Kim Petras is leaving for the airport. Lately, she is always leaving for the airport. Earlier this month, she\u2019d been in New York for the launch of a Motorola phone. Then it was back home to Los Angeles to perform with Paris Hilton<\/a> before returning to New York for her own set at Governors Ball. The festival drew more than 100,000 spectators, and Petras played on a bill that included Lizzo, Haim, and Kendrick Lamar. How does one celebrate after a show like that?<\/p>\n \u201cIt was honestly sad,\u201d Petras says. \u201cI went to the hotel and signed, I think, 1,800 CDs. I have to get to a lot more than that; we\u2019re kind of in a time crunch, and it\u2019s time for delivery.\u201d Describing the scene, she says: \u201cYou\u2019re in your hotel room, you\u2019re single \u2014 but I had my team with me. We were just watching the Hannah Montana<\/em> movie, and I was getting those signatures. Honestly, that movie feels very relatable to me at this moment in my life.\u201d<\/p>\n Schiaparelli jacket c\/o Bergdorf Goodman, Intimissimi bodysuit, MM6 Maison Margiela skirt, Wing + Weft gloves<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n There are worse metaphors for this moment in Petras\u2019 career than the story of a country girl with a double life as a pop star. In February, the 30-year-old artist won a Grammy Award for \u201cUnholy,\u201d her collaboration with Sam Smith; before performing the song live on TV \u2014 in a performance Ted Cruz later called \u201cevil\u201d \u2014 Madonna mouthed to Petras backstage: \u201cGo get it, b*tch.\u201d In May, she sat front row at the Chanel show on the Paramount lot in Los Angeles and later appeared on the cover of the Sports Illustrated<\/em> Swimsuit issue, a milestone for a trans artist. Now, after what feels like endless delays and Internet leaks, her major label debut album, Feed the Beast<\/em> \u2014 featuring the Nicki Minaj collaboration \u201cAlone,\u201d<\/a> which samples Alice Deejay\u2019s Euro-club classic \u201cBetter Off Alone\u201d \u2014 arrives June 23.<\/p>\n Petras\u2019 ascent is both unprecedented and overdue. For years, she was dismissed by executives and industry watchers as a niche artist, she says. \u201cPeople would tell me all the time, \u2018Oh, you just make gay club music.\u2019 I pride myself on that. I love making gay club music.\u201d But in the quiet moments away from the spotlight, the Kim who likes ramen and low-key dinners at friends\u2019 houses started to wonder if she wasn\u2019t also hiding in those gay clubs. Why can\u2019t a trans girl from Germany be the world\u2019s biggest pop star?<\/p>\n Marc Jacobs clothing and shoes, Falke tights<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n Kim Petras likes to play characters<\/strong> in her music. On her 2017 breakout single, \u201cI Don\u2019t Want It at All,\u201d she was a spoiled brat, whining about designer clothing. But the song was born from pain. Petras grew up in a small village outside Cologne, the daughter of a dance teacher and an architect, and lived a quiet life \u2014 until age 13, when her transition was chronicled by a news crew and she became something of a national curiosity, or, perhaps worse, a German punchline. For Petras, fashion offered freedom through self-expression. \u201cWhen I was a kid,\u201d she says, \u201cI used to have to go to school in boys clothes. At home I was allowed to wear whatever I wanted, so I would just wear ridiculous things and feel like myself. But I felt like I was this weird monster that needed to be hidden.\u201d<\/p>\n She started writing songs in her bedroom, finding success with, of all things, commercial jingles. The German-laundry-detergent-to-Hollywood pipeline is a singular road. And at 19, having saved up enough money from a job waiting tables, Petras flew to Los Angeles and essentially couch-surfed for a while.<\/p>\n \u201cI came to L.A. to learn how to make pop music\u201d \u2014 not to be famous, she clarifies \u2014 \u201cand that\u2019s a specific difference. I didn\u2019t see the sun for years. I was such a studio goblin. L.A. definitely wasn\u2019t how I pictured it when I was back in Germany,\u201d she says. \u201cI only knew it from movies and TV shows, but it seemed magical. It\u2019s not like that in reality. And I spent a lot of time on futons writing songs about lifestyles completely different from mine, but I found a lot of inspiration in the fantasy of it.\u201d She adds: \u201cMoving back to Germany and giving up on pop wasn\u2019t really an option for me.\u201d<\/p>\n The pretend-princess she played on \u201cI Don\u2019t Want It at All\u201d would give way to the underworld killer on 2019\u2019s \u201cThere Will Be Blood,\u201d from her horror-themed Turn Off the Light<\/em> mixtape, and then the semi-pornographic, man-eating club kid of her 2022 EP Slut Pop, <\/em>where she dubbed herself the \u201cthroat goat\u201d (sample lyric: \u201cNo gag reflex, I just had to flex\u201d).<\/p>\n Schiaparelli jacket c\/o Bergdorf Goodman, Intimissimi bodysuit, MM6 Maison Margiela skirt, Wing + Weft gloves<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIn my life,\u201d Petras explains, \u201cit makes me feel quite uncomfortable to be the main character.\u201d But these personas, \u201cthey\u2019re all different parts of me. On Turn Off the Light<\/em> and Slut Pop<\/em>, I magnified parts of myself into larger-than-life characters because that was always more fun to me. I always looked at pop music as an escape, and I want my music to do that for other people because it was so important for me growing up.\u201d<\/p>\n In another timeline, Petras might have been granted a slow roll to the mainstream and a chance to grow on her own terms. Her 2018 song \u201cHeart to Break\u201d just scraped into the Top 40 chart (though your mom would definitely have to Google her). She signed with Republic Records (home to Ariana Grande and Taylor Swift) in 2021, but her album Probl\u00e9matique <\/em>\u2014 a winking nod to some perceptions of her<\/a> in the industry \u2014 leaked online and mostly had to be shelved. \u201cIt was sad,\u201d Petras says of the moment, \u201cbecause the fans loved the music, but they were like, \u2018Oh, your stuff never gets released and always leaks.\u2019 It became this negative thing, and I\u2019m like, \u2018I didn\u2019t want to leak it. I didn\u2019t want you to hear it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n I was afraid of making big songs. I always thought I was too weird to be played on the radio.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n She quietly went back into the studio. But then \u201cUnholy\u201d blew up on TikTok and became an inescapable pop monster and much bigger than anything she\u2019d sniffed at before. She would make history as the first transgender artist to win a Grammy in a major category, and then appeared on one of the covers of the Sports Illustrated<\/em> Swimsuit issue. While she wasn\u2019t the first transgender woman to snag that honor \u2014 Leyna Bloom covered it in 2021 \u2014 Megyn Kelly predictably lost her sh*t, calling the image a \u201cfraud\u201d and saying the magazine failed in its singular mission: \u201cMy understanding of the cover of the Sports Illustrated<\/em> magazine is it has one main purpose, and that\u2019s for 15-year-old boys to spend some alone time with it in the bathroom.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/imgix.bustle.com\/uploads\/image\/2023\/6\/6\/819fe549-4fad-4226-bd1c-52110cc3fa16-230508_kim_petras_elite_daily_s3_0018-_r7-copy.jpg?w=1320&h=1980&fit=crop&crop=faces&auto=format%2Ccompress)
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