Music

On a warm Friday August afternoon, in an Italianate mansion in the hilliest (read: gatedest) part of Beverly Hills, Paris Hilton breezes into the room. The assembled label reps and journalists were politely asked to take our shoes off in the marble-floored foyer of the estate that serves as the office of Hilton’s 11:11 Media, a content company for brands and creators. Upstairs in this white carpeted room, the lady of the house wears stilettos.

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The occasion for this gathering is Hilton’s new album, Infinite Icon, out today (Sept. 6), 18 years after the release of her self-titled debut. The album is a dance–pop hybrid that finds Hilton in full pop mode, with a group of collaborators that includes Meghan Thee Stallion, Rina Sawayama, Sia and Meghan Trainor. Paris set a precedent for success with its “Stars Are Blind,” which spent 12 weeks on the Hot 100 in 2006, peaked at No. 18 — and, to this day, bangs.

The house/office is decorated to remind onlookers of what Hilton has accomplished. There are posters on the wall for her show The Simple Life, a Y2K-era ratings juggernaut that helped make Hilton and co-star Nicole Richie household names. Her 2021 reality program Paris in Love tracked her wedding to now-husband Carter Reum, who welcomes us into the house and offers Diet Coke and a tour of the “Sliving Spa,” a collection of amenities that includes hyperbaric and cryotherapy chambers set up in what used to be the garage. There’s a display of pink purses and a neon wall sign proclaiming “That’s Hot,” the catchphrase Hilton trademarked in 2004, long before “very demure” became the patent-pending slogan of the summer.

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As an assistant leads up upstairs, we pass racks (and racks) of clothing (bright, bedazzled, feathery) pulled for, among other things, an upcoming music video shoot for Infinite Icon‘s “Bad Bitch Academy.” A mood board for the video, among other very fierce, very empowering imagery, has a picture of the famous 2006 photo of Hilton, Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan that the New York Post published with the headline “Bimbo Summit,” which on the moodboard has been swapped for “Bad Bitch Summit.”

But much of the clothing will not ultimately appear in the video; it will instead be incinerated in an RV fire that will happen outside the L.A. video set a week from now. An accident triggered by what Hilton assumes was an electrical issue, the fire started just after they shot the first scene and destroyed nearly everything inside the RV, among it Hilton’s clothes, shoes, hair extensions, 300 pairs of sunglasses, and other more irreplaceable ephemera.

“With my ADHD, I have notepads where I have like, thousands of notes, and all of that burned along with all my journals,” Hilton tells Billboard in the wake of the fire. “It’s just been heartbreaking, really.”

But even with the tamed blaze still smoldering, Hilton and the team carried on with the shoot. “A lot of people thought it was going to be over,” she says. ” I’m like, ‘No, no, we’re powering through.’” You can genuinely say that actual fire can’t stop Paris Hilton from her pop star dreams.

Certainly a second album laden with hooks and household names guests might help her get there. But in a way, with the fame, the wealth , the outfits and the pre-existing Hot 100 hit, Hilton has always been a kind of pop queen — now she just has more music to go with it. “I’ve always had that attitude and vibe and feel,” she agrees. “Even when I go to my perfume line [release] signings and all of these things around the world, my products, my books, I feel like a pop star all the time. So this is just the next level, with this album.”

The project finds her in what’s always seemed to be her comfort zone: surrounded by a gaggle of gal pals. Infinite Icon was executive produced by Sia, a turn of events that happened after Hilton appeared with the singer and Miley Cyrus to perform “Stars Are Blind” on Cyrus’ on NBC’s 2022 Miley’s New Year’s Eve Party special. The day after, Hilton flew home with Sia on the latter’s private jet and divulged her dream of making more pop music, which Sia encouraged into existence with sessions at her house.

“The first time I sang in front of her, I was, like, freaking out,” says Hilton. “I’m like this is the greatest songwriter, singer of our time, and I’m singing in front of her — and I’m so shy, but she literally brought out something in me that I didn’t even know I had. Before I was more in the baby voice and being very breathy and kind of like, Marilyn [Monroe] vibes. And then with this album, I just felt like a woman.”

Infinite Icon was recorded at Sia’s place, L.A.’s Sunset Studios and the studios Hilton had built in this house and her other house not far from here. 

