Concert Review: King Princess Gives Rock Stardom a Spin

“You gotta be loud, I only like loud girls,” Mikaela Straus, better known as King Princess, told a screaming and mildly aroused crowd at the House of Blues on Oct. 30. Shrieks of delight rippled from the section of the pit that received a wink from the artist. Someone threw a bra onto the stage.

Throughout the night, Straus made love to fewer than Joplin’s 25,000 people, making sure to mention her girlfriend so we knew she would not be going home alone. Her carnal stage presence is a true composite of the dirtbag rock icons who came before her — queer or otherwise. Though Straus flexes her originality as a songwriter on her new record, “Cheap Queen,” the Cheap Queen concert experience seemed intent on fashioning its star as an inheritor of, or merely a perpetual homage to, the music of sexual liberation and a long tradition of rock-star impetuousness. Yet she played the role so well that the audience hardly noticed long enough to stop dancing.

After performances by a handful of high-kicking drag queens and fiery guitar work from her backing band, Straus bounded onto the stage in a whirlwind of leather and skin — eliciting gasps of sexual confusion from the straight women in the room. She paused, in queer contraposto, at the top of a white staircase, framed by two pairs of daintily posed hands that cupped her from behind like the shell of Venus. The backdrop, a tranquil nature scene, provided a sharp counterpoint reminiscent of Wes Anderson whimsy.

Swaggering down the steps, Straus opened the show with a commanding rendition of “Isabel’s Moment,” played on an acoustic piano that sat just in front of the audience on the stage. She banged at the keys with the firm fingers of Elton John and the grandiosity of Lady Gaga singing “Speechless” (a song which Straus coincidentally covered) live and with a glass of whiskey.

Straus stood up and proceeded to play a few of the slower tracks from her new album — “Tough on Myself” and “Prophet” — with an upbeat intensity that enlivened the melancholic, sad-gay lilt which tinges her recorded music. She welcomed the audience with a twisted form of warmth — “Welcome to the Cheap Queen tour, bitch,” she spat. The crowd went wild.

Just under two years after releasing her first single, 20-year-old Straus has become something of a queer sex icon at meteoric speed. In September, she posed for Playboy as both a cheerleader and a varsity letterman. She recently cut her hair from a soft bob into a choppy, Joan Jett meets Mick Jagger shag. And beyond the explosively literal sexuality of her emergent discography — the song “Pussy is God” speaks for itself on this point — Straus has carefully cultivated the persona of a snide, unadulterated id: the mildly arrogant New Yorker who knows that everyone now wants to have sex with her. More acutely, everyone wants her to have sex with them.

The version of King Princess onstage — brash, pelvic-thrusting, leather-diaper-wearing — embraced this burgeoning dimension of Straus’s appeal. Her constant hip gyrations, some of which included the mic stand as a phallic prop, evoked a sexed-up Elvis. Midway through the show, a stagehand was summoned to unzip the aforementioned leather diaper from Straus’ body in a moment of pure, concertedly campy spectacle.

From her opening “bitch,” though, something seemed intentionally unpleasant about Straus. Sucking on a straw from a red solo cup, she repeatedly called offstage for “more juice” in between numbers even as she became visibly drunker — never mind the fact that she’s underage. During the final encore, a rockified rendition of the unreleased ballad “Ohio,” she persisted in kicking over the mic stand, not once, not twice, but three times, each time after which the same poor stagehand shuffled sadly out of the wings to right it once more. These choices seemed self-conscious, as if she were proving a point that she, too, could abuse her body and treat people miserably, just like the rest of her gender-transcendent (yet mostly, practically, male) rock ancestors.

Based solely on the industry weariness Straus projected throughout the concert, one would imagine she’d been around the block. She introduced “1950,” a candy-coated tale of repressed queer love that pays homage to its closeted ancestors — and undeniably the song that jump-started her career — as “the one I’ll be playing until I fucking die.” Considering that the song came out in February of 2018, it’s difficult to accept just how far this new, sexier, and drunker King Princess may feel she’s strayed from her sweeter teenage origins.

But to be fair, Straus is only 20, finding fame during the years of her life in which we all experience the greatest rate of change. Undeniably, she has broken barriers in pop, inspiring a legion of non-conforming folks and manifesting the most basic desires of the queer community — that we hear ourselves, explicitly, in the music that dominates airwaves. She bears the weight of a long legacy, one she both embodies in its radical queerness and resists accepting in its prescription. For better or for worse, King Princess matters, more so than the average pop star. What happens when the act of self-destructive degeneracy becomes more than just a performance? It may be unfair — but one cannot help worrying, somewhat selfishly, that she doesn’t age herself before her time.

— Staff Writer Amelia F. Roth-Dishy can be reached at amelia.roth-dishy@thecrimson.com.