From Brokenhearted To Bionic, Kim Petras Is Pop's Baddest Bitch

Welcome to VOL.UME: LOVE Right now, a new series of stories chronicling how we find and experience romantic connections in the digital age. For the entire experience, head to VOLUME.MTV.Com.




Kim Petras is killin’ it. Because the camera clicks away, she lies back on a translucent, inflatable couch, throws her hands up, and kicks her orange heels airborne. With a pouty smile and platinum blond waves, she looks every bit the Barbie Girl; cool, confident, untouchable. And then we hear it: a blasting pop pierces the soundtrack of camera clicks and Madonna hits blaring from the speakers. One of her stilettos punctures a hole in the blow-up sofa, and she yelps, momentarily shocked, before erupting into a fit of giggles. Life in plastic, it’s fantastic.

This is a rare day off from tour rehearsals for the 27-year-old pop star, who, in the week preceding her photoshoot with MTV News, released Turn Off the Light, a full-length follow-up to the Halloween-inspired EP she dropped last year; filmed a music video for one of that album's standout tracks, the gory stomper "There Will Be Blood"; and hopped onstage throughout Charli XCX's Los Angeles concert for a charismatic duet "Click." All of the while, she's continued prepping for the Clarity Tour, her biggest headlining trek to date, in support of her debut album. It's a "intense" show, she says, and admits she's nervous about mastering all of the tight choreography it demands.


Nevertheless on this Wednesday morning, Petras is all smiles as she scans the monitor to review the photographs for which she’s just posed. She rests her pointy nails on her hips along with a grin creeps over her face. "Sick!" She approves. This is how Petras describes most of the things she likes: The royal-blue Balenciaga dress hanging in her dressing room is sick. The mix of Britney Spears and Lady Gaga hits that blares over the speakers is sick. Her loyal fan base, affectionately dubbed the Bunheads, are the sickest of all. It's also how she characterizes the recording studio in Hawaii where, between breaks on the beach, she channeled her murderous, "straight-psychotic" alter-ego to create Turn Off the Light. ("Hawaii is actually really scary at night," she insists.) Crafting that music was a true vacation for Petras, both from her Los Angeles residence and her own real-life problems. "It's really freeing to write as an elevated version of myself who goes and kills everybody and is just the baddest bitch out there," she says proudly.


Writing as different characters is nothing new for Petras, who launched her pop career in 2017 with a batch of bubblegum bops — a collection she refers to as "era one" — that illustrated what she wanted her life to be like. Take her breakout hit "I Don't Want It At All," a "bratty, rich-bitch anthem" written whenever she was sleeping on a futon in a little apartment shared with three roommates. However for Clarity, which arrived at the end of June, the intention was different; Petras was willing to "pull back the curtain" and capture her life as it truly was. And, as it stood at the time, she was newly single, completely heartbroken, and "really depressed."


"In the starting, I was going to create the complete record emo and depressing," Petras tells MTV News. Damaged was the initial song she wrote for the album. Over an airy trap beat, she spits at her ex, "Pray to God / That she leave you damaged, damaged / Like you abandoned me damaged, damaged Next was "All I Do Is Cry," another gloomy trap-pop concoction inspired by Post Malone, Juice WRLD, and Kanye West's 808s & Heartbreak, all of which she was listening to on heavy rotation. She was on tour with Troye Sivan at the time, and the routine was the same every night: Put on a happy face, go perform, then get offstage and cry her eyes out. However after awhile, those breakup songs would become her "bangers," and the album she was writing began to brighten up.


"Halfway through, I noticed the fun side of it and the sexy side of it. I was still making sad songs, yet it was, 'I'm still cooler than even in case you cheated on me and fucked me over.' I think through that, I noticed the album I wanted to prepare, which is half-fun, half-sad," she says. "It's a very accurate representation of me. It's like going out with me for a night and then coming back to my apartment and crying over dudes."


And make no mistake, plenty of tears were involved. "I certainly cry, and I certainly have a hard time closing chapters, which is why I've learned a lot of mechanisms to [deal with] a breakup. I know to lock myself in my apartment for a week with a bunch of pot and write a bunch of songs and watch all my preferred movies — First Wives Club, Death Becomes Her — and listen to a lot of Lana Del Rey. And then I move on." She pauses. Although wait for the next breakup, and it's going to suck, and I'm going to have forgotten all of this." Similarly essential: absolutely zero contact with mentioned ex. "I block all of my exes. They're deleted entirely from my life. Although I am hoping he hears the songs once they're out and he's just like, 'Damn it. Fuck that bitch,'" she says with a laugh.)


