EBENEZERWorld
The cult star proves she is ready for pop’s big leagues in a show that blends chaotic punk energy with technical finesse
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Music — Emma Madden
The last time Slayyyter toured, in 2023, she struggled to break even and had to fly home boxes of unsold merch. Back then, she was still largely the domain of Twitter gays: a subcultural figure to those who assessed music in terms of “flops” and “bops”.
Then, midway through 2025, she released the electro-trashy Beat Up Chanel$, and suddenly caught everyone’s attention. With a career-defining Coachella set earlier this year, she had broken through into the mainstream alongside a class of flop-no-more artists – Zara Larsson , Raye and Tinashe – who had spent years seeming cruelly shut out of its central sphere, only to break through with a surprise big hit. For these artists, and Slayyyter in particular, the urgency of a last chance had become as galvanizing as the urgency of a first.
Related: ‘I didn’t think anyone would be into it’: Slayyyter turns midwest trash into pop gold
Following what she described to the Switched on Pop podcast as the “financial failure” of her previous tour, Slayyyter’s fourth studio album, Wor$t Girl in America, became that final chance. She intended it to be the last album she’d ever record, trading the pinkish, delusional chic of her earlier work for Middle American sleaze. Closer Brittany Murphy , a song about depression and suicidal ideation, doubled as a meta-farewell to the chase for musical relevancy: “Do you notice all I’ve done? Do you know it’s all I want?”
When she announced the accompanying North American leg of her Worst Girl in the World tour in March this year, it sold out in minutes. Her team immediately set to work on venue upgrades and added extra dates; tonight and tomorrow night at the Shrine in Los Angeles sold out almost instantaneously, a venue that Slayyyter said midway through the set was a place she “always dreamed of playing”.
At her first of these two packed Los Angeles shows, she finally got the answer she wanted to the question she posed on her album’s closer: a crowd screaming those lyrics back at her. Three songs into the set, she told them, seemingly unaware of the connection to Brittany Murphy, “This is all I’ve ever wanted.”
She came out to devilish howls from the crowd, which almost drowned out her version of St Francis’s prayer. She walked, at first somberly, across the stage, which consisted of a tiny Missouri home, likely similar to the one she grew up in in St Louis; a lone carousel horse, a washing line full of Slayyyter-branded white tees, a crucifix poking out of the ground, and a high-exposure timelapse of a blue Missouri sky over a wheat field. As the sky turned from blue to gray and then lightning, Slayyyter detonated, bringing the energy of a hardcore show to a pop performance.
Slayyyter’s production was distinct, self-contained and grand without losing its sense of scum. It was a Harmony Korine -like meeting of the baroque and Americana, finding beauty in a pack of Marlboro Reds and a gas-station T-shirt with a ganja leaf on it.
Like the album, the set married pop and hard techno with Americana scuzz. While Slayyyter sang and screamed on the record through punkish distortion, with most of the music happening in the low end, live, you heard the clarity of her voice and just how incredible it was. When she sang, she belted in a single note with the heft of Dua Lipa, the hiccups of Chappell Roan, the girlish trails of Ariana Grande and the inferno of Courtney Love.
She performed mostly with a rock band set-up: drummer, guitarist, bass; a proper live show. Early in her career, when she came up among the first wave of hyperpop artists, she proved she could do it alone and make low budget look cool. Now, more impressively, she can make a much larger budget look cool, too.
Related: Trash hits! Why a wave of hedonistic, feral female pop stars are rejecting respectability
Everything else was equally precise: the crowd work, the stage blocking, the hairography (and what hair!) were all on point. There was something deeply gratifying about hearing Slayyyter and seeing her vision so clearly, welcomed with such enthusiasm. It was particularly satisfying if you had followed her long enough to remember when the idea of this many people standing in a room to hear her sing would have seemed slightly delusional.
The crowd had changed, too. Slayyyter had built a visual brand strong enough that the audience could wear it back to her. A great majority of the 5,000 in attendance came dressed in gas-station trucker caps, boxy thrifted tees, and oversized camo khakis. Everyone was mercifully at her feet while she fed the 5,000. When she sang bloghouse banger Old Technology, repeating the lyrics, “I’m doing drugs tonight,” a woman in the crowd with a bleach-blond skullet vomited into a bin.
Rounding off the night with Beat Up Chanel$, Slayyyter stood beneath the blue Missouri sky as thousands screamed for her not to go. The prayer that opened the show had asked for grace in a world of suffering. Finally, she received a room full of people who knew exactly what she was trying to say. Her prayers had been answered.
Then, midway through 2025, she released the electro-trashy Beat Up Chanel$, and suddenly caught everyone’s attention. With a career-defining Coachella set earlier this year, she had broken through into the mainstream alongside a class of flop-no-more artists – Zara Larsson , Raye and Tinashe – who had spent years seeming cruelly shut out of its central sphere, only to break through with a surprise big hit. For these artists, and Slayyyter in particular, the urgency of a last chance had become as galvanizing as the urgency of a first.
This report is published with credit to theguardian.com. Full available text from the wire is above. Read on theguardian.com →
Source: theguardian.com · Emma Madden. Published 24 Aug 2026, 03:54 pm.
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