Editor's note: The artist's current album, referenced in this article, contains profanity in the title.
Slayyyter is preparing to bring her dark and sultry dance pop to Boston as she kicks off her Club Valentine tour at Royale on Wednesday.
In a conversation with GBH News, the hyperpop star talked about the plans for her tour, including the dazzling visuals she has planned. She’ll be touring her new album, “STARFUCKER,” a bass-heavy club music record that's a satirical take on the desperation of Hollywood and the plights of chasing fame.
Slayyyter said her upcoming performances will be theatrical, featuring four acts and multiple outfit changes. She’ll be fully channeling a 2000s pop diva, equipped with a headset and props. She said she wanted the tour to feel like a live, narrative version of the album.
“I wanted to do a dramatized version of just my life in LA and I've always been really obsessed with old Hollywood starlets,” she said. “Visually, I wanted it to feel timeless, like it could be at any point in time in Hollywood. Some of the visuals are very '80s, but some are very 1960s Hollywood. Some stuff is very current and grungy. I just wanted to capture all these different eras of Hollywood and what fame means in that way.”
Fame is at the center of Slayyyter’s current music. There’s the track “I Love Hollywood!” which is a tongue and cheek dance pop anthem about partying in Los Angeles; “Plastic,” about as expected, plastic surgery, set to a buzzing, fast pace; and “Miss Belladona” describes the vixen-like character the singer takes on. The entire series of visuals from the album is provocative and dramatic — Slayyter even struts down the streets of Hollywood naked in the music video for “Erotic Electronic.”
Slayyyter says the level of success she’s achieved always comes as a surprise, along with the hunger for more that comes along with it.
“I was just working a minimum wage job living in the suburbs,” she said. “And my music started to go off online and I ended up moving to LA. And then I feel like I never expected any of that stuff to happen in the first place. But then when it does, the goalposts kind of start to shift and you're like, ‘Well, now I need to sell bigger venues.’ And it's all these different set of worries that you didn't really have before.”
The character at the center of her new album is one she says she sees often in LA and has “major delusion.”
“In this album I wanted to embody someone that thinks and acts like they're just so, so, so famous, even if they're not,” Slayyyter said. “I feel like the kind of delusion about fame is what everyone has when people move to LA because they want their dreams to come true. It’s all delusions until it actually starts to work out, which is kind of I feel like my life has gone, you know. I was really delusional.”
The dramatic energy that Slayyyter has poured into her album will also translate on stage: expect interludes of sound clips sampling paparazzi sounds and movie quotes. She wants the “Miss Belladonna” character to come alive on stage, eclipsing the Slayyyter persona she became famous for.
Set pieces — which Slayyyter said pay homage to some of her favorite movies — will be stark white, with a projector and a clear male mannequin on stage.
“It feels very ‘Clockwork Orange,’" she said. “Overall there's a ton of movies that I really love and adore, and I feel like they've all inspired the visual process for this tour. ‘Basic Instinct’ is one of them. I was really inspired by ‘Blue Velvet’ with my album.”
The moody, thrilling aspect of her music fits with the timing of this tour.
“I love Halloween. I'm a big Halloween girl,” Slayyyter said. “I'm going to be turning some of my stage looks into costumes with certain accessories. I really am encouraging fans to come in costumes all Halloween weekend and it's going to be really fun.”
Slayyyter wants fans to join in the high energy experience she creates at her show.
“I feel like no matter what's going on, on stage, [my fans] are always ready to have a good time and to party with me,” she said. “I feel like that club atmosphere is really just going to come, my fans always make it feel like a rave.”
And Slayyyter says that energy from her loyal fans is also what sustains her.
“I feel like I'm not even that big of an artist," she said. "But the fans that do love and appreciate what I'm doing, they show out to the shows always. I feel like they're all going to see there was a lot of dedication put into this tour and the show and even one of the costumes for my encore, like I'm literally rhinestoning an entire outfit myself, like hand stoning crystals. The details are so important to me.”