Newly invigorated, Petras reveled in the rebound and her post-split "horny phase," which she specifics in the sexy bops "Do Me," "Got My Number," and "Sweet Spot." Then there’s the Weeknd-esque "Icy," which has become her Britney Spears "Stronger" moment, on which she confronts her ex and proclaims, "I'm on a higher level." It's her most favored song on the album, her preference to perform live, and, she believes, one of the greatest songs she's ever made. It's also entirely emblematic of her current mindset. Some days any time you're in relationships, you forget who you are as a person, and also you forget all of the shit you aspire to do," she says. "Once that happened to me, I was just like, 'OK, I'm going to go so hard on my career, and I'm going to write so several songs. I feel so inspired, and I feel bionic right now.'"


Petras is like this — driven, excited, unabashedly self-assured — for a reason: She's made it this far, and she's done it all on her terms. She's still an independent artist without major label backing her, and she's the one who charted her own path from the German countryside to the Hollywood Hills. As a kid growing up in a little town about two hours outdoors of Cologne, she was unpopular to the point of being suicidal, she says. Any time while she was 16, she basically became Germany's poster child for transness soon after appearing in a documentary that chronicled her own operation; it made her a public figure however also an easy target for school bullies. Around the same time, she got a MacBook and began obsessively making beats and writing songs. She learned English language by watching Britney Spears interviews online and started thinking of pop stars as not just her idols, however her friends.


"I would just watch Gwen Stefani's Love. Angel. Music. Baby. videos and literally think about nothing else," Petras says. "It was a way for me to escape my life, which I hated, and escape school, which hated. Whenever I put on my headphones and listened to pop songs, it transported me to somewhere where I wanted to be."


That place was Los Angeles, where Petras moved at 19 to manifest her pop star dreams. Although as she steadily climbed the ladder of the music industry — by working her way in as a songwriter and afterward scoring a publishing deal — she noticed it more and more frustrating attempting to separate her art from her identity. "There were a lot of people who were either telling me that I needed to hide being transgender or that I needed to prepare a big deal out of being transgender," she says. "A lot of people didn't think I might ever be lucrative because being transgender is a niche thing in their eyes. I've routinely felt like there was a big wall for me to break through plus a lot for me to prove, and there still is."


In the starting, Petras shopped around for major label deals nevertheless was disgusted by execs who wanted to use her identity as a marketing tool. "A woman really high up at one of the greatest labels ever was like, 'So are you transgender because it's trendy now she says. At the time, Petras would rarely speak up for herself, however that's definitely not the case anymore — although doing so can present its own challenges. "It's been quite tough, to be sincere, because there's also been backlash Once I just want it to be about the music. There really are trans people being like, 'Oh, you don't desire to support the trans community.' And then Once I do, folks are saying I'm using it. It's such a balance, which is so hard to identify. And I'm one of the initial people that has to figure it out."


With the media qualifying her as a trans pop star, Petras's team intentionally determined to keep her face off the "era one" artwork, opting as a substitute for neon outlines of her head. Yet with Clarity, everything is out in the open — on the cover and in the music — and Petras's confidence is at an all-time high. "I routinely thought I wasn't interesting enough or pretty enough or a good enough singer," she admits. "I was routinely wondering, 'Is anybody going desire to listen to my shit?' Like, 'Who the fuck cares about what this person from the middle of nowhere in Germany has to mention I used to feel alone and like a bit of a freak before I met my fans."


During our conversation, Petras repeatedly makes two points, with different variations although habitually with the same conviction: Making pop music is her "purpose, and her fans fuel her confidence. Her love for them is so strong that she's even damaged all pop star etiquette by becoming companions with them — a bunch have her phone number, and she texts them about how school is going or about what music they're into. Recently, Petras even sent one of her fans a rough cut of her "Icy" video to get his opinion; it's a testament to their mutual trust that it hasn't leaked online. "Maybe I shouldn't have done that," she says, although all my fans are talented, and so they just get it."


She maintains that it’s because of her fans she has the life she routinely dreamed of, and she's decided to impress them and make them delighted. Today, that shows slaying this photoshoot — and an inflatable couch or two. "I really hope to kill every look that we've got. I'm just attempting to stay focused and remind myself to arch, to breathe, to look like I'm not trying…" She pauses and reconsiders. "I feel like I've got my angles down. I got this."


Photographed by Clare Gillen


Styled by Matthew Mazur


Hair by Iggy Rosales


Makeup by Gilbert Soliz


Set Design by Haley Appell


Photo Assistant: Julian Tuzzeo


Stylist Assistant: Diego Lawler

Back to VOL.UME: LOVE NOW.