I think the name perfectly encapsulates my soul, and so I get to be myself with the safety of a different name.
King Princess
I spent a lot of time preparing for releasing music and then not a lot of time releasing music.
Gak encompasses so many things, like, 'Tonight is going to be a gak and a half.' If it's going to be a 'big gak,' it's going to be major.
My dad was really a protector and mentor.
Historically a publicly unaccepted but incredibly rich culture, queer love was only able to exist privately for a long time, expressed in society through coded art forms.
How I can be an active voice for gay people but also the music industry? This is the art we need right now. This is what we need right now. We're in a renaissance, and we need people to rebel, come forth, and bring messages into art.
I'm a big Cate Blanchett fan. I'm ready. I'm coming! I mean, come on, I am a gay girl; I want what I want. I want to come to Australia and marry Cate Blanchett. Just let everybody know for me.
I feel super-proud of my team and myself; like, I have an all-star MVP team. They're so sweet, and they love me, and I love them. It's a very respectful, lovely relationship.
I definitely spent a lot of high school isolating myself because I didn't feel like I fit in. I learned how to be funny.
Queerness is the lens that I live my life through.
When I do makeup, it's performative. I don't really wear makeup, but I use it as a tool to talk about gender and sexuality.
You're your truest self when you're young, and when somebody says something, and you're like, 'Oh, maybe I'm not normal,' you shut it down. It's always a process to rediscover those parts of yourself.
I'll just say I'm lucky. I've got the dopest girl in my corner.
I'm just playing songs for my friends and for people, and they're just like, 'Wow, this is powerful.' I'm excited. It's also important that, in the record, I move the focus a little bit away from me to more about the things that I think about, communities like drag, gender expression, and friendship-concepts that go beyond me.
I think it's so funny because straight people just don't think about gender in their songs, or making a statement by talking about love.
You need to kind of have a rubric, how you want to be, how you want to interact in this industry.
I think that's the place ideally we'd like to get to as well, as queer people, where you can just judge the music for what it is and not just because it's gay. I think it's important that until we get to that place, statements have to be made, and we have to be loud and outward, so that's where I'm coming from.
I think that there are all these amazing figures in our history - the Bowies, the Tina Turners, the Chers, the people who are, in many ways, genderless or represent 'the other' - and I want pop music, and other queer artists - Kehlani, Perfume Genius - these people are bringing queer narratives into people's minds.
It's time for gay people to be in the industry and talking about their stories.
Growing up with a dad who was a classic-rock guy, I felt out of place with what was happening in pop culture. The Beatles, Zeppelin, T. Rex - that, for me, was the music that could never leave our vocabulary.
King Princess is like an attitude. I take comfort in it as kind of a shield to exist in, where I can make cohesive art. And it's androgynous, which is intentional. It's important to me that my art exist in a kind of neutral space, genderless to some degree. And give the listener some imagery to hold on to.
I write chronologically in my life, so whatever's going on, I write about it. Usually, that's when I feel the most cohesive body of work is formed. I got to live this crazy life, I got to write about it, and now I've got this record that I'm really proud of, too. It's not done, but when I put it out, it's gonna be good.
There's just a certain amount of grandeur and total squalor we exist in as songwriters because it's a crazy job for crazy people.
We released '1950,' and I felt so grateful for the response from the queer community as well as just musicians and people in the industry responding to it and validating the art I had made. It makes me feel super hopeful.
What I didn't tell her was that I distinctly remember walking out of my junior year English class reading, 'Amandla Stenberg comes out as queer.' She unknowingly set a precedent in my life, a gold standard of how to be proud and exist in the intersectionality of multiple identities that were one thought of as being conflicting.
Having a sold-out show takes a lot of the pressure off because I know that it's going to be a room full of people who are excited to be there. The worst part - or the part that I'm adjusting to - is the actual act of traveling. The hotels are pretty trash.
I think younger women need older women to get where they need to be. I think women turn out the best work in the world.
I wrote them kind of consecutively, starting with 'Holy,' and then '1950,' 'Talia,' 'Upper West Side,' 'Make My Bed,' and I was kind of like, 'This is it.' It felt right. It felt complete. It felt like a sentence. I really enjoyed making it.
I didn't have a lot of homies in school when I was young because I was gay and weird and mean, so I went to theater class because I was like, 'Yo, I need a hobby.'
I wrote about ladies who had come through the studio. I get asked, 'Is it a choice to gender the music or put pronouns in?' and for me, it just wasn't a choice.
I take my inspiration from New York, and I bring it to L.A. and use it as a quiet place to do my work.
It's funny 'cos I think a lot about kids who grow up with their parents being really important members of their fields, and they just go the opposite way.
I was like, 'I'm an academic!' I'm not at all. It turns out I'm not great at that.
I took some meetings when I was 11. I think what was interesting about being a young kid in environments like that was people were like, 'You're so sure of yourself! You're so confident!' And I was like, 'I'm 12.' Now I've got to this place where I'm like, 'This is who I am.'
I think that was my biggest fear - censoring myself and putting myself into a cookie cutter to be representative. But I think what I realised is we don't need that.
I think that everybody on my Instagram are lovely. These people are wonderful, like these kids... it's just unconditional love, and it's really sweet.
I'm a great example of somebody who is gay but exists on a very complicated gender spectrum. I'm okay with that uncertainty, and I'm okay with existing in a gray area and not always being sure.
I've seen so many beautiful, strong, talented women stifled by male ego in rooms, and I want every young woman who feels that their music is being taken from them to know that they have a voice, and they have the tools, and that it's possible.
I remember my mum and I went to see the Icky Thump tour when I was young.
I've been working in music since I was a little kid. I would do background singing in my dad's studio all the time when I was a kid. I went to label meetings when I was pretty young, and obviously my goal was, like, 'No, we're gonna hold off.'
Pop music has been the center of change, you know? And positive messages. I would love to get back to that place because I think we've lost it a little bit.
You're in for a live band. That's really what I wanted; I wanted to put on a show for people where they could come for the gay and stay for the musicianship. It's a live show; there's some rock stuff, too. Some rock and roll. Get ready.
As a person in the LGBT community, I feel like I've begun to do my job.
The inspiration behind '1950' was... gay history and the way that our people had to hide in public and how that affected the way that we love each other now.
