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After Carrie Underwood made headlines Monday (Jan. 13) for announcing she would play at Donald Trump’s inauguration, a former RuPaul’s Drag Race star decided to mock the country star online. In a post to her Instagram Stories on Monday evening, Drag Race season 14 contestant Kornbread “The Snack” Jeté shared a recent post from the […]
Early on in their Thursday night (Dec. 5) performance at the Kings Theater in Brooklyn, NY, drag stars Jinkx Monsoon and BenDeLaCreme told their crowd of a few thousand fans that they intended to do things a little differently this year.
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The pair have been performing together in various iterations of their annual Jinkx & DeLa Holiday Show for the last seven years, with each successive variety performance becoming more involved, plot-driven and deeply meta than the last. Their 2023 show, as they point out during this year’s production, revolved around their show itself turning on and trying to kill them.
So for 2024, the dynamic duo told their audience that they just wanted to keep things straightforward — some lighthearted fun, some good laughs, and that winning parody combination of “a pop song you heard on the radio all year, plus Christmas,” as DeLa put it. Nothing fancy, just an easy, simple holiday show.
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What ensued, while it was of course not at all what the duo described at the outset of their performance, proved exactly why these Drag Race alumni make such a perfect pair on the stage. Across two acts and two hours, Jinkx and DeLa managed to not only encapsulate the manic brilliance of their now-historic run together, but to also deftly (and often bluntly) address and audience still reeling from the political chaos of the last month.
Fans of the The Jinkx & DeLa Holiday Show will have plenty to celebrate with this year’s iteration, as the pair keep on the tradition of building a loose narrative around a Christmas-themed concept. This time around, Jinkx delightfully informs the audience that they’re doing a Nutcracker riff (or “nut-gobbler,” as DeLa accidentally calls it), as the pair get shrunk down to toy-size and participate in the well-loved Christmas ballet. It’s a welcome shift, seeing the usually-grinchy Jinkx getting excited for the holdiays, while the often-optimistic DeLa gets her opportunity to make fun of the centuries-old ballet at every given opportunity.
The song parodies are also back, and arguably better than ever. Jinkx and DeLa once again meld their own original songs with new versions of holiday classics, American standards and a heaping helping of 2024 pop hits. A now Broadway-minted Monsoon flexes both her musical and comedic chops on the early standout performance of “Secular” (to the tune of Wicked‘s “Popular”) as she delights in leaving the more Judeo-Christian aspects of the season behind. Meanwhile DeLa stuns with a rendition of Beyoncé’s “Texas Hold ‘Em” that sees the star crooning about missing snow in a globally warmed winter of unseasonably warm weather — although, when it happens this much, we really shouldn’t call it “unseasonable,” as DeLa points out.
The standout running gag from the show, though, comes in the form of the pair desperately trying to find an appropriately funny (and Christmas-y) Chappell Roan parody. DeLa tries her best early on — conjuring up clunky visions of a “Red Reindeer Place” and attempting to incite a “Femininomenon” in the city of Bethlehem — before Jinkx tells her to just give it up. But the pair finally triumph with their own, double-meta version of Roan’s breakout hit “Hot to Go,” this time singing about the difficulty of coming up with a Chappell parody before settling on spelling out “Hot Coco.”
While the show certainly has plenty of fun songs and hilarious jokes — Jinkx’s ongoing infatuation with and seduction by The Nutcracker had the Brooklyn audience in stitches — the show’s core comes into full focus during it’s second act, when both Jinkx and DeLa partially drop the facade of the show to look at the context they’re performing it in.
In an interview with Billboard back in October, both Jinkx and DeLa expressed their desire to get to the core of our current system of political division, and how those divisions have made the holidays and even harder time of year for everyone, especially in the LGBTQ+ community. “At a hard time of year, a bunch of people get to come together and look at some beautiful visuals, outfits, props and performances from our brilliant cast,” DeLa said at the time.
While I won’t give away the show’s clever plot, I can say that the Act II breakdown from Jinkx & DeLa landed exactly where they wanted it to. As the pair use the structure of their show itself to process Donald Trump’s re-election in November, they dig even deeper to get to the emotional crux that the audience at the Kings Theater was feeling. When Jinkx woefully declared that she — like many of us — was “so tired of caring,” DeLa delivered the needed reality check: “I’m tired of people not caring.”
