Album Review: Scene Queen - 'Hot Singles In Your Area'
The name on everyone’s lips throughout the 2020s has been the reigning rock monarch Scene Queen. A blonde bombshell with a set of lungs and a sense of fun and fundamental beliefs, she found herself moving from the For You page to the music charts and beyond and after a successful collection of EPs and a string of leading singles, it’s finally time for her to pop up and make the offer of a lifetime with her debut full-length Hot Singles In Your Area.
With songs about self-love, self-discovery and her hot-pink-coloured life stories, Scene Queen is ready to bring her sequined Y2K fantasy on a larger scale. Holding no punches back, the record opens with the super-powerful ‘BDSM’. Storming in with the lyrics, “BDSM, Scene Queen hates men”, the singer plays with the combination of hypersexualisation and hyper-feminism while airing out her true frustrations of her common criticisms. Since her rise to popularity on social media, she was loathed as much as she was loved; being dismissed as a “man-hater” or a “joke to rock music” in comment sections everywhere. To make this an introductory track shows the truest rock attitude: do no harm, take no crap.
Speaking of taking no crap, the following track is the phenomenally viral single ‘18+’. Scene Queen’s anthem to predatory behaviour in the music industry, this was one song that became a quick fan-favourite among her fans and the wider alternative music community. Telling a universal tale of “good people getting overlooked” for those who have been known to take advantage of their younger fans, it’s become a one-of-a-kind track in the industry and made her one of the most outspoken artists right now.
Scene Queen has also recruited some of her fellow music stars in the record. This includes the high-energy heavy-bass hit ‘Girls Gone Wild’, featuring British duo and former tourmates Wargasm. Bringing together an exhilarating combination of both acts’ music styles, it’s paired with the blessed collision vocals between Scene Queen and Wargasm co-frontperson Milkie Way. Being a track that burns twice as hot but half as long, it’s a memorable collaboration and one that will set festival stages alight in the future.
Hot Singles In Your Area is full of spurts of songs, with all but one being under three minutes in length. This is not off-putting, this is nowhere near a drawback - if anything, the only drawback would be the wanting for more, more, more of certain sounds. The production is modern, manic, and a near-perfect representation of Scene Queen’s persona: loud and proud, quick to dismiss but hard to forget. She will wiggle like a worm into the brain, and she’s ready to make home and stay for a while.
This almost goes without saying, but the record prides itself on deep-diving into sexuality. It’s impossible to ignore, especially with tracks such as ‘MILF’ and ‘Finger’, but as over-the-top and silly as these tunes may come across, this is important. This open and unapologetic attitude, especially with the intersection of queer sexuality, is something that even in mainstream popular music is still scrutinised. Artists, particularly female artists, are still being criticised for having a more adult edge to their music - even if the concept of ‘sex sells’ has been around since the very beginning. Artists who refuse to sanitise their sound are bringing a new revolution and as well as normalising sex and sexual exploration, they are also producing the catchiest and most fun anthems in the industry right now - and this definitely does include Scene Queen.
Not everything in this world will be appropriate for kids, and that is not a bad thing.
Ending the record with the hard-to-misinterpret ‘Oral Fixation’ and the grand finale of ‘Climax’, Hot Singles In Your Area is an album that will stand on its own. There will be nothing similar, no copycats, because simply no one can invent and utilise a sub-genre like Scene Queen has for bimbocore. This is Scene Queen. This is her sound. These are her thoughts. Her experiences. Her tales. Her moments of euphoria and her times of despair, and at many points, her bursts of rage and anguish.
Listening to Hot Singles In Your Area, to mirror the final lyrics of ‘Climax’: “Don’t let it end”.
Words by Jo Cosgrove
