King Princess Wrote ‘Talia’ Sobbing in a USC Practice Room and More Stories Behind Her Music

The word swagger is often used to describe King Princess, a.k.a. 23-year-old Michaela Strauss. It's an apt description: She blew up at 19 with her first single, “1950,” a soulful lesbian love song with a hook so sharp it inspired Harry Styles to reach for his phone and tweet. Shortly after, she followed it up with hits like “Pussy Is a God” and “Talia,” and her 2019 debut album Cheap Queen, a coming-of-age record about getting your heart smashed and staying up late with your friends.

Over the past four years, King Princess’s blunt, horny lyrics about women and androgynous dirtbag glamour have helped carve out space for a very different type of pop star than, say, Ariana Grande or Taylor Swift. But Strauss’s music deconstructs her image even as it builds it up. Beneath the swagger and the mullet is a songwriter dealing with the same crippling insecurities, fear of rejection, and identity crises as every other 23-year-old. The tension between Strauss’s effortless cool and her vulnerable songwriting is all a part of the King Princess appeal.

“I write so many of my songs crying at the piano,” Strauss tells Glamour, shortly after pausing our call to retrieve her Juul charger.

Maybe not exactly the same struggles as every 23-year-old. If Cheap Queen was a heartbreak album, then King Princess’s sophomore record, Hold On, Baby, out now, is a self-acceptance album, written to process her overnight fame, the pandemic, a long-term relationship, and Strauss’s turbulent relationship with herself. She struggles to accept her success on “Too Bad,” sounds exhausted with herself on “Cursed,” and thanks her childhood friends for putting up with her on “For My Friends.”

“Writing Hold On, Baby was very cathartic for me,” Strauss says. “Being famous is a bad thing with redeeming qualities. And if you don’t process it, you’ll get really fucked up.”

“My goal with this album was to forget everything that’s happened and stick to the thing I love, which is writing songs,” she continues. “It allowed me to go back to my childhood, before all this, which was just me, sitting in my bedroom writing music.”

For Glamour's latest installment of 5 Songs, 5 Stories, King Princess shares the stories behind some of her biggest hits and the songs off Hold On, Baby that changed her life.

“Talia”

“Talia” is King Princess’s second-ever single, off her debut E.P., Make My Bed. The subversive music video—which was edited and colored by Amandla Stenberg—became a hit in its own right, racking up 10 million views on YouTube.