The fabulous costume design and gifted background performers helped elevate 2024’s Jinkx & DeLa Holiday Show to new heights, that’s for certain. But the thing that always made this zany show work is what worked best for the 150th time on Thursday night; a pair of best friends and talented performers who know exactly how to balance the real with the delightfully absurd.
A little over halfway through her newest project, RuPaul’s Drag Race superstar Alaska Thunderfuck nurses a glass of whiskey while bemoaning the circumstances she finds herself in. “Could you imagine?” she shouts. “A musical about drag queens. Who would be dumb enough to buy a ticket to see that?”
If the audience at Manhattan’s New World Stages on a chilly Monday night in November is any indication, quite a few people. Drag: The Musical, which debuted its off-Broadway run back in late October, takes the well-trodden subject matter at its center and aims to create something new — and, refreshingly, something radically honest.
This latest iteration of the show — which she stars in and co-wrote with Tomas Costanza and Ashley Gordon — has been an adjustment for the Drag Race winner. “Doing eight shows a week is kind of unhinged, and it’s much more work than I am used to doing,” Alaska tells Billboard. “But I’m also grateful that, if I’m going to do eight shows a week, it’s this show and it’s these people.”
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On its surface, the two-hour rock musical tells the story of two competing drag bars — The Fish Tank and The Cat House — as they struggle to stay open amid financial pressures. But underneath that familiar exterior is a love letter to the art of drag, and a timely coming-of-age story about self-expression and authenticity in the face of societal rejection.
Along with a number of positive reviews, the show has received one very important co-sign from venerated queer idol Liza Minnelli. The legendary performer serves as a producer of the show, and introduces the audience to the story through a surprise voiceover at the very start of the performance. “I mean, that is an actual ICON, in all-capital letters. We couldn’t be more lucky and grateful to have her fairy dust sprinkled upon us,” Alaska says. “It doesn’t get old — every night I’m back stage and I’m in a furious quick change, but I am loudly saying the words along with her. I still cannot believe it.”
The show exists within an established tradition of musicals examining drag as an art form. Over the last few decades, shows like La Cage Aux Folles and Kinky Boots aimed to present drag to an audience that may have otherwise never seen it. Nick Adams, who stars in Drag as the Fish Tank’s glamorous proprietor Alexis Gillmore, originated the role of Felicia Jollygoodfellow in the 2011 Broadway production of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert — and yet he says Drag: The Musical stands out amongst its prior counterparts as a particularly honest look at the lives of drag queens.
“This show is very representative of drag in 2024, which means it’s not specific to one idea,” he explains. “It’s not just female illusion, it’s a lot more than that, and we really capture the essence of that in a way that [musicals] didn’t before. I think it challenges people to look at what the art form of drag is outside of those parameters.”
Alaska agrees, adding that the original intension behind the story was to take the tropes of past drag musicals and flip them on their head. “I did not want the main story to be about the straight people learning about drag culture, I want it to be about the drag queens and their lives,” she explains. “You’re on the drag queens’ turf, and it’s their world, and the straight guy is the one who is constantly confused and saying ‘what the f–k is going on here.’ It’s an inversion of that formula.”
Drag: The Musical has been in the works for nearly a decade — after beginning to write the show in 2016, Alaska, Costanza and Gordon brought their vision for this story to life with a 2022 concept album, featuring stars from the world of musical theater, stand-up comedy and drag itself. The trio fleshed out the show’s script and put on a limited run of the live show at The Bourbon Room in Los Angeles, before transferring the show to its current off-Broadway home.
As Alaska recalls, the evolution of the musical has been nothing short of transformational. “The only constant has been change. Every time we put the show up, we learned more about the structure, how to make it funnier and better,” she explains. “We were changing this right up to the debut, because you just want to fine-tune everything and get it to its peak form.”
Adams, who has been involved with the project since the 2022 album, remembers early performances at The Bourbon Room, and how the bar atmosphere provided its own set of pros and cons for the show. “There was a scene in the Bourbon Room show where I was laying over top of a bar and my character is at his lowest point,” he says. “And I look down, and this woman in the audience is just chowing down on some chicken wings and drinking her beer. It was just so unique.”
That sort of interaction underlined part of the show’s charm. Where other portrayals of drag focus on the glitz and glamour of the art form, Drag: The Musical leans heavily into the fact that drag, at its core, is messy. The show’s queens (portrayed by bonafide drag stars Jujubee, Jan Sport, Luxx Noir London and others) often find themselves cramped into closets that act as dressing rooms, while early showstopper “Drag Is Expensive” breaks down the financial reality of performing in custom-made costumes night after night.
