King Princess: Hold On 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 slice of future pop, justifying the industry hype that has been building around her.
Straus was first offered a record deal at 11 years old, which suggests that her talent was never in doubt. Her father was a recording engineer, and she spent her formative years messing about 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 Ronson, becoming the first signing to his Zelig label.
Her debut single 1950 was a viral hit, championed by Harry Styles and at least partially propelled by Straus’s gender-blurring image (a girl dressed like a boy dressed like a girl). In a pop world increasingly obsessed with identity politics, Straus was right on trend, describing herself as queer and non-binary (although mercifully unfussed by pronouns). Her 2019 debut album, Cheap Queen, offered up frank and sensuous songcraft allied to sleek, understated contemporary pop but didn’t exactly set the world on fire. Hold On Baby is in another league altogether, for which she has really put her inner self on the line.
“It sounds like a song – but it hits like a Bible,” the 23-year-old declares in a breathily desperate tone between a whisper and a scream. It is an arresting phrase that sounds like a mission statement. It comes from Dotted Line, a sticky, woozy, punch-drunk synth pop banger about being an undervalued woman in the music business. “I’ve got a lot of regret / Dotted lines that I signed at 17,” Straus sings, confessing “I’m so much younger than I pretend / I got a lot in my head / But they don’t care cause it’s better when I don’t speak.” By the chorus, she is on the bathroom floor getting high and painting “a pretty face over tears I’ve cried.”
Yet there’s something about the way Straus layers her vocals, singing in different tones from tremblingly soft to raw and explosive, that turns it into a conversation in her own head, as much pep talk as a complaint about the misogynist state of the music business. “It sounds like I’m breaking but I’m just trying to make it out,” she seethes with furious energy, as if determined to get on with the real work of creating songs that have the force of religious conviction.
The whole album maintains this level of emotional intensity, without straying into stridency or neglecting the business of crafting flowing melodies and earworm hooks. From tense scene-setting opening track I Hate Myself, I Want to Party to dramatic closing anthem Let Us Die (a metaphorical lover’s suicide pact that drives 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 hits a sweet spot between commercial electropop, idiosyncratic indie rock and intense confessional singer-songwriting.
There is a lot of fine US talent on board, including Aaron Dressner of alt-rock favourites The National (fresh from collaborations with Taylor Swift), Ethan Gruska (producer of Gen Z’s favourite troubadour Phoebe Bridgers) and Ronson himself. But Strauss has co-written and co-produced, stamping it with the force of her personality. To listen to Hold On Baby is to feel like you are really inside someone else’s world, their voice urgently delivering their most intimate feelings in your ear, transmuting them into pop gold. Neil McCormick
