King Princess: Hold Your Baby (Zelig) ★★★★★
King Princess is the alter ego of Mikaela Straus, a multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriter from Brooklyn. Hold On Baby is her second album: a smart, intense, provocative, seductive piece of future pop, which justifies the industry hype that has built up around her.
Straus was first offered a recording contract when she was 11 years old, suggesting that her talent was never in doubt. Her father was a recording engineer and she spent her formative years in his studio singing backing vocals for bands. She dropped out of music school in LA after being discovered by super producer and hitmaker Mark Ronsonbecoming the first signing to his Zelig label.
Her 1950 debut single was a viral hit, championed by Harry Styles and propelled at least in part by the gender-blurring image of Straus (a girl dressed like a boy dressed like a girl). In a pop world increasingly obsessed with identity politics, Straus was all the rage, describing herself as queer and non-binary (though thankfully she wasn’t obsessed with pronouns). Her 2019 debut album, Cheap Queen, offered candid and sensual songcraft allied to tight, understated contemporary pop, but didn’t exactly set the world on fire. Hold On Baby is in another class altogether, for which she has really put her inner self on the line.
“It sounds like a song – but it beats like a Bible,” the 23-year-old declares in a breathtakingly desperate tone between a whisper and a scream. It’s a catchy phrase that sounds like a mission statement. It comes from Dotted Line, a tacky, woozy, punch-drunk synth pop banger about an undervalued woman in the music business. “I’m so sorry / dotted lines I drew when I was 17,” Straus sings, confessing, “I’m so much younger than I pretend / I’ve got a lot on my mind / But they don’t care cause it’s better if I do not speak.” In the chorus, she sits on the bathroom floor getting high and painting “A pretty face over tears I’ve cried.”
Still, there’s something about the way Straus layers her vocals, singing in different tones, from trembling soft to raucous and explosive, making it a conversation in her own head, as much pep talk as it is a complaint about the misogynistic state of the music business. . “It sounds like I’m breaking down, but I’m just trying to get out of it,” she bursts with furious energy, as if determined to continue the real work of making songs that have the power of religious conviction.
The entire album maintains this level of emotional intensity, without straying into sloppiness or neglecting smooth melodies and earwig hooks. From the thrilling opening track I Hate Myself, I Want to Party to the dramatic closing song Let Us Die (a metaphorical lover’s suicide pact rides over the edge like a turbo-charged new wave pop-rock anthem), Hold On Baby grapples with the complications of being young and in love in a confusing world. Straus is somewhere between commercial electropop, idiosyncratic indie rock and intense confessional singer songwriting.
There’s a lot of good American talent on board, including Aaron Dressner of alt-rock favorites The National (fresh out of collaborations with Taylor Swift), Ethan Gruska (producer of Gen Z’s Favorite Troubadour Phoebe Bridgers) and Ronson himself. But Strauss has co-written and co-produced, stamping the power of her personality. Listening to Hold On Baby makes you feel like you’re really in someone else’s world, with their voice urgently bringing their most intimate feelings into your ear and turning them into pop gold. Neil McCormick