Ariana Grande: God is a Woman. King Princess: hold my beer...

November 8, 2018 3:57 AM

The world is a dumpster fire, so now is a good time to enjoy the new single and music video from queer pop icon King Princess, Pussy is God. Featuring fun with chromakey, joyous toplessness, and A-grade dance moves.
posted by nerdfish (12 comments total)

Well I’ll be listening to this all day, thanks!
posted by STFUDonnie at 4:07 AM on November 8, 2018 [2 favorites]

I've had this song stuck in my head all week. I was singing it to myself this morning while making coffee and porridge, and was thankful aftewards that my son doesn't speak English, because he started babble-humming it on the way to kindergarten, but none of the lyrics had stuck.
posted by Kattullus at 4:08 AM on November 8, 2018 [6 favorites]

Oh hey, and there's a lovely piece by Kate Jinx about going to a King Princess show in The Guardian today, contrasting it with her own teendom as a queer woman. Excerpt:

To me, a woman in the twilight years of her 30s, there seems to be a plethora of out, queer artists across continents and genres to, ahem, “stan”. Am I using that right? Don’t @ me. Yes, queer artists have existed for time immemorial, but when I was a teenager in the 90s I definitely wasn’t seeing myself in the mainstream pop charts. I yearned for more than the gender-neutral love songs, queer-ish erotic iconography and wink-wink lyrics on offer, and turned to genres like riot grrrl and queercore. Bands like Huggy Bear, Pansy Division, Bikini Kill and Team Dresch all delivered the explicit pronoun usage I needed, and my 7” and zine collection became a safe haven for my complicated gay teen feelings.

Having a sense of belonging in a particular subculture is a well-worn adolescent tradition, and one that I embraced wholeheartedly. Spotting another kid out in polite society with a particular record label’s badge, their hair dyed just so, sporting a similar dog collar to the one I’d bought at my local suburban pet store? Well, that was a rare kind of heaven. But as much as I lived for the punk immediacy of the music and the underground, clandestine nature of it all, I do wonder how different it would be to grow up in 2018 with overtly queer pop songs just as likely to filter out of a woke, non-binary 17-year-old’s wireless headphones as they are from a high street sneaker store.

posted by Kattullus at 4:33 AM on November 8, 2018 [8 favorites]

Is there a name for this lofi visual style? i'm thinking of calling it screensaverwave
posted by dis_integration at 6:12 AM on November 8, 2018 [8 favorites]

Incredible technical achievement of managing to film this video over 30 years before the song was even recorded. Makes Boyhood look simple in comparison.
posted by saladin at 6:16 AM on November 8, 2018 [10 favorites]

i'm thinking of calling it screensaverwave

get out of my head

the flying toaster was a little on the nose though
posted by PMdixon at 6:32 AM on November 8, 2018 [7 favorites]

The audio on the Youtube video sounds really garbled and overcompressed (MP3 artifacting), at least for me. Is that an intentional artistic choice—sort of the audio equivalent of the lowfi visuals—or something that's happening in transit? (Strangely, the video is coming through in 1080p just fine.)
posted by Kadin2048 at 9:34 AM on November 8, 2018

Sounds fantastic on Spotify
posted by STFUDonnie at 9:47 AM on November 8, 2018 [2 favorites]

All the way through I was thinking "Dang, that bass sounds great" and then she busts out the bass solo at the end and she's like "yeah you *know* this bass sounds great". Loved it.
posted by parm at 12:58 PM on November 8, 2018 [3 favorites]

that was really great. I've never heard of King Princess before but I'm enjoying her songs now. thanks for the post!
posted by numaner at 3:00 PM on November 8, 2018 [1 favorite]

this is rad and king princess owns. thanks for alerting me
posted by lazaruslong at 7:22 PM on November 8, 2018 [1 favorite]

Yeah it was definitely YouTube just deciding to make everything sound like garbage for... reasons. It sounds 1000% better on Spotify. /smh
posted by Kadin2048 at 10:25 AM on November 9, 2018 [1 favorite]