“I always felt like in movies and in musicals that deal with drag, it’s always ‘look at how fabulous everything is,’” Alaska says. “We wanted you to be able to smell the f–king bar that these queens are working in. The floor is sticky, it’s all kind of a mess. That is the drag that I come from, where you’re in the kitchen and your mirror is propped up on the walk-in refrigerator.”
Yet despite the show’s many lighthearted moments, Drag: The Musical goes out of its way to touch on real issues facing the community it celebrates. Fish Tank queen Dixie Coxworth (played by Liisi LaFontaine) spends an entire song explaining the often-complicated politics of being an AFAB drag queen (“One of the Boys”). A particularly arch portrayal of real estate investor Rita LaRitz (J. Elaine Marcos) highlights the real-life urban gentrification of queer spaces. A secondary plot involving Alexis’ brother Tom (New Kids on the Block’s Joey McIntyre) lays out the pitfalls of straight privilege through multiple musical numbers.
“That’s a tricky thing with theater — sometimes, plotting can feel so on the nose like you’re trying to check every box, that it becomes a question of ‘what story are we actually telling now?’” Adams says. “But I think we do a delicate dance between being muppets and then all of a sudden being serious performers going, ‘This is a real problem.’”
Even with a multitude of issues touched on throughout the show, Drag never falls into the trap of feeling preachy or oversimplified, a fact Alaska credits to her work with Costanza and Gordon. “I’m a drag queen, Tomas is straight guy, and Ash is a straight woman who does drag and writes music for drag queens,” she explains. “We all brought our own perspective, we trusted each other immensely.”
Perhaps the show’s most impactful plotline comes in the form of 10-year-old Brendan (played by Yair Keydar and Remi Tuckman), who is utterly fascinated by drag, but doesn’t have the unequivocal support of his family to explore why that is. In the tear-jerking ballad “I’m Just Brendan,” the young man doesn’t come out or express dissatisfaction with his gender identity — he just likes what he likes and doesn’t understand why others have a problem with a boy playing dress up.
The song was written long before the conversation of children’s involvement at drag shows became a political cudgel for right-wing lawmakers, and Alaska says that the show hasn’t changed its Brendan plotline to reflect that reality. “When I’m loving drag the most is when I’m seeing it from a childlike place of expression. So, we wanted to touch on that and connect to that part of drag, because it’s often the best part of it,” she says. “This is just a young person who wants to express himself in a way that he’s not currently allowed to. That speaks to literally everybody who’s a human person.”
Even though the show doesn’t delve directly into the current political reality for drag performers, Adams can’t help but notice that something shifted after Donald Trump won the election in early November. “I felt the shift that Wednesday after Election Day,” he says. “The crowd was electric that night. People in the audience were placing more importance on the show than they did the Monday before. Queer art is even more important than it was a few weeks ago, and we’re now almost charged with more power.”
The production, meanwhile, shows very few signs of slowing down — tickets are currently still available through March, and a number of upcoming casting substitutions promise a longevity that often alludes other off-Broadway productions.
When it comes to the musical’s Broadway aspirations, Alaska simply shrugs. “I don’t know how all of that works, it’s not my world — I don’t understand what circumstances have to happen for a transfer to happen. But of course we’d love to make it to Broadway,” she says with a smirk. “Who has a Broadway theater we can borrow? I’m ready, I’m flexible, let’s do it.”
When it comes to reviving a 145-year-old comic opera, who better to enlist than drag superstar Jinkx Monsoon to liven things up? On Wednesday (Nov. 13), the Roundabout Theater Company announced its upcoming new musical Pirates! A Penzance Musical, starring Monsoon alongside Broadway veterans Ramin Karimloo and David Hyde Pierce. Billed as “reimagined, lovingly adapted […]
RuPaul’s Drag Race and We’re Here alum Bob the Drag Queen spent the better part of last year with pop icon Madonna. Now, the drag star is ready to tell fans what the singer is like behind the scenes. In a clip shared on Saturday (Sept. 7) from one of her recent standup shows, Bob […]
From one pink pony girl to another, drag icon Sasha Colby is sharing the love with breakout pop “Femininomenon” Chappell Roan.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, the winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race season 15 reacted to the pop star’s interpretation of her now-iconic catchphrase, calling herself “your favorite artist’s favorite artist.”
