The Daily Spin, July 24
Kim Petras | Feed The Beast
Welcome back to the Daily Spin, the series in which I review 365 albums during 2023.
Each album will be given a rating on a scale from 0 to 10. You can look at the entire set here. Additionally, you can check out a list of my favorite song from each album right here.
Album: Feed The Beast (2023)
Artist: Kim Petras
Link:
If nothing else, I appreciate an album that’s so unabashedly out of the late 2000s, taking a page straight out of early Lady Gaga or Katy Perry a la Teenage Dream, not too distinct from the Ellie Goulding/Calvin Harris collaborations that colored so many of my teenage years, thumping beats and syrupy vocals, only barely evolved to incorporate some of the trappier beats that Petras has utilized throughout her career.
When I reviewed Janelle Monae’s The Age of Pleasure, I made note of it being horny almost for the sake of the shock value, and this album frankly feels much the same. Petras is so overtly sexual that it feels overly intentional, a Howard Stern-style blasting that leaves you no choice to confront it very directly - and yet, it all feels like it’s dancing around the heart of the issue itself, oddly sanitized for being so direct in other moments.
Unfortunately, that kills a lot of the listenability of the album for me - if I’m solving bug fixes or trying to work on some projects, I’m not usually seeking out songs screaming about getting boinked in all its many forms. Give me the instrumentals any day, most every single one of them is delightful (including a sample of ‘Better Off Alone’, a classic dance-pop club banger), but the whole package underwhelms pretty severely.
With Feed The Beast, it feels as though Petras failed to balance the scales, no matter how you look at it.
Rating: 7.5/10
Best Tracks: King of Hearts; Minute; uhoh
Worst Tracks: Unholy; Sex Talk