The general vibe is that everyone who worked on it is a bff. Sia is “my guardian angel, my fairy godmother. I love her so much.” Meghan Trainor — “such a sweetheart. I love her. She is my sis for life” — wrote two Infinite Icon songs, which she also sings on. Co-producer Jesse Shatkin, who produced Sia’s “Chandelier” among many other things is “amazing,” while music video director Hannah Lux Davis is “such a badass.” The album takes inspiration from pop stars that made the mold — “I’ve always looked up to Madonna” — including those Hilton has been actual friends with: “I always loved Britney.”

The project is also influenced by Hilton’s longtime love of dance music, a relationship cultivated by attending many of the world’s greatest parties over the years. (“All my friends are like, begging me to go [to Burning Man], and I’m like, ‘Guys, I have an album coming out next week. I cannot be there,” she says when we speak during Burning Man week.) She is also, of course, a longtime DJ herself.

“My DJ career has definitely had a massive influence on me and my life and making this album,” she says. “Performing all around the world at music festivals, for thousands of people and being on stage and just really paying attention to what makes people move and how to create those unforgettable dancefloor moments — I wanted to bring that same energy into the album.” To that end, Infinite Icon‘s “Infinity” is pure fist-pumping Tomorrowland fare.

Other songs traverse more nuanced topics like her ADHD diagnosis, bad relationships, the love she says she’s now found with Reum and their two young children (son Phoenix is 19 months, daughter London will be one in November) the emptiness of fame and even death. These themes further the expansion of Hilton’s public image that started in 2020 with the release of her documentary, This Is Paris.

In it, she disclosed her experiences at Provo Canyon School, an involuntary residential center for young people where she was taken against her will in 1997, when she was 16. The mental and physical abuse she experienced there was revealed in the doc, which has been viewed 80 million times on YouTube alone. The film fell squarely into the broader public reassessment of the misogynistic and often abusive treatment many female celebrities (Britney Spears, Pamela Anderson, Janet Jackson, etc.) received from the media and culture at large in the Perez Hlton era.

Hilton went deeper into her story in her 2023 memoir, which an assistant hands out copies of after the mansion office album listening session. The book details adventures like the time she and photographer David LaChapelle snuck into her grandparents’ house for an impromptu photo shoot (the grandparents were asleep upstairs) — and thornier subjects, like how the release of a private sex tape against her will by an ex-partner derailed her rising career when she was 19 years old. (One might, for example, read the first half in one sitting on a Friday night in August.)

“That was just such a therapeutic experience,” Hilton says of the documentary, “delving into my life and really taking that time just to reflect on my life and everything I’d been through, and just seeing how strong I am, and resilient, and just what I’ve had to endure. Then with the book, it took it to the next level, where I even started going even deeper, and then through the music. So, yeah, I don’t think the album would have been as deep as it is if it wasn’t for doing the documentary and then that book.”

She’s got a few live shows behind the album lined up and says while her main focus is her family and her business empire she’d love to play Coachella (“that would be iconic”) and make music with Charli XCX. “I’m the original brat,” she says matter of factly. 

“Every time I’ve spoken with [Charli],” she continues, “she’s like, ‘You’ve always been such an inspiration to my music.’ So I just think it just makes so much sense for us to do a song together.” Luckily, the few things that didn’t burn up in the fire included a notebook with ideas for her third album.

All in all, the impression one gets is that Paris Hilton is indeed — in a phrase she trademarked in 2022 — “sliving.” Given the intoxicating but also often toxic realm of celebrity that she emerged from, it’s easy to see how things could have gone differently for her. Instead, she’s got her family, a global business, and now, the album she’s spent nearly 20 years dreaming about. She’s sweet, and she seems happy.

“Being the blueprint for modern celebrity, and really redefining what it means and pioneering a new kind of celebrity, and being someone that blends fashion and media and business and pop culture into a powerful personal brand — I feel proud of that,” she says. “I love seeing so many people now who can follow in my footsteps and take that blueprint and be able to create their own brands and their own businesses and create a beautiful life to support themselves.”

It’s perhaps not the future even she’d dreamed for herself back when “Stars are Blind” was on the charts.

“It just makes me happy anytime I meet someone who says like, ‘Thank you so much. You’re the reason that I do what I do,’” she says. “Or, ‘If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing.’ Or, ‘Thank you so much for always being my role model.’ Growing up as a teenager and everything I went through, I never thought I would ever hear that. So it’s just been very validating to me.”