While not exactly a “cultural reset”—the phrase that gets thrown about so freely for just about everything—Kim Petras’ seven-track EP, Slut Pop, does something that few pop stars have chosen to do of late: embrace Pamela Anderson-style “sex positivity” (and the aesthetics that go with it). In the current Gen Z pop star landscape of Billie Eilish, Griff, GAYLE and Olivia Rodrigo, Petras bursts forth (take that innuendo how you will) to bring us seven songs that ooze with pure “fuck me” energy without any concern for the “political” implications of what that means. For, in a reversal of how things used to be, a woman is more critiqued than ever when she comes across as a “caricature” of being “femme” (which is what the ultimate sex symbol, Marilyn Monroe, was doing with her own shtick… back when all pop culture was created with the aim of getting men off). As opposed to, like Eilish, “keeping that shit covered” (that is, when she’s not providing her own occasional caricatures of being femme). But the person really being caricaturized on this record is Kesha, who we’ll get back to momentarily.
In any event, Petras proves that everything old is always new again. And there’s nothing older, at this juncture, than the Bimbo Barbie look, which she embodies to a tee on her album cover (something about it being very reminiscent of Janine Lindemulder on Enema of the State), complete with blow job lips (of the variety that were quite popular in the 00s thanks to lip gloss trending) and a blue bikini top with plenty of under boob showing. Announcing what Slut Pop is all about with the eponymous track kicking off the album, Petras unabashedly sings, “This is slut pop, whip your dick out/Turn your bitch out.” If that song didn’t give you the memo, the straightforwardly-titled “Treat Me Like A Slut” will. Like all the other songs, it’s accompanied by its own visualizer, and, in this one, Petras dons a moto jacket and black leather skirt as she continues to film herself with what Gen Z would see as an “old-timey” camcorder.
She urges, “Treat me like a slut/Little dirty bitch/I love to fuck!” Yet the sense of “empowerment” intended, just as it was the case on Doja Cat’s Planet Her, is negated entirely with production credits attributed to Dr. Luke. And while, yes, Petras has blithely opted to work with him in the past on Clarity and Turn Off the Light, Slut Pop far more overtly mimics the vibe of 2010-2012 era Kesha. The years Dr. Luke had control over her music before effectively sending her on a five-year hiatus amid emotional trauma fallout and legal battles that would not allow for the release of Rainbow until 2017. An album that was, in so many ways, a complete departure from the two she made under the “tutelage” of one, Lukasz Gottwald.
It’s evident that Dr. Luke must have felt as though he lost his “prized pupil” when Kesha blew the lid off his behavior, for when we hear Petras say these types of things—e.g. “Ooh Daddy, pull my hair/Take control/Take my soul”—it’s hard not to picture Dr. Luke funneling such lyrics into her ear so that she can spit them back out and tell him what he, as a disgusting misogynist, wants to hear. What Kesha would never agree to continue doing after enduring the verbal and physical abuse Gottwald subjected her to (complete with spurring her eating disorder by comparing her body to a “fucking refrigerator”). And so, as though to add insult to her injury, Dr. Luke is not only producing freely again with other pop stars, he’s also having Petras imitate, categorically, the sound that Kesha perfected with her debut and sophomore records. Ultimate retaliation for what he would like the public to believe is “defamation” (we’ve got a real Tinder Swindler type on our hands here).
For instance, a song like Kesha’s “Blah Blah Blah” (one of the few singles from 2010’s Animal that Dr. Luke didn’t produce) was already saying the same thing as Petras long ago. Case in point, the lyrics: “Zip your lip like a padlock/And meet me in the back with the Jack at the jukebox/I don’t really care where you live at/Just turn around boy, let me hit that/Don’t be a little bitch with your chitchat/Just show me where your dick is at.” Petras mirrors this persona of a woman who uses men for “the only viable thing they have to offer” (and even that’s debatable) as she coos, “I wanna go harder/I wanna cum faster.”
The third track, “XXX,” establishes Petras giving us “lengthier” efforts (this one being a full two minutes as opposed to the previous songs being just under two) for Slut Pop. And as she repeats, “XXX” in a way that makes it sound like, “Sex, sex, sex,” Petras is determined to keep the shock value going with comments like, “Say you got a girl, I don’t give a fuck [how “Break Up With Your Girlfriend, I’m Bored”]/If you wanna cum, then you gotta level up.” In this, and so many other ways, there is something almost Jules Vaughn (Hunter Schafer) from Euphoria-like about the way in which a trans woman such as Petras feels obliged to hyper-stylize her self-described sluttiness as a means to play up femininity for the conventional hetero male gaze.