“The night of the finale for season 16, when I gave up the crown, was also the night of the finale for my Stripped [tour], and that’s when Chappell said it at Coachella,” she said in the interview. “To see Jimmy Fallon say my name is kind of wild. I just talked to Chappell, we just talked for a little bit. We were very meet-and-greet-y, like, ‘I love you, I think you’re amazing.’”
Colby originally referred to herself as “your favorite drag queen’s favorite drag queen” during her “Meet the Queens” interview for season 15 of Drag Race. Roan later presented herself using the phrase during her Coachella set in April, with many of her fans spreading the clip of her introduction online.
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During her recent appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Roan made sure to give proper credit where it was due. “That was a reference to Sasha Colby, and Sasha Colby said, ‘I’m your favorite drag queen’s favorite drag queen,’” she told the host. “It just hit me through the heart. And so I hope one day Sasha Colby watches me, and that’s why I said it.”
Colby added that she appreciated seeing a major pop star directly credit her for her contribution, and said she hoped more pop stars would take notes. “Drag has always been a mirror of pop culture,” she said. “Since Drag Race, we are pop, the tastemakers, and pop girlies look to us for inspiration — much like Chappell Roan! All I can say is, goddess sees goddess, you know? Greatness sees greatness! Your favorite artist’s favorite artist, baby!”
For most of her career as a performer, Jinkx Monsoon had to create her own model for success. Whether it was in music, stand-up or especially acting, the acclaimed drag star almost always took a do-it-yourself approach to finding stardom — mostly because opportunities for a transfeminine drag queen were, at best, limited.
“I’ve been screaming it for years: ‘Give drag performers real chances to show what we’re capable of,’” Monsoon tells Billboard over Zoom from her well-appointed New York apartment. “Because for so long, it was just lacking.”
Lately, though, it’s clear that someone was listening to her plea. On Friday (May 10), Monsoon starred in the newest episode of the beloved British sci-fi series Doctor Who. Titled “The Devil’s Chord,” the episode revolves around The Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and his companion Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson) traveling back in time to London 1963, intent on watching The Beatles record their debut album Please Please Me. But when they arrive, something has gone terribly wrong — The Fab Four, along with everyone else in the world, can’t seem to hold a tune.
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Enter Maestro, Monsoon’s malevolent, scene-stealing villain. Described by the performer as existing “somewhere between Greek mythology and Lovecraft,” Maestro introduces themself as an eldritch deity who is the literal embodiment of music itself. Hellbent on hoarding the concept of music for themself to create a symphony out of the ending of the universe, Maestro battles against The Doctor and Sunday using the power of music itself, before being banished by a magic musical chord from younger versions of Paul McCartney and John Lennon.
“This episode is so over the top and so stylized and heightened, that I felt very honored to be invited in — because I did have confidence in my ability to do that,” Monsoon says. “There’s parts of it where it feels like Looney Tunes, which makes a lot of sense to be me because music was such a big part of those cartoons.”
Below, Monsoon chats with Billboard about creating a memorable villain for the show, her starring role as Audrey in the current off-Broadway production of Little Shop of Horrors, and why she hopes her success opens doors for even more trans performers.
Before we get into Doctor Who, I wanted to say congratulations on Little Shop of Horrors! It’s such a great role — what has it been like for you to take on this part?
It’s been strikingly easy! Honestly, I was so anxious about this, and the reason why it’s been easy is because the cast and crew is incredible. They are the best. I was very blessed and lucky to come into a wonderful cast and crew with Chicago, and here I am, again, in another setting where everyone is just happily coming to work to put on a really incredible show. Now that I’ve worked with Corbin [Bleu], I can’t imagine anyone else having been Seymour. James Carpinello and I started our rehearsal process together, so we very much feel like we’re in it together. It’s just been a dream come true.
There was so much anxiety I had about being a transfeminine performer and a drag entertainer coming in to play the female lead and the love interest in a show like this. But no one in the rehearsal process or backstage shared that feeling. Everyone else was so certain that this was going to be a hit, that it was easy to let go of that insecurity. I’ve been in situations where I hide my gender presentation or I don’t enforce my pronouns, because I just don’t want to be that person, I don’t want to be the Norma Rae of everything. But this has been such an affirming experience.
Well, let’s get into your latest role as Maestro in Doctor Who — how did you get involved in this project?
