Like Hilton’s Debut, Paris, Infinite Icon Is Designed To Fit the Mold of the Current Culture Climate

The year was 2006. Paris Hilton was still at an apex of her aughts-era fame—which she’s continued to parlay into pop cultural clout all the way into the 2020s thanks to the increasing nostalgia for that decade (a time when no American knew they had it so good despite how horrible the Bush years seemed in the moment). Part of that apex was still a result of her successful reality series, The Simple Life, even though it hit a bump in the road after a falling out between Hilton and her co-star/“best friend,” Nicole Richie. Nonetheless, the two seemed to realize how lucrative their partnership still was (well, that and they were contractually obligated to film two more seasons), with the show being picked up by E! (just a couple of years before Keeping Up With the Kardashians would appear) in 2005 so that the fourth season could continue in 2006.

Thus, season four aired at the beginning of June 2006, making it the summer of Paris Hilton when her record, Paris, was released in August. Perhaps that’s part of why Hilton has no trouble declaring herself to be the “original brat” in a cover feature for the September ’24 issue of Nylon. (On a related note, a review for Yahoo! Music by Mark Daniels called Paris’ “Screwed” a “bratty anthem” when it first came out.) Interviewed by Bebe Rexha, Hilton is filled with “pearls” about making her album and, of course, the 2000s. Because, again, Hilton knows that people just want to hear her mention all the “iconic” things she did at that time. Including her role in the night that continues to launch a thousand memes: the infamous “Bimbo Summit.” Or at least that’s how the New York Post misogynistically billed the sight of Paris Hilton driving Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan away from the Beverly Hills Hotel in the small hours of the morning at the end of November 2006. Needless to say, it was a paparazzo’s wet dream (especially at that time) to see the three of them together and, thus, the trio’s image was forever immortalized in the public’s mind. Even if Hilton saw fit to debunk the myth that the three were, like, “besties” or something by telling Andy Cohen in 2021, “We were all at the Beverly Hills Hotel at the bungalows during an after-party and then Britney and I wanted to leave to go home. Then [Lindsay] started, like, chasing us and then squeezed in the car. And it was literally a two-seater SLR—you know, the sports car. She just, like, squeezed in and I didn’t want to humiliate her in front of all the paparazzi and be like ‘Get out of my car,’ so I was like, ‘Whatever.’”

At the time, however, it was all just part and parcel of the ways in which Hilton continued to capture the attention of America with her so-called party girl antics (though she got far less shit for it than Britney and Lindsay ever did). Antics she only played up on Paris, with songs like “Turn It Up” parading her club prowess. As Hilton herself admitted of the record ahead of Infinite Icon‘s release, “My first album was very of that time, just about having fun, being hot and going out. But now I’m a sliving mom, I work hard and just being with my babies is everything to me” (though, obviously not quite everything). In another time and place, though, if a song wasn’t the party persona Hilton was promoting, it was her sex kitten, blow-up doll-to-fulfill-every-hetero-man’s-fantasy one (e.g., lyrics like “My heart beats like a drum…when I hear you come” on “Heartbeat,” “Nothing in this world can stop us, tonight I can do what she can do so much better” on “Nothing In This World” and “All the boys are looking up at me/As I dance on the tabletop/Tonight, I’ll be your liquid dream/They want a piece of what I got” on “Turn You On”). “Not Leaving Without You” served as a combination of both, channeling the sonic background of Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love,” with an outro that seemed to emulate Spears’ intonation on 2003’s “Brave New Girl.”

Indeed, a lot of Paris feels like an attempt to emulate Spears’ breathy, make-men-cum-in-their-pants-with-just-a-few-words vibe (with “Turn It Up” being Hilton’s most obvious attempt at trying to mimic her In the Zone output). To that end, it’s no surprise that Dr. Luke has one of his earliest mainstream writer/producer credits on Paris via “Nothing In This World.” And, of course, Hilton was then operating within an era when (allegedly) no one knew about Dr. Luke’s nature, even though the time of Hilton recording the album would have been 2005, the same year Kesha was date-raped by Dr. Luke at none other than Hilton’s Hollywood Hills abode, where she was throwing a birthday party for her sister, Nicky. But, as Paris would probably shrug, “It was the 2000s.” Anything went. Including an ongoing “friendly relationship” with Donald Trump, who had signed her to his T Management modeling agency when she was nineteen.

