Would it be such a far-flung proposition to think that even a New York Times bestselling author, reality television superstar, successful entrepreneur, chart-topping musician and one of the most recognizable names in drag could be susceptible to the same speed bumps in life as the rest of us?
Trixie Mattel would tell you it isn’t.
When the going got tough, the multi-talented artist turned to her first passion: creating music. That soul-searching eventually produced a half-dozen songs, now collected into a Halloween EP titled ‘TILL DEATH DO US PART. Featuring tracks such as “Vampire” and “I’m in Love with a Ghost,” the release coincides with an October 5th YouTube special, promising all of Mattel’s on-brand extravagance.
The artist spoke with RUE MORGUE about her current projects.
Having listened to the recently released ‘TILL DEATH DO US PART, it’s fair to say that this isn’t your typical Halloween album. It’s folk-meets-synth in unmistakable Trixie fashion. What led to its creation?
Last summer, I was prepping content for my YouTube channel. We were making Halloween dishes, crafts and decorating my house. It was Halloween for me from August through October, and I didn’t even get my stuff taken down to almost Thanksgiving. But of course, I’m always in Halloween mode! My boyfriend grew up really religious; he was one of those kids who never saw any horror movies. So as an adult, I’m like, “I will chain you to this chair and make you watch it all!” I mean, we’re talking a 36-year-old man who’s never seen Halloween. That’s sad. I’m rescuing him.
For the past few years, I’d been DJing and focusing on electronic dance music. But my guitar music that I played for all the years before that, I was still writing it for fun, but I wasn’t really releasing it. Around last year, I was writing all these spooky songs, probably because my environment was so spooky. I thought, “We might as well commit and make a little Halloween record.” But I finished it like October 30th or something. There’s no time to put it out. So I waited all year.
I loved doing my one-night-only special a few years ago from my home where I perform for my dolls. I wanted to make a Halloween special to showcase the songs because I don’t love doing music videos, but I like to make music in the context of something like musical theater. I talked to my friend Daniel and was like, “I have these six Halloween songs. I want to do another special like the one that you and I wrote a few years ago.” We thought of doing a telethon, because something about Trixie struggling to find the funding and having no money to make a Halloween special and then doing a telethon on Halloween to try to raise money for a Halloween special — I loved that idea! And I love Shock Treatment, the Rocky Horror sequel where that whole musical takes place on a TV set. I’ve done reality TV for years now. Something about cameras being there unprompted and genuinely scary things happening was exciting to me. And then Trixie is trying to do a show, but she’s being harassed by a killer. Once I thought of it, I had to do it. And the album was the first part of it to be done.
What’s your creative process like? Are you writing and recording in drag, and what was your approach to this album?
“Ghost on the Moon” I wrote a few years ago when I was super depressed and having a huge crisis of faith that I wasn’t a good musician or a good drag queen. At the time, I put so much pressure on myself that I’m only worth what I can produce — and I wasn’t happy with what I was producing. Songs like “Ghost on the Moon” are songs I wrote for myself behind the scenes when going through something. And then songs like ‘Vampire,” that’s about me being disgusted with the part of me that is so ambitious and a workaholic. Being a drag queen is kind of like being a vampire. You’ve got all this makeup on, you stay out all night, you’re drinking a lot and you sleep all day. Some of these metaphors were sitting right in front of my face.
I write music for myself and then I just happen to perform it in Trixie. I don’t really think of it separately. I make music for fun on my own — even if I quit drag, I would keep doing it. And I’ve made music way longer than I’ve been doing drag.
For the special, I get in the seat with the audience and I think, “What do I want to see happen to this person?” I like to watch Trixie struggle! I like to see things go wrong. Trixie tries to be Miss America. She thinks she’s an amazing person and that she’s good at everything. But the flip side of that is deep insecurity. In the special, she’s hosting a telethon to raise money for a Halloween special. She’s taking a big piece of humble pie because she doesn’t have the money to do it, but the cameras are on and the lights are on and she has to try to be poised and act like everything’s okay. I personally like to see drag queens where the music’s skipping, her hair’s on fire and her heel’s broken — and you have to try to smile through it. I feel like that’s relatable. In life, we’ve all been the drag queen with the skipping music.
Anybody who loves horror knows it’s fun, but the metaphors are deep: real human trauma, fear, family dynamics, divorce, abuse. These are the best horror movies in my opinion, the ones where you watch it and go, “Wow, that was scary, but also it made me think of my divorce or my mom dying.” I think drag can do that too, where we laugh and we do something campy, but we’re tapping into some realities. “I’m in Love with a Ghost” — I wrote that because I did a renovation show with my partner at the time, and then we didn’t work out. But I still lived in the house we renovated on television. At first, it was very weird. I wondered if I would ever be able to move past that. I was afraid I would have to move out or sell the house. But the song is about mourning of what something could have been.
Were there any specific genre films or moments that crept into the music?
Oh yeah, there’s little lyrical stuff in there everywhere. You know what I didn’t get to reference? Phantasm. I love Phantasm and it’s so scary and I’ve been wanting to do something with it. I have such vivid memories of watching it as a kid.
Scream is in there because, on my record and in my special, we’re referencing horror while doing original horror. Screamis kind of the king of that. There’s an A24 reference. There’s a Conjuring reference in one of the songs. And definitelySalem’s Lot; I’m a big Stephen King fan.
What’s the one horror film that Trixie Mattel can’t live without?
I mean, it’s gotta be Scream.
The first Scream is genuinely scary, funny and clever. And it’s good because of the performances that the actors gave. They’re all so grounded. Neve Campbell is in a horror movie, but she’s playing a girl who lost her mother and her friends are getting killed. She grounds it all so much. It’s like how Stephen King thing can bring us the scary clown, but if you make us care about the kids, the clown is a lot scarier. So, if I had to pick only one, it’s Scream.
But if I could pick two, [the other] is probably Halloween.
Learn more about ‘TILL DEATH DO US PART and Trixie Mattel’s other projects.