[Showrunner Russell T Davies] came to see this show I did called Together Again, Again, which was written by me and music directed by my music partner Major Scales, where we play ourselves in a dystopian future in our 80’s, and Jinkx has become kind of a monster. Like, full-blown Norma Desmond, but with the brassiness of Rosalind Russell — she’s grand and delusional. Russell came to see that show, and I guess on the walk home he thought, “Jinkx should be Maestro.” Eventually I got the call and he was very forthright, and told me he got the idea from seeing me in that show. That kind of nipped my impostor syndrome in the bud, because my first instinct would have been to say “Oh, my friend is trying to give me a leg up in the business.” But I genuinely felt that Russell trusted me to handle this role.
I know you’ve been a fan of the series for a while — what in particular about the universe of Doctor Who attracted you as a fan?
I have very eclectic taste in television, and I prefer to live in the realm of fantasy. I like things that are over the top, even to the point that I like watching old sitcoms because it’s a very presentational style of acting. But what I love about Doctor Who is that it’s got good writing, good acting, wonderful guest stars, and captivating plotlines that are, of course, larger than life, but that have a purpose and a meaning. This episode, for example, shows us that music — and just artistic expression — is necessary for our survival. Without it, we would go extinct. I love getting to be a part of that message at a time when I hope we’ve realized how essential art is after a pandemic that shut the industry down.
This is a very wild character you’re playing. How would you describe the character of Maestro?
I see Maestro as the embodiment of music, and I see them as a god who would also be interpreted as a demon by many. They are an eternal force that exists in the universe. And when you play a character that is that powerful and has existed for that long, certain things come to mind. First, they create their own rules — we see it in Maestro’s gender expression and pronoun reference. Maestro doesn’t care about human rules and societal standards, because they’re a god. Second, I think characters like that must be really bored. When you’ve been alive for a long, long time, you get bored. So, the genuine excitement of meeting someone like The Doctor who actually gives Maestro run for their money — that’s very, very exciting.
Jinkx Monsoon
Courtesy of BBC Studios
Part of what I loved about your performance was your ability to balance the campy, very arch bits of the character, while also being genuinely scary. What was your approach to finding a balance there?
I like to think about the fact that music can be erratic — Maestro can switch on a dime. And one of the scariest things about a person is when you have no idea what they’re going to do next. And when you have a character like Maestro that’s capable of pretty much anything, but you have no idea what they’re gonna do — that’s terrifying.
When it comes to the campiness, I feel like my whole life has been about studying character actors who make big choices feel natural. I think Bette Midler as Winifred [Sanderson in Hocus Pocus] is a great example — everything’s Shakespearean and over the top, but like, do we get sick of it? No! So, specifically for the acting style for Doctor Who, I brushed up on Michelle Gomez as The Mistress. When she plays a villain, they are nuanced, and I love that she has flipped so many female archetypes on their side. I really wanted to bring that to Maestro.
It’s also refreshing to see a show letting a drag performer have a well-written, interesting role, rather than throwing together a collection of stereotypes to make a character.
Yeah, I was extremely honored to be a part of that. There was some anxiety, though, because I thought, “If I don’t deliver, does that mean there’s not going to be future opportunities?” Luckily, I got welcomed into a beloved, professional, incredible production. I’ve said the words trust and respect over and over, but that’s what it was — they trusted me to play this character, and they respected me enough not to tone me down. They weren’t interested in diluting my performance, all of the direction was to help me refine but not de-queerify things. That was incredible, because trans performers and drag performers before me have made things possible, so that I could take another step forward for the next generation of trans and drag performers to come in behind me. And it feels really exciting to get to pay that forward.
All of this comes amid a string of huge career moments for you — between Doctor Who, Little Shop, your return to Chicago and your upcoming debut solo show at Carnegie Hall. Especially as a drag artist, what does it mean for you to finally be acknowledged and welcomed in these spaces?
There were definitely points in my life where I did not believe in my lifetime that we’d see such progress and representation. And now that we have, I’ll fight tooth and nail to keep it there — I will not let our community be pushed back, because this is beyond my wildest dreams. I was very realistic in my early 20s, and I set attainable goals for myself. Now, I gotta set some new goals.
But I also feel like it’s about godd–n time, because queer people have been the backbone of entertainment this whole time. But for so long, we had to hide that part of us to be in front of the camera, because we were not invited. When we started getting invited, it was very homogenized and was very much for straight audiences. And now, we have reached a point where queer people are writing stories with a queer lens and casting queer performers to tell these stories authentically and genuinely. And that is incredible, but I also know the work that we’ve all put in.