But every wrong she committed back then, Hilton insists, was but a psychological reaction to her mistreatment while at Provo Canyon School during her “troubled” (by her parents’ standards) teenage years. This, she maintains, extends to her rampant racist and homophobic slurs that have been well-documented (e.g., singing a parody of Sister Sledge’s “We Are Family” that goes, “I am a fat ugly Jewish bitch/I’m a little jap-y Jew/I am a little Black whore, I get fucked in the butt for coke/I’m a nigger and I’m Black and I steal shit” or being recorded in a cab while saying of gay men, “Gay guys are the horniest people in the world. They’re disgusting. Dude, most of them probably have AIDS”). Of course, some could argue that, during a decade when “gay” was used as a synonym for “stupid,” “uncool,” “lame,” etc. (hence, Hilary Duff needing to make a PSA about it in 2008), Hilton was just “parroting” the times. Perhaps far more than she was influencing them.

And yes, just as Paris was a sonic reflection of the period (complete with features from Fat Joe and Jadakiss, songs about being “in the club” and most of the album being produced by Scott Storch [who also produced Beyoncé’s debut before she was Beyoncé]), so, too, is Infinite Icon. And, also like Paris, it relies on its primary producer for relevance and cohesion. That person, in this case, being Sia. In fact, it was Sia, per Hilton’s account, that got this whole sophomore album ball really rolling when, while the two were traveling out of Miami on Sia’s private jet (after performing “Stars Are Blind” with Miley Cyrus on her NYE special, Miley’s New Year’s Eve Party), Sia asked her, “‘Why have you not released another album? You were incredible last night, you were born to be a pop star.’ And I just said, “I’m busy, I’m doing a million other things’ and she said, ‘Well, what if I was the executive producer and wrote it with you?’ And, like, how can you say no to that?” In other words, how can you say no to the same sort of hand-holding that Hilton got while making Paris?

As for another reason for the “why now?” question, Hilton additionally stated (in the same interview with Jimmy Fallon), “I just thought it was perfect timing, just with releasing my documentary, This Is Paris, and then my memoir right after. And now, this is, like, my third part of me telling my story through my music.” Ah, the two most odious words in the English language: “my story.” The root of why so many bad movies, books and, yes, even songs exist. But it isn’t that Infinite Icon is bad, per se (at the very least, it probably offers more than Katy Perry’s forthcoming 143, which, incidentally, bears a similarly styled album cover to Infinite Icon). It’s just that it radiates the same issue as Paris: being a par offering that was largely bought by the best producers and songwriters money could buy. To quote again from the abovementioned review by Mark Daniels for Yahoo! Music, “To many it’ll appear that, like everything else, the fabulously wealthy Ms. Hilton has bought herself a singing career. And in many ways it could be argued that she has. But so what? With some contagious pop, genuinely stylish moments and a complete lack of inane ballads, it was worth every penny.”

And so it was foretold that, more and more, no one really cares that much if something (least of all music) is “good.” They’re more interested in the “lore” surrounding it. And Hilton has plenty of that to provide, having perfected the art of self-mythologizing ever since the 2000s ended. At the same time, she’s done everything in her power to “adapt to the post-woke climate.” This includes talking about how much harder it was in the 00s not just to be a celebrity, but to exist at all, telling Rexha in that Nylon interview, “Yeah, I mean even just saying ‘mental health’ back in the 2000s, [people would think] ‘mental hospital’—another stigma. They weren’t talking about mental health. They weren’t talking about feelings. Everyone just needed to be happy and perfect.” Yet Hilton still projects that sort of image with her Barbie-inspired “lifestyle” (underscored by the vacuous phrases “sliving,” “loves it” and “that’s hot” being on constant repeat). Because, for as much as she has claimed wanting to “change” and “grow,” Hilton has always clung to the “persona” she insists is just that. There was no better example of this than at the end of her 2020 documentary, when director Alexandra Dean tells Hilton, “You can’t do this brand forever. You’re gonna age out of it.” Hilton replies, “No. I’ll just be like this forever.”

