By Thea Cole
You may have heard of this little artist named Slayyyter, and if you’re new to her, yes you have to drag out the slay part of her name every single time you say it. Some of her popular bops include “Daddy AF” which appeared on the Bodies Bodies Bodies soundtrack, her collaboration with Charlie XCX and Kim Petras on the “Click No Boys Allowed Remix” and “Mine.” I’m listening to her new album Starfucker while writing this, so all I’m hearing is “brand new tits my doctor made it look like this” (“Plastic”).
Starfucker is packaged with an old Hollywood aesthetic but its lyrics add K-holes and latex to the mix, satirizing celebrity culture through opulent overindulgence. While these kinds of lyrics, accompanied by equally unhinged and often glitchy production, are a calling card for Slayyyter, her third album leans into a more top 40 vibe. Slayyyter is solidly a pop girl but more importantly she’s a slut pop icon.
“Slut Pop” is a bit of an amorphous category. What I would call slut pop is usually high femme, over the top, and tends to create an aesthetic around hypersexuality; think It girl, femme fatale, bimbo etc. I also see it as a scene sprung from queer corners of the internet. Many slut pop artists got their start on Soundcloud and grew their fanbases on social media. Slayyyter connected with Ayesha Erotica, her first major collaborator, producer, and a Slut Pop star in her own right, through Charlie XCX stan twitter.
Sonically, Slut Pop is related to dance pop, hyperpop, techno, pop metal and a bunch of other microgenres I don’t feel like naming (most are pretty arbitrary). Broadly speaking, the sound matches the balls to the wall energy of the lyrics. At times it intentionally satirizes and subverts views on sexuality, and at others it invites listeners to just enjoy the non-stop innuendo.
Aside from Slayyyter and Ayesha, other key artists in Slut Pop are Kim Petras, Dorian Electra and Chase Icon. Everyone I just named is queer, and all but Slayyyter are trans. Their approach to Slut Pop often counters cisheternormative narratives surrounding trans sexuality and gender expression while celebrating both in the process. At its best Slut Pop takes control of queerphobic narratives and playfully taints them with descriptions of real nasty gay sex.
On “Ram It Down,” Dorian Electra takes the homophobic saying ‘you can be gay, just don’t ram it down my throat’ to its natural conclusion: a deepthroating joke. At the start of the song we hear the familiar call to keep our queerness under wraps but the chorus abruptly switches up as Electra begs for it: “harder, farther, deeper.” It’s like yes, shove it down my throat, be as gay as possible. It’s slutty for a good cause! Electra transforms a restrictive statement demanding Straight conformity into a brash sexy banger.
Chase Icon’s song “SRS” (Sexual Reassignment Surgery) starts with Icon quoting the Lady Gaga interview where she says it doesn’t matter if she has a dick or not. Immediately after, Icon proudly declares her “custom made pussy” the hottest commodity in LA. Icon shits all over the idea that trans women have to pretend to be cis to be desirable by yelling out that she’s trans and that it doesn’t make her less hot. It’s actually a high fashion aesthetic: a designer pussy.
Slut pop is inherently political in its campy depictions of non-normative sex, but a lot of it just basks in the fun of sex puns. Ayesha Erotica is definitely the most out-of-pocket of the artists named as the self-proclaimed “no.1 coke whore” (“Literal Legend”). Another artist that leans into sexual shock humor is Onlyfire. The Croatian DJ mixes techno beats with the vocals of a very horny fembot. What results is something like Siri reading CupcakKe lyrics.
But it’s not all nose candy and orgies – Slut Pop has its issues. The constant focus on sex appeal references an unhealthy ideal of what traits are attractive. The songs firmly declare what’s hot and what’s not, so it can be pretty difficult for slut pop to shake arbitrary and often eurocentric beauty standards. Ayesha Erotica’s song Nasty starts with the lyrics “I got a thin waist, model legs” and the rest of the song, in true slut pop fashion, is centered on her fuckability. Like the others I’ve mentioned, Nasty is a campy, chaotic, relatively sex positive bop, but at the same time it carries the message that thinness is a beauty ideal worth bragging about. While a lot of Slut Pop focuses on these themes without explicit or implicit body shaming, enough of it perpetuates fatphobic tropes to warrant calling it out. At the same time however, slut pop is so often used for progressive critiques that it still remains an interesting collection of queer art that uses sexuality in creative and rebellious ways.
Slut Pop is reclamatory. While “slut” is a derogatory term on its own, laid over hypnotic beats slutty behavior becomes freeing and aspirational. Slut Pop’s rising popularity is emblematic of women and femmes embracing the labels that once demeaned them. Some of these artists heavily play into the bimbocore aesthetic, another example of hyper-femme pop culture reclamation (also worthy of critique). But all Slut Pop artists use humor to take power away from anti-queer narratives, helping listeners shake ass and question their gendered assumptions at the same time. If you at times find sex goofy and love really cunty music, this is the sound for you. So… stream ‘Starfucker’ and Chase Icon’s entire discography.
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