Yes, I won season five a decade ago, and I experienced so many wonderful things because of that. But it was a completely different game back then, and I just grew to accept that we were considered a subsect of the entertainment industry. But then I got fed up with that. And then that’s when Ben and I created the Jinkx and DeLa Holiday Show, and that went to places we never imagined. I started to believe that we all do what we do, we just do it in drag. We’re showing the world that just because we do it in drag doesn’t mean we do it less than anyone else.
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And that’s happening despite what certain right-wing lawmakers have to say on the subject.
They’re a dying breed, I gotta say. They might be loud, but popular opinion is not on their side. I honestly think with every swing they take at the queer community, it’s another nail in their coffin. And I didn’t always feel that way. But I do feel that way now. Our consciousness, our perspective shifting, and these people are getting desperate. When you try to you try to gather everyone against a marginalized group of people hoping that their shared bigotry will rally them behind you, that’s despicable. I can’t think of a lower way of trying to lead your people. I can’t think of a bigger bastardization of the job they were hired to do than trying ostracizing and attacking constituents that they swore to protect. It just sickens me, so I will do everything in my power to fight that.
You mentioned needing to set some new goals — with this windfall of success, what have you not yet accomplished that you want to get to in the near future?
You know, I don’t even know how to answer that these days. Because, honestly, like — I am so happy with the things I’ve gotten to do recently that I just want to do a lot more of it. I’m hoping to do a lot more work on stage, I’m hoping to do more work in front of the camera. I just love when I get to do this, and I want to do a lot more of it. So on my bucket list at the moment is a lot more of the same. I don’t feel like I’ve peaked or plateaued, but I’m not in a rush.
For all the steps forward the music industry has taken when it comes to LGBTQ inclusion, Drag Race stars Trixie Mattel and Monét X Change say there’s still a ways to go when it comes to drag musicians.
During the latest episode of Mattel’s podcast The Bald and the Beautiful With Trixie and Katya, Mattel and X Change compared notes about life as a drag musician. When Mattel complimented her guest on her musical talents, X Change asked the host whether or not she felt there would ever be recognition for drag artists at the Grammys.
“I recently have been taking a break from music because I feel the glass ceiling so fiercely,” Mattel said in response. “I think I’ve just gotten to do everything that I’m going to get to do, because we’re only ever taken seriously about one month a year. And it kind of takes the wind out of your sails. I want to make music, but if I don’t have this wig on, no one will pay attention. But because I have this wig on, no one will take it seriously. So then what?”
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X Change agreed, saying that she often asks herself why she continues to make music when the industry doesn’t invest in drag artistry. “I often feel like, ‘Why am I even doing this,’” she said. “‘Why am I even putting all of this time, effort, money, everyone’s f–king patience into this thing?’”
Mattel then spoke about the cost of trying to sustain a career in music as an independent artist. “A cheap music video is, like, $30,000. And that’s when the directors are like, ‘Well, we’re not going to have food on set, and you won’t have a ride, and there’s no air conditioning,’” she explained.
X Change jumped in and added that music videos are also billed as being exceedingly necessary in order to maintain a steady following. “There’s such a machine where it’s like, ‘Well, you have to do the music video so it gets more press, you can talk about this thing …’ and it’s like, one thing does lead to another, but we’re independent artists. I have to self-fund all of this. There’s no label behind me pumping all this money into a single and into a project.”
Even with backing from a major label, Mattel pointed out that the industry is still brutal for up-and-coming artists. “I know artists who are signed, and I know about their deals. The record label can collect 80% of what they make, including touring and merch,” she said. “They could be like, ‘Here’s $2-3 million … but it’s an advance, which means that it goes against five album sales. So either you make us that much money or, at a certain point, you owe us an extra album because you didn’t make good on that amount.”
Each of Mattel’s two studio albums and two EPs — 2017’s Two Birds, 2018’s One Stone, 2020’s Barbara and 2022’s The Blonde and Pink Albums — have charted on Billboard‘s Top Album Sales chart, with The Blonde and Pink Albums serving as her highest debut (No. 48). X Change, meanwhile, released her debut EP Unapologetically in 2019, and is currently promoting her forthcoming two-part album Grey Rainbow, with the first volume set to release Friday, May 16, via PEG Records.
Check out the full conversation between Trixie Mattel and Monét X Change below:
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