372\/revisions\/1579"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}