Kim Petras has never shied away from anything. Her past work embodied the phrase “go big or go home,” featuring bubbly dance pop and lyrics that would make baby boomers clutch their pearls. For instance, on 2019’s ‘TURN OFF THE LIGHTS,’ Petras sang about eating hearts and partying to death in between dance pop instrumentals featuring clashing knives; this year, she opened her 2022 EP ‘Sl*t Pop’ by chanting, “This is sl*t pop, whip your d**k out / Turn your b***h out, out, out, out-out-out-out / This is sl*t pop, get your t*ts out / Do it right now, now, now, now-now-now-now.” Anyone familiar with Petras’ penchant for personew u a would be surprised to hear her latest single “If Jesus Was A Rockstar,” on which she sings candidly about her own feelings, trading her usual bouncy, electronic instrumentals for a crisp acoustic guitar.
The lyrics of “If Jesus Was A Rockstar” have a pensive vulnerability to them, as Petras meditates on what religion has to offer her. Like many members of the LGBTQ+ community, Petras has not felt welcomed by the Christian community.
“It’s just been a thing that I never even had a chance to fit into, because religion never accepted trans people, and I’ve been trans my whole life. When I was a kid and all my friends would go to [receive] Communion and things like that, I was never a part of it. It was just never an option for me,” she told Rolling Stone.
The concept of “If Jesus Was A Rockstar” becomes even more powerful as Petras flips that feeling of alienation on its head. She considers not what would make her appealing to religion, but rather what would make religion appealing to her.
Petras reinvents Jesus with the same tongue-in-cheek irreverence she uses to talk about sex, drugs and murder. She declares that she wouldn’t just believe in him, but aspire to be him if he had been a rockstar “diving off the stage.” Her version of Jesus is reckless, getting kicked out of bars and spending “daddy’s” — presumably God’s — money carelessly. He would be able to “teach [her] to get on [her] knees,” and given Petras’ track record, she probably doesn’t mean in prayer. He is openly flawed in a similar way to many modern young adults, as he drinks the pain away and pops pills in the bathroom of a party. While explicit imagery and references to “sinful” behaviors is not unusual for Petras, it takes on a new importance when she directly addresses the people who “think [she] can’t be saved.” It’s a powerful, confident statement of self, as Petras embraces an identity that is fully hers, “sins” and all.
This marks the beginning of a new era for Petras, as she moves away from using music as a vessel for escapism, an elaborate costume hardly tied to reality. She told The Guardian, “This is a very different song for me. It didn’t feel exciting to do another round of artificial pop. It felt like the craziest thing I could do was strip back and sing a song with a guitar lead and just my voice.”
“If Jesus Was A Rockstar” may also mark a new direction for Petras’ sound, as known abuser Dr. Luke — who has had a hand in Kim Petras’ works as recently as February 2022 — is missing from the credits. Instead, Petras worked with pop icon Max Martin, whose impressive resume includes the likes of Britney Spears’ “Oops… I Did It Again!,” Kelly Clarkson’s “Since U Been Gone,” P!nk’s “So What” and Taylor Swift’s “I Knew You Were Trouble.”
Luke also did not have a hand in Petras’ collaboration with Sam Smith “Unholy,” which received a Grammy nomination for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance earlier this September. Petras and Smith also made history as the first nonbinary person and trans woman to top the Billboard Hot 100. “If Jesus Was a Rockstar” and “Unholy” feel like a logical transition into Petras’ newest project, introducing the unabashed sexuality of ‘Sl*t Pop’.
Petras told the Daily Beast that “the album is inspired by lore, religion, fairy tales, horror movies and Greek mythology… It’s very much just all of my interests combined into one and it makes this really exciting cocktail of pop music.” From the choir singing “Mummy don’t know daddy’s getting hot / At the body shop, doing something unholy” to the explicit reimagining of Jesus, Petras’ use of religion is mildly sacrilegious and an excellent vessel for her raw, honest thoughts.
These two tracks are an exciting look into what is to come from Petras’ latest project — though many details are uncertain, one thing is for sure: if Jesus was a rockstar, he would be tuning in and singing along to every word.
Teresa Pham is an Entertainment Intern for the fall 2022 quarter. She can be reached at teresaap@uci.edu.
