Slayyyter on Timeless Hollywood Aesthetics and The Death of Celebrity

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When Slayyyter visited Los Angeles in early 2020 to finish up her debut album, the last thing she imagined was that a global pandemic might make her a permanent resident. “I was very much like ‘I love St. Louis! I’ll die by my city”, says the pop artist, as she video calls me from her 80s art deco inspired apartment, “But I got stuck here during the pandemic in that time where you couldn’t travel or see a single person, so I ended up alone in an AirBnb, frantically ordering furniture to a new apartment.”

Watching her new home recover from its dystopian ghost-town pandemic existence, her forthcoming album STARFUCKER, out September 22, is influenced by experiencing the glitz, glamour, and gossip of celebrity culture whilst still feeling more “on the cusp” of fame than an actual celeb.  

The twenty-six-year-old artist – who began making music from the makeshift studios of a dorm room bunk bed and the closet of her childhood bedroom – has always been inspired by the figure of the celebrity. “I’m a very visually driven person. I think back to Vaporwave on Tumblr, or those 3D visuals of dolphins and artists like Yung Lean. I feel like that has always really inspired me.” Slayyyter explains, ” So when I started making my own music, I tied it into this visual McBling subgenre. Everything I was making was inspired by images like 2008 Heidi Montag dancing at a club. All of these random 00s specific visuals.” 

STARFUCKER sees Slayyyter’s artistic fascination with fame move from the aesthetics of a y2k pop girly towards an aesthetic of timeless fame and grandeur, influenced by the worlds she has become privy to as an artist based in L.A. Below, Slayyyter talks visual-driven artistry, intersections of fame, and the death of the celebrity in the internet age. 

In the visuals for STARFUCKER, you portray this strong character of a Hollywood Femme Fatale – what were your biggest inspirations in the creative direction of this era?

I feel like a lot of this album was inspired by just expanding my taste. I was in a relationship for almost two years and during that time he was showing me a lot of new movies. I was watching a lot of erotic thrillers like Basic Instinct and Sliver. Blue Velvet was also a big inspiration for the album. On one of the tracks “Dramatic”, I sing about wearing blue velvet and I imagine the singer Dorothy from the film where she’s slinking around in her apartment. I’m more visually driven, so I think to myself: if we were in a dirty Berlin sex club, what would the song sound like? It’s definitely inspired tracks from the album like “Erotic Electronic”. I feel like everything fits a mood or a vibe. It’s just all so dramatic and I feel like that’s the universe this music lives in.

I can see this vibe of dramatic grandeur in the visuals. 

Definitely. I feel like another thing I wanted to do with the album was to make a timeless version of Hollywood, mixing a lot of the super old Hollywood sleazy references with newer elements. Whether my hair is looking like Rita Hayworth but I’m singing about defamed photographers like Terry Richardson, I think all of the album’s realm encapsulates this unreal world of Hollywood that is neither current nor retro. It’s everything. 

Do you have a story or narrative behind the album?

I think the word ‘starfucker’ is what is really funny to me. I’m kind of on the cusp as an artist – I have fans who love me and treat me like I’m some big artist but at the end of the day a lot of people have no idea who I am. It’s a funny spot to be in. Living in L.A., sometimes I feel like I’m the starfucker, and sometimes I feel like I’m the one getting star fucked by people. Over the past couple of years, I’ve gone to parties and seen major A-List celebrities I’ve loved since I was a kid and I’ve thought to myself ‘How am I here? This is so crazy’. But at the end of the day, you kind of notice that these scenes seem so glamorous on the outside but a lot of these people are really boring. They’re not that cool or funny and they don’t get down with the girls. So I feel like ‘starfucker’ is kind of a catch-all-term for a lot of things in entertainment. 

Although you’re a student and lover of original pop girlie culture - one defined by paparazzi and gossip magazines - you’re also a part of the emergence of internet-based pop music and culture. As a bridge between these two eras, I wanted to ask you: who is the pop girlie in the age of the Internet? 

Everything has changed so much with the Internet. There are no stars anymore, you know what I mean? Michael Jackson is such a good example of someone who was a universally iconic celebrity, and we don’t really have that anymore. In this internet age, artists have this ‘flash in a pan’ fame and then it goes away and you don’t think about them anymore. I think a lot of the aesthetics of this album are pretending like I’m one of those big meteoric stars, even though I’m not because it’s funny to have that false sense of reality about yourself which a lot of influencers have. 

Like, you go to a club and see a YouTuber screaming at the bouncers to let them in and you think to yourself, ‘girl, you are a YouTuber’. But real artists and real stars don’t really exist anymore. So I think channelling this fake sense of fame was the vibe of the whole project. Even if I haven’t truly made it, I’m just going to pretend and hold my head up high like I have.

Was the process of working on an album centred on these questions of fame something that helped you grow and accept these life changes?

Yeah, definitely. I feel like I’ve found some success in music that a lot of people would love to have and that I’m really grateful for, but at the same time I don’t have a hit song yet. It’s a funny place to exist in that I’m still trying to grasp. 

A couple of years ago, I was a hair salon receptionist and a college dropout. Things weren’t looking great and my mum was asking me what I was going to do with my life. I got really lucky, and I have what I always wanted - I live in a big city, I have success in music, and I get to play these big festivals. I have all these cool opportunities, but I’m still worrying about how I’m going to pay my rent this month. There’s this fire under my ass that drives me. But there’s people bigger than me who are still constantly chasing something bigger, so even though I still feel like I haven’t really made it yet, I don’t know if that feeling ever really comes to an artist to be honest. 

Words: Lucy Lawson | Photographer: Savanna Ruedy | Concept: Ione Gamble | Styling: Malcolm Baron Smith | Hair: Daniel Meraki | Makeup: Selena Ruiz | Hair Assistant: Eskee Lee

Slayyyter’s new single, Erotic Electronic, is out now