Cheap Queen
More than a year after her breakout hit “1950,” King Princess delivers *Cheap Queen*, her soulful and reflective debut album. Balancing husky, vintage-sounding vocals with subtle flourishes (a vibraphone here, a chiming synth there), the project loosely traces a young relationship’s hopeful beginning and wounded end. Throughout, we get to see the emerging queer-pop icon, a 20-year-old Brooklyn native named Mikaela Straus, evolve: Meandering mind games (“Useless Phrases”) and self-deprecations (“Cheap Queen”) become earnest observations (\"Watching My Phone\") and confident tell-offs (“You Destroyed My Heart”). The final number—a breathtaking, pensive ballad that unfolds delicately—feels fragile and guarded: “And it might take a sec/My world’s become a mess/I’m second-guessing all the things I used to want to be,” she sings, a bit more measured than she was at the start. But she’s stronger, too, armed with the self-assurance of someone who has had their heart ripped apart and, to their own surprise, survived.
The viral phenom’s full-length debut cuts her modern pop sensibility with doses of historicism, embracing opposing energies with effortless swagger.
King Princess hasn't reinvented pop, but she is bridging its most exciting chasms
The Mark Ronson-endorsed New Yorker recalibrates the traditional love song for an LGBTQ audience and her debut soars at its most experimental
'Cheap Queen' largely captures Straus in the process of blooming with a little help from her friends as she figures out how to exist amid a period of heartbreak.
When 20-year-old New Yorker Mikaela Straus, aka King Princess, was asked recently how she feels about the idea of becoming a queer spokesperson, she replied: “I’d rather put out good art and allow my gayness to be an added bonus of that art.”
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Mikaela Straus exudes confidence. You can see it in her interviews (like our recent cover story), music videos and now, on her debut album a...
Rising star 20-year-old King Princess - born Mikaela Straus - has vocals that are arresting, with an openness to match. Her debut single from last
What you can't fix, you feature. King Princess, née Mikaela Straus, frequently applies this mentality to her songwriting by using explicit honesty
Swapping queer pop anthems for understated ballads, Mikaela Straus’s debut deals in laid-back confessionals about crushes, loneliness and forbidden love