King Princess: Cheap Queen [COLUMBIA]

Why you'll love it

This edition comes in a gatefold jacket with a double-sided 24-inch square poster. Cheap Queen came out on Mark Ronson's Zelig Records imprint and scored 81 on Metacritic, a mark of universal acclaim.

This edition

• Gatefold jacket
• Double-sided 24" x 24" poster

About the album

Mikaela Straus took the album's title from drag slang: a cheap queen is the one who makes something fabulous out of not very much. It's a fair description of how she works, too, building a debut that sounds intimate and expensive at once from bedroom-pop bones.

She wrote the songs in the order you hear them, through what she called the most vulnerable year of her life, so the album plays like a diary. "Tough On Myself" opens with a shrug and a groove, the title track swaggers, "Ain't Together" is a slow-burning ballad, and the funk-driven "Hit The Back" was singled out by The Guardian. Critics heard everyone from Prince to Fiona Apple in the mix, and The Guardian also praised her voice as close and unadorned, as if she's singing right next to your ear. The same paper noted how she'd swapped the anthems of her early singles for understated ballads, and it suits her.

The closing pair, "You Destroyed My Heart" and "If You Think It's Love," make a terrific one-two finish. The poster, meanwhile, is two feet square, so do measure the wall first.

Also at Kops: more King Princess on vinyl · browse Pop

Tracklist

Listen

On Zelig / Columbia (cat# 19075987161), the 2019 album.