It would seem that, thus far, she’s not totally wrong. Apart from having the means to keep her face and body looking as “similar” as it can to her The Simple Life-era self, it’s also Hilton’s “energy” that radiates a perennially youthful air (plus, it helps her body’s cause that she didn’t give actual birth to her children). One that shines through on Infinite Icon’s opening track, “Welcome Back.” Doing the best to sound her most Sabrina Carpenter-y, “Welcome Back” is meant to be an empowering “kickoff track.” For, although it applies to the moment after a breakup when a girl realizes how much of her personality she’s sacrificed to be with the asshole in question, in Hilton’s case, it also applies to the ongoing media distortion she’s endured (even if at least some of it was courted by her in the name of making more cash). So it is that she seems to be speaking to both an ex (perhaps one of many) and the media when she opens the song with, “White platform boots that you hatin’/Red lipstick, you toleratin’/No, I’m not your property/You stole my voice like robbery/I sold myself to the devil/‘Cause you made me feel I was special/It’s like you won the lottery/To all of the messed up parts of me.”

But now, Hilton insists she’s weaponizing all the best parts of herself (even the ones she was formerly made to believe were bad—e.g., “ADHD”) for nothing but positivity. Even after the early trauma she went through, which is all part of the “storytelling” trifecta concluded (supposedly) by this album. Hence, performing a cover of Ultra Naté’s “Free,” a song Hilton recounts listening to after being freed herself from an abusive boarding school. As the “pop star” herself stated, “Going through what I went through at Provo Canyon School, it was just so traumatizing and so painful. And I remember the first song that I heard, when I got out of there, when I got out was ‘Free’ by Ultra Naté.” Thus, its lasting impact on her “emotional journey.”

To differentiate her version slightly, Hilton renamed it “I’m Free” and adds Rina Sawayama as a feature to make it, theoretically, slightly less generic in terms of her cover abilities (hear also: Paris’ “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy”). The video itself also pays an odd homage (even if unwitting) to Jennifer Lopez’s “Waiting For Tonight.” As for Sawayama’s presence, it’s no surprise that the most listenable songs on the album are the ones with features—which make up half of the twelve-song album. What’s more, Hilton is only credited with co-writing four of them. Namely, her most “personal” ones: “Bad Bitch Academy,” “ADHD,” “Legacy” and “If the Earth Is Spinning.”

It’s “Bad Bitch Academy” a.k.a. “BBA” that features Hilton’s most “clout-laden” get for the album: Megan Thee Stallion. In fact, it’s probably almost the modern equivalent of snagging Fat Joe and Jadakiss for Paris’ “Fightin’ Over Me.” Alas, Hilton didn’t seem to have enough pull to get Megan Thee Stallion to appear in the accompanying music video, instead settling for more non sequitur cameos from the likes of Lance Bass and Heidi Klum (though the former makes a little more sense due to his 00s cachet). Meghan Trainor also cameos, but then, that makes sense considering her strong involvement on the record. Not just as a feature on the second single (and third song) of the album, “Chasin’,” but also a co-writer on the latter, as well as “Legacy” and “Stay Young.”

As for the third single (and fourth song) of Infinite Icon, “Bad Bitch Academy” is doing the most to be “iconic” (one of Hilton’s many wind-up doll words). This extends not only to the many cameos of the video, but also to deliberately including a nod to Britney Spears in the “…Baby One More Time” video—well, that and Cher Horowitz in Clueless. Either way, the classroom setting and “girly” pom-pom pen contribute to evoking both “icons” (one real, the other fictional). As for Thee Stallion’s verse, there’s a certain part of it that evokes the intonation and lyrics of her nemesis, Nicki Minaj, on “Barbie Tingz” rapping, “I’m a bad bitch [that phrase, too], suck some dick/If that bitch get slick, I’ll cut the bitch/I’ll cut up the bitch, I’ll gut the bitch/Had to fuck up the bitch, man, fuck the bitch/Won’t shoot her but I will gun-butt the bitch.”

In The Stallion’s case, that version of the rap goes, “I’m a feisty bitch, I’m a pricey bitch/I’m a hot girl but I’m still an icy bitch/Face card never maxed, I’ll swipe the bitch/And if I think she a chop, I won’t hype the bitch.” And yet, while it would seem that Hilton is Team Megan, her album cover actually reeks of the “AI-generated style” of Nicki Minaj’s Pink Friday 2. This marking yet another indication of Hilton’s predilection for adapting her music and album artwork for the times—with the Paris album cover—all dead-eyed and “bored model-y”—instead reflecting 2006 in all its tinsel-y, “perfect but vacant” glory.

