Kim Petras Tells Apple Music How She’s Feeling Following The Release of Her Debut Album ‘Feed The Beast’…
It feels so exciting because you’ve heard all the opinions of people, people’s favorite songs, all of that. The songs aren’t mine anymore now, they’re now everyone’s, which is a different outlook on everything. But I’m so proud of this record and I’m so proud of everyone I’ve worked on it with and I really feel like it’s not gotten tired on my part at all, and I’m so excited. I’m putting together the show right now… yeah. I’m so excited. I mean, I feel like that’s what I made this album for too, it’s just for the tour experience and to really be able to tell… the story. Exactly.
Kim Petras Tells Apple Music About Processing Success Following The Release of “Unholy” with Sam Smith…
I feel like I had some really personal highs and lows while Unholy was taking off, and my life had really changed and it wasn’t all happy and like, “Yay, I’m so successful now.” It’s also a lot of pressure and just new things and criticism, and especially I think with Unholy being a song that was so for me and Sam, so about our identities and stuff like that. And I think so many people just really tried to tear that down, so I felt very emotional while all of that was happening.
Kim Petras on What She’s Learned From The Backlash to “Unholy” with Sam Smith and Having Each Others Backs…
I think what I’ve learned is that people are going to assume whatever they want to assume and you can’t control that. And people are scared of what they don’t know. I think for me, something that I just genuinely always felt is I want to learn about different experiences. I want to accept them. I wish everyone to find a way to make it through life and be happy however they want to make it, and to be less judgmental, especially seeing Sam and the things that people had to say about Sam just make me sad as a friend. And someone who just loves music and is such a talent and such a light… which I find inspiring for me.
I think we just kind of stuck together on this one and just really had each other’s backs and we did all the performances together and that was really beautiful to me, that we really did everything together. But yeah, I think just personally, sometimes stuff just gets to you. As much as you want to push this because people told you your whole life, you’re going to hell. So it’s like, well, let’s show them hell. And we did that. But I mean, I know that that some kid in the middle of nowhere who doesn’t fit in, who’s not allowed to be themselves, watched that and felt like I get them…
Kim Petras on Childhood Trauma and How Her Grammy Performance with Sam Smith Signified Progress…
When I was a kid, it was like, “You are wrong and we need to try to fix you, and what can we put you on?” It was like, “Something about you is wrong and we need to fix you.” I mean, from psychologists to mental hospitals, to doctors and all of that stuff because I knew so young, that was my childhood, it was all mental hospitals. And so I found a way to make it in my life so I can live with myself and be happy, and I think that’s something that people should be happy for you for… I remember my grandparents saying, “Well, great, that you found what you’re going to do, but you’re going to go to hell now.” I remember things like that and it’s just… I know Sam grew up around that same kind of thing where it’s like, “Okay, by being myself, I am now something evil and something that shouldn’t exist,” and so I think just the Grammy performance and Unholy, it was all just reminding us of that and what people told us…
Kim Petras on Being Accused of Pushing an Agenda…
We won a Grammy, which was crazy and something like I’ll never forget. But also it just reassured me in my, “I just need to make the music and everything else is up to you.” And in general, what I know about myself is that I’m just trying to be like, “I found how to be myself and I want the same for you.” I’m not trying to tell anyone how to be, however you are and however you make it through life is valid and it’s great. But I think a lot of people were like, “Oh, they’re pushing this agenda and trying to make people what they’re.” You can’t make people something they’re not.
Kim Petras on Meeting Her Young Trans Fans…
I’ve cried so many times when I meet young trans kids and they look up to me, and I just know that that means the world to them and so that makes it worth it, for sure.
Kim Petras on Being Accepted By Her Pop Peers…
I mean, Madonna and Sam and Nicki, I’m just so over the moon of just how special it’s been and how accepted I feel in that world. I just want to keep doing this for sure that there’s no one goal that’s like… That the goal is the journey. The goal is to always make music, always evolve, always find new things to talk about, find new sonic worlds and all of that. I want to do this forever.
Kim Petras on Meeting Madonna and What She Means To Her…
I think for me, someone like Madonna who really broke down kind of gender barriers and things like that, and I think had conversation about gender and homosexuality and the LGBTQ community that was someone I… that was someone who inspired me as a kid a lot to just be myself. She came to the SNL after party, and I just like talked off her ear about how much I love her music, and it was so special. It’s the best feeling. Yeah. Madonna, I met and died.
Kim Petras on Embracing Criticism…
Look, everyone in this world gets judged, so will I. And I’m down for that. I love reading what other people have to say about me when it comes from a genuine place of, I listen to the music or I watch the performance and here’s my true thoughts. Even if it’s something negative, I can learn stuff about myself. I mean, it’s when it becomes insulting or that is something that I just try to block out. But I think in general, criticism and that stuff is something that that’s good. I make music and I want to know what people think about it.
Kim Petras on Who Might Have Leaked Her Album and How It Was a Blessing in Disguise…
I have no idea, but it’s definitely someone I know and that’s what’s really annoying about it. It was just a double whammy in a lot of ways and really stung. And that was the album where we set up the studio in the closet of the Airbnb we got for lockdown. And did everything, like me and my friends all together every night just trying to make music, trying to make something that made life half sense. And so, it sucks. My fans still have the music, which is the good part. They don’t feel like they got robbed of this album. And how much better is the timing of this and Feed the Beast and what happened with Unholy and all of that stuff? There’s a blessing in everything and hoping that I’ll find a way to put that out as well at some point. I think it definitely taught me lessons and writing-wise, there was some just stuff on that that I love and listen to this day.
Kim Petras on Working with Max Martin and Being a Student of His Career…
I feel like I had studied his sort of philosophy of music and pop since I was a teenager…I remember just watching YouTube videos and interviews and anything I could… I mean, I just had studied him so much that I definitely knew his philosophies and all of that stuff. And then it was really just once that was kind of established, it was just going in and having fun and it was just coming up with melodies and he’s the same as me in the way that we both just went into the booth and just freestyled anything that came to our minds and then we picked out the best parts together… It was really, really fun. And I think that’s the way it should be working with… And I’m happy he hasn’t lost that fun. Yeah, because someone who has done it for as long as a Max Martin, I was scared it was going to be stale or anything like that. He’s just a great guy.
Kim Petras Calls Charli XCX “One of the Best Pop Songwriters We Have”…
I love her. She’s so good. And I always shout her out because she put me on the Unlock It, which was something that really introduced me to her fan base. And I’m forever so, so grateful for her and I just think she’s one of the best pop songwriters that we have. Well, she has a whole culture that she’s the center of, I feel. And I love that she goes and plays in basements sometimes and wherever the most actual fun is happening. As someone who has started in gay clubs and stuff like that, I miss that. And I want to go and just party and rage and I respect that about her so much that she just does it.
Kim Petras Tells Apple Music When Fans Can Expect More New Music…
…people don’t know this, but I at all times have a stash of just songs that don’t belong on an album yet, but I’m waiting for the album that they’re going to belong on. I feel like my process is a lot of like, “Oh, I wrote this verse in 2014 that I remember from this demo that now suddenly really fits with this concept that I’m doing.”