German pop star Kim Petras has graced us with a new 12-track project today - ‘Clarity’. Prior to this, nine of the singles from the collection were released - beginning this past April. I’m not a professional music reviewer (I’ve never actually ‘reviewed’ music before… I find it kind of odd), but I wanted to write this because Petras’s singles are mainly all I’ve been listening to lately - so I feel ‘unprofessionally qualified’.

I first found out about Kim Petras in December - and, after that, I couldn’t stop listening to her 2017 song ‘I Don’t Want It At All’ and 2018’s ‘Heart to Break’. Side note: I have this thing where, when I find a really good song, I listen to it almost exclusively. I guess it could be dubbed as kind of creepy if you want to think of it like some ‘American Psycho’ weirdness - fine, but I've just always liked the repetition of listening to a song back to back to back to back to back and really absorbing all the lyrics…… Fast forward to late spring, when I recently heard ‘Broken’ for the first time - the first single to be released from her newest project. I then proceeded to listen to it on repeat for the following next couple weeks or so... I also was having a particularly rough time one day at the end of May, so I listened to ‘Broken’ on loop while taking an hour long scorching hot bath (and cried). I could listen to this song a million more times.

Anyways, then only four days ago, I discovered there were eight other singles out… I felt like I’d won the ‘bops I can listen to on repeat’ lottery (and I don’t even particularly like the word ‘bop’). ‘Got My Number’ and ‘Blow It All’ were the next two tracks in this particular succession of Petras’s springtime releases - but these songs didn’t grab me as much as one that followed: Sweet Spot. This song feels so familiar - I honestly wish every DJ on the face of the planet would only play this song. I mean, I would probably ‘go out to dance’ if this song was playing 95% of the time - and I don’t ‘go dancing’.

And then I got hit hard by ‘All I Do Is Cry’. The perfect heartache, heartbreak song. Literally every lyric is perfect if you’re sad and longing over lost love. Definitely an all-time top breakup song. The first thirty seconds had me devoted. I actually put it on to do this writeup and then proceeded to listen to it three times before continuing with the rest of the singles.

Okay, next: her song ‘Do Me’????????? Are you kidding me? I’m brainwashed at this point - can Petras do no wrong? Another song I want to manically do a self-made dance routine to. It also feels like an unapologetic ‘banger’ that inherently supports the queer community - as Petras, a trans woman, sings about her incredible sex life.

Moving on to ‘Clarity’ - the title song of her upcoming collection. Though the song came out seventh of the nine tracks released so far, it will appear first on the project. She sings, ‘Clarity, I got clarity / I'm the bitch with the sauce, apparently’. Kim, you are the bitch with the sauce!!!! - thank you!!!!

‘Personal Hell’ now… yet again, another Petras song that has the power to bring me out to dance floors across the world. It is so wildly catchy. I’m in love, and I’m fully committed her little play on words with: ‘touch me - only your hands make me come.... alive’. And who doesn’t relate to just wanting someone (anybody!) to save you from your own personal hell sometimes? Although no one needs a knight in shining armor (it’s almost 2020!!!), as Disney conditioned us to think growing up - this song is about escapism.

Then we come to the end of the series of singles: ‘Another One’. To be honest, this song kind of makes me anxious because it throws me back to all the ‘fuckboys’ I’ve encountered in my life. It’s basically about the whole thing of you not being the only one your (probably on and off, hot and cold, gaslighting, commitment-phobe) lover is seeing (been there, done that). I’m sure most people who have dated in this century have experienced this, and can relate to this song.

It’s hard to even choose, but I’d say my favorite of the nine singles so far is a tie between ‘Broken’, ‘All I Do Is Cry’, and ‘Do Me’. I’d say if your mood is ‘I just got fucked over, and my friends are probably sick of hearing about it, and I want to lay in bed and cry/or have something to listen to at my desk at work to feel less alone during this miserable season of my love life’, you should put on ‘Broken’ and ‘All I Do Is Cry’. If you’re feeling more like channeling ‘I’m a hot, empowered person who knows exactly what I want’, listen to ‘Do Me’.

Now I’m going to go listen to ‘Icy’, ‘Meet The Parents’, and ‘Shinin’.

The full project ‘Clarity’ is out today on all platforms. Here’s the track list:
‘Clarity’
‘Icy’
‘Got My Number’
‘Sweet Spot’
‘Personal Hell’
‘Broken’
‘All I Do is Cry’
‘Do Me’
‘Meet The Parents’
‘Another One’
‘Blow It All’
‘Shinin’