King Princess is “happy to be making music and hanging out,” and as she sat down with Audacy’s Bryce Segall on New Arrivals, the Cheap Queen artist opened up about the making of her sophomore studio album and spoke about her role as a musical influence in the LGBTQ+ community.
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In the last year, the artist also known as Mikaela Mullaney tells us that she was particularly “hyper-aware” of her productivity rates… which lead her to try to “make as much music as possible.”
However, Mullaney says that she worked hard to ensure that she didn’t lose the whimsy and spontaneity that came with making music before she was doing it for a living. “Luckily I came out with a really really legendary album, that I’m super proud of,” notes King Princess.
As of now KP’s sophomore album is all written, the production is essentially wrapped up, so now the album is heading in to be mixed this August. Mullaney worked with Aaron Dessner and Ethan Gruska for the production of her next body of work.
Dessner has just come off of producing with Taylor Swift, while Gruska has been working alongside Phoebe Bridgers. As the project is being mixed, the “1950” singer will spend the rest of that time developing the creative for her next era.
KP’s first album, Cheap Queen was “an exploration of all relationships,” not just queer relationships. She makes this distinction because, “as an artist who is trying to make my way downtown, and uptown, and all around town… to be constantly reminded that I’m gay, it’s like, ‘yes and!?’”
But now, Mikaela explains that her new record is a lot more about herself, rather than a retrospective on relationships. “There’s less love songs than I’ve ever written, which is crazy. But when there are kind of like moments of love, they’re not unrequited,” shared KP. Now many of her songs are about her relationship with her girlfriend, Quinn.
“It’s about kind of growing up, it’s about my position in the industry and a lot of feelings of like inadequacy and anger…but in a funny way. And I think that’s the thing that I do well, that I always try to commend myself on…there’s always a sense of humor,” Mullaney tells us.
KP says that the new songs for her album were all written sitting at pianos or on the guitar. Normally she is at her computer simply focusing on trying to produce a track. The singer says that working her way up from writing with an instrument to production has always felt like a “home base” to her. She reveals that both “1950” and “Talia” were written on a piano… she adds, “I have this theory that all great pop songs start as ballads.”
However, sonically, King Princess’ project will not be stripped down. She feels that this album’s production is the most “well thought out” production she has ever accomplished.
As her career has risen, KP has been deemed an icon of the LGBTQ+ community. But the singer feels that she is “very young to be deemed an icon.” She continues, “it’s very early in my career to be representing anyone…in the best way possible I took that and just deleted it from my brain with this new album.”
“From my experience of idolizing people, what makes someone iconic is that they just went, ‘okay, you know what I’m gonna do exactly what I want and I’m gonna let the world enjoy me being myself and I am gonna try and erase this understanding.”
KP says, “the kids who like my music, they just want to be fed. They want to be fed good content. The news outlets are the ones that use the terminologies… that’s like danger zone…. you get into these danger zones of like ‘queer icon legend King Princess,’ and it’s like somebody telling you that from a magazine.”
Ultimately, all KP is trying to do is create the best content possible in order to “feed the children.” She doesn’t consider herself a “diva queen” right now, but if she continues to churn out the best music possible in the early stages of her career, King Princess will certainly rise to the title of “diva queen.”
Listen to King Princess' full interview above.
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