In any case, with regard to naming a song that has “Stars Are Blind” potential in terms of being the “standout single” this time around, “BBA” is probably the strongest contender. It’s certainly not the track that follows, the ultra-cheesy “Fame Won’t Love You,” which feels like a bit of a “cheat” to include on Infinite Icon in that it was already present on Sia’s record from earlier this year, Reasonable Woman. To that point, Sia does most of the heavy lifting as she paints the picture, “Watch children cry/The pageant sells the lie/Third place isn’t winning, you know/Neither is first/The pressure and the thirst/For this skeleton’s show/I am so thin-skinned/Don’t scratch the surface/Please let me live within/Within this circus.” Or, as Spears once said, “All eyes on me in the center of the ring/Just like a circus.” As for Spears’ influence this time around, it’s not nearly as present as it was on Paris, with Hilton more focused on appealing to a Gen Z audience via a song like “ADHD” (neck and neck on cheesiness with “Fame Won’t Love You”). On it, she sings, “Now, look at me, I’m the best I can be/I was so down, thought I’d never be free/My superpower was right inside, see?/It was ADHD/My hands were shy, yeah, could never be me/Look at me now as I laugh nervously/My superpower was right inside, see?” She then adds, without a single ounce of irony, “So, thank you to me (oh)/Thank you to me (oh).”

The tempo might pick up on “Legacy,” but it doesn’t stop Hilton from continuing down Cornball Way as she “waxes poetic” about her real legacy: her children. Of course, she also leaves enough interpretive leeway in the lyrics for it to apply to her other number one accessory, Carter Reum. But, in truth, it’s all about the rich girl gush of being able to leave her money and assets behind to someone (sort of the way Beyoncé brags about that on “Boss” with the lyrics, “My great-great-grandchildren already rich/That’s a lot of brown churrin on your Forbes list/Frolickin’ around my compound on my fortress, boss”). Not just her many “Hilton pets.” So it is that she unabashedly insists, “I know they all remember me/For the glamour and fantasy/We know in reality/That loving you is my legacy/Your touch is a guarantee/Your kiss is my destiny/Tonight we’ll make history/‘Cause loving you is my legacy.” She even has the gall to insert the ultimate cliché (as only a wealthy person could have the audacity to tout), “When I’m with you, all the best things are free.” But broke asses know the truth.

At least Hilton, however, can be honest about one thing on Infinite Icon: her desire for eternal youth. (Paris’ acolyte, Kim Kardashian, has also admitted to this many times, even announcing that she would probably eat shit every day if it made her look younger—though, technically, she already ate plenty of shit daily while working for Paris). This much is addressed on “Stay Young,” a commanding title that is in contrast to Kesha’s 2012 single, “Die Young” (because dying young is the only strategy for staying that way). It also negates M.I.A. telling listeners (also in 2012), “Live fast, die young, bad girls do it well.” Instead, Hilton envisions a world where everyone can stay young if they simply will it so (which is in keeping with the abovementioned quote she gave at the end of This Is Paris). After all, as many millennials will tell you, youth is as much an attitude as a look. And Hilton, a “millennial icon,” speaks to many an “echo boomer” lament when she sings, “I never wanted to grow up, no I wanted to stay young for evermore/I never wanted to grow up, no/Somehow, there ain’t enough time to take it slow/Somebody tell me where we go/When our eyes, they finally close (I wanna know).”

That’s right, Hilton dares to get “way existential” by actually acknowledging the prospect of death (even though she’s the kind who will probably get cryogenically frozen). But it doesn’t take her long to return to being nonsensical and derivative as she concludes the track with, “If we ain’t here forever, let’s stay young/As long as we’re here together, let’s stay young.” Because, as any vampire will tell you, regardless of being here forever or not, “youth” is always the goal, aesthetically speaking.

