The first shockwave that Slayyyter sent out in anticipation of her third album came on August 1st with the unshakable command of a single titled “BEAT UP CHANEL$.” Over the following months, she showed us what it feels like to be hooked-- on a drug, a night, or in our case, a sound.
This Friday, the anticipation of an album titled WOR$T GIRL IN AMERICA comes to a fiery head. If the five singles are a good indicator of the album’s essence, it’s going to hit club floors and house parties (and my iPhone speakers while I paint my face to go out) like an asteroid, and the dust won’t settle quickly.
The praise for her cohesive yet chaotic sound didn’t come out of nowhere, but this is still a major moment for Slayyyter. Her previous albums, Starfucker, Troubled Paradise, and Slayyyter, received lots of acclaim, but this run of singles is already making an impressive name for WOR$T GIRL IN AMERICA. Here in Austin, tickets for her tour stop in September were gone in minutes even after upsizing from Mohawk to Emo’s. Still, there isn’t a venue big enough to contain the unchained electropop soundscape that she’s building on this album.
The current state of dance music has long since moved on from Brat, but we’re still sitting with what that era shook up. For one, it’s understood now more than ever that clubbing is more than a dreamy, slow-motion dance montage under colorful lights. Partying feels euphoric, but we also party while we’re feeling vengeful, overconfident, lovestruck, and crazed. From St. Louis, Slayyyter described the new album’s take on nightlife as inspired by the “Midwest-core tweaker bar rat” figures that she grew up around.
That is to say, Slayyyter’s interpretation of herself through these singles is deliciously unglamorous. On the final single, “OLD TECHNOLOGY,” she sings, “Relapse into a bender / big bag of rack on the dresser.” In case it wasn’t clear, she punctuates, “I’m doing drugs tonight / Ones that I’m not prescribed” in the murky and highly danceable chorus. The music video is a perfect image of her inspiration. It’s disquieting, black and white, and shot against a desolate landscape and a series of seedy, disheveled rooms.
The third single (and first on the track list) is “DANCE…”, and it opens with a percussive build and synths like droning insects, creeping up on you until they release. It’s a similar sound as her previous album Starfucker, which was inspired by 80’s synth and Darkwave artists like Boy Harsher. Its subject matter makes it a bold choice for an electropop album opener; it’s about the surge of vitriol you feel when the person you hate the most is sharing the dancefloor with you. However, in the chorus is a line that is the thesis statement for an album about a bombshell party girl with gritty origins: “It doesn’t matter / let me dance.”
“CANNIBALISM!” is fun, seductive, and the glitziest of the five singles. In this one, you can especially hear how she took inspiration from her “iPod music” growing up. It’s melodic, electronic and punchy, and the lovesick (and borderline obsessive) lyrics make it like a hybrid of early Grimes and Marina and the Diamonds.
Out of all five singles, “CRANK” has become the symbol of what this album promises. This song starts on ten and goes higher. It starts with Slayyyter’s voice, spliced like she’s laughing in a car speeding by at 120 mph. The first verse is confident, cutting, and doesn’t hide what it is. When she raps “I’m leavin’ this party / It’s shit and all these bitches boring,” she isn’t stopping for the night. The song becomes louder, more tense, interspersed with shouts of “CRANK IT!” until it breaks to a chorus that yells, thrashes, and leaves you high on adrenaline and sweaty on the dancefloor.
There’s no surefire way of knowing what this album release is going to do to the charts or the clubs. Dance music notoriously gets left behind by mainstream critics, but WOR$T GIRL IN AMERICA has already racked up 40 million Spotify streams in five songs. It’s the culmination of her experience in the music industry and as a person, and it feels like a cultural moment is about to burst.
The best part about Slayyyter’s music is that it shows a version of party culture that’s within reach. In her videos, herself and her dancers throw themselves around in denim cutoffs and icy blue eyeshadow in wood-paneled houses. Being truly wild and untouchable isn’t determined by a ticket to Ibiza or Berlin. Anyone is capable of feeling like the worst and acting like the best in a room where the bass bumps louder than your own heartbeat. WOR$T GIRL IN AMERICA is Americana at its core, even if it’s hidden under glitter and furs.
Slayyyter has spent her entire music career, from Soundcloud to her first Billboard charting in 2023, with her finger on the pulse of electropop. She divulges what makes underground dance scenes so addictive and threads it into art that’s authentic and new. It seems that with this new release, her own time in the underground is running out. For now, we’re waiting anxiously to find out what’s waiting past the previews.