Jules puts it succinctly when she tells her therapist in a special episode of Euphoria called simply “Jules,” “Basically, I feel like I’ve framed my entire womanhood around men. When, in reality, I’m no longer interested in men. Like, philosophically—like what men want. Like what men want is so boring and simple and not creative and just, like, I look at myself and I’m like, how the fuck did I spend my entire life building this—like my body and my personality and, like, my soul around what I think men desire? It’s just like, it’s embarrassing. I feel like a…a fraud.” She goes on to sum it all up with, “My entire life, I’ve been trying to conquer femininity and, somewhere along the way, I feel like femininity conquered me.” And that’s precisely what seems to have happened with Kim Petras on Slut Pop. Ergo, a highly non-empowering capitulation to working with Dr. Luke (even in spite of the album’s description as “seven servings of unabashed and empowering Europop”).
As for Petras and Dr. Luke willfully ripping off Kesha’s lyrical steez, with the addendum of Cannibal to Animal, Kesha also brought us the song title of the same name, during which she proudly declares, “I eat boys up, breakfast and lunch/Then when I’m thirsty, I drink their blood/Carnivore, animal, I am a cannibal/I eat boys up, you better run.” Petras merely chooses to increase the “offensive quotient” as a means to update Kesha’s own sex positivity (somewhat antithetical, as it was being engineered by Dr. Luke) for a new decade. Accordingly, “Superpower Bitch” provides more of the same increasingly generic Dr. Luke beats as Petras brags, “I’m a superpower bitch/I can make you cum/I’m a superpower bitch/Spit you out like gum” and “I can be your little slut/You will never get enough/If you do it, you gon’ do it till you bust.”
Continuing to attempt one-upping herself on how “slutty” (or is it sex positive?) she can get, “Throat Goat” offers every male fantasy (the very kind Eilish criticizes on her song of the same name) as Petras assures, “I can take it all/Love it big or small.” She also has no issue name-checking Lady Gaga to further intensify the eerie ties to Kesha on this album. For not only did Lady G lash out against Dr. Luke and his legal team in 2017 for their treatment of Kesha, but she’s also known for being openly vocal about her own sexual assault—which is why it’s odd for Petras to sing, “These lips go la-la-la/This throat Lady Gaga/Boys say hallelujah.” With these two factors in mind, using Gaga’s name feels equally as in poor taste as her performance in House of Gucci. Elsewhere, “Make you hit the wall” obviously alludes to the dude in question’s wang touching what Cardi would call “that little dangly thing that swing in the back of my throat.” Hence, the reason Petras announces, “I’m the throat goat.” A goat because she’s grunting and on all fours while doing it? Sure.
A semi-frequent mention of exes also feels like an undercutting dig at Kesha on Dr. Luke’s part, for she is, to a certain extent, an ex of his. On “Superpower Bitch,” Petras urges, “Fuck me like your ex,” but on “Throat Goat,” she changes it up to, “I just sucked my ex/No gag reflex/I just had to flex.” More pointed shade that could easily be directed at Kesha if anyone knows how to interpret the ultimately vindictive nature of this album. The goat sound effects and voice manipulations are even reminiscent of the animal noises on Kesha’s “Dinosaur,” during which she goads, “D-I-N-O-S-A—you are a dinosaur/An O-L-D-M-A-N/You’re just an old man/Hittin’ on me, what?/You need a CAT scan.”
Things don’t seem to calm down on emulation when Petras shifts gears to sounding like she recently listened to Calvin Harris’ “The Girls” with “They Wanna Fuck.” Which is essentially Petras rehashing how all kinds of boys wanna fuck her. More to the point, “Them LA boys, they wanna fuck, they wanna fuck/Them New York boys, they wanna fuck, they wanna fuck/Them Euro boys, they wanna fuck, they wanna fuck/Them Dubai boys, they wanna fuck, they wanna fuck/Them Christian boys, they wanna fuck, they wanna fuck/Them Tokyo boys, they wanna fuck, they wanna fuck.” You get the gist. And yeah, it’s very much in the vein of, “I like them black girls, I like them white girls/I like them Asian girls, I like them mixed race girls/I like them Spanish girls, I like them Italian girls/I like the French girls and I like Scandinavian girls.”
Taking Christina Aguilera’s “Genie in a Bottle” motif up to a more self-debasing notch, “Your Wish Is My Command” serves as the finale to Slut Pop (and perhaps she was saving her longest [song] for last). Wherein numerous statements are made that sound as though they’ve come from Dr. Luke’s deepest fantasies about what he only wishes Kesha would say to him, such as, “Come on, teach me a lesson/I can be your possession.” And yes, since Gottwald co-wrote all of these songs as well, there’s no denying that this record is retaliative. A big “fuck you” to Kesha by both stealing her sound and throwing her style back in her face in an extremely denigrating way. Like trying to make her look at her reflection in a warped funhouse mirror. And while there’s no slut shaming here with regard to what Petras says on the album, there’s certainly plenty of Slut Pop shaming in continuing to work with a man like Dr. Luke in 2022, as well as so blatantly doing what amounts to a send-up of his arch nemesis.