Hilton also has her wannabe Taylor Swift moments on the song, at least from a lyrical standpoint. Specifically giving “Bejeweled” energy when she declares, “I’m goin’ out all night” as though to one-up Swift’s own pronouncement, “And by the way, I’m goin’ out tonight.” What’s more, the outro does have a certain Kesha vibe when Hilton sings, “So while you’re here in my arms/Let’s make the most of the night like we’re gonna die young.” As a “fairy clubmother,” Hilton feels the same, and probably will for “Infinity.” Which also serves as the title of her ninth track. Although “Infinity” recycles the message of “Legacy” and smacks of Katy Perry’s own cringe-y love letter to both her daughter and Orlando Bloom on “Lifetimes,” it also has a certain Vox Lux tone. That is to say, this is the kind of song that sounds like an actress recorded it to support a movie in which she was playing a pop star. To be sure, in many respects, Hilton is merely acting in that role—often unsuccessfully. And yet, like most pop music, if a person listens to it repeatedly enough, it grows on them. That’s probably why Swift “jokingly” alludes to putting narcotics in her songs on “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?”

In Hilton’s case, it’s about putting money into the songs. As Keith Caulfield of Billboard remarked during the Paris era, “Does it matter that Paris Hilton isn’t a great singer? Not really. […] Wisely, the gaggle of producers and writers enlisted for the project don’t require Hilton to do more than she’s capable of, thus making Paris an enjoyable pop romp. […] Naysayers be damned: Hilton releasing an album does not signal the end of days. Paris won’t change the world, but it’s good fun.” Perhaps the same can still be said of Infinite Icon, even if it often tries too hard at being “deep.” Though that’s likely more Sia’s influence than Hilton’s, with the former also appearing on track ten, “If the Earth Is Spinning.”

Sadly, it’s with only three songs left that Hilton finally seems to hit her stride on this record, with “If the Earth Is Spinning” being her own little version of Spears’ 2011 hit, “Till The World Ends” as Hilton sings, “Yeah, I know that I’ll survive/If the Earth is spinnin’/Got to dance with it, got to dance with it, ah/I can fix my broken heart/Underneath electric stars.” That “fix my broken heart” line also has some Swiftian echoes via her TTPD lyrics, “I was grinning like I’m winning/‘Cause I can do it with a broken heart.” Hilton’s pastiche overload also gloms onto some Del Reyian lyrical flair, too—namely when she says, “These stilettos are headin’/For the dark side of heaven/Where a sinner can get in/That’s where I let it/I got diamonds in my eyes.” (Side note: never forget that Hilton’s “bestie,” Nicole, wrote a book called The Truth About Diamonds.)

The clubby, “DJ Paris” tone of the album persists on the penultimate track, “Without Love,” which, of course, continues to rely on a feature. This time, it’s María Becerra, another important “get” for Hilton in that she accounts for the Gen Z and bisexual demographic. Giving listeners yet another antithetical-to-her-lifestyle message about how love is the most important thing, Hilton insists, “Don’t wanna live without love/‘Cause I wouldn’t be livin’ at all.” Elsewhere, she serves the double entendre-y lines (whether “meaning to” or not), “You go down easy, I see you see me/Right in the middle of a crowd.” It goes without saying that such a treacly sentiment is intended for Reum, who also serves as the subject of Infinite Icon’s final track, “Adored” (which, yes, has a certain “I Wanna Be Adored” by The Stone Roses quality—just don’t tell the remaining members of the band that).

Speaking once again (as she did on “Welcome Back,” ergo creating a full-circle effect) to how she tolerated being treated like shit by her boyfriends, Hilton admits on “Adored,” “I thought love always came with a bitter taste or it wasn’t real/But I’m not drowning in tears, had no idea till you looked at me.” Hilton also marvels, “So this is what it’s like to be/Totally in harmony, and you can tell/Givin’ it all and gettin’ it back from someone else/Feels nice when it’s right, when it’s right.” It’s a far cry from Paris-era lyrics like, “Don’t care who’s watching me, I do just what I want/Just ‘cause I dance with you, don’t mean you’re getting some/Don’t get excited, baby, ‘cause I might turn you on.”

However, despite the “musical progress” (however minuscule) exhibited by Infinite Icon in comparison to Paris, the question remains: is it really necessary? According to Hilton, of course it is. As she tells it, “Someone needed to come and save pop music. So I’m here.” One supposes she didn’t catch the many headlines over the summer about how said claim has already been, er, laid (which sounds like a song title that could be on Paris) by Charli XCX, Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter.