Current Dork cover star Kim Petras has just shared a faith-grappling new track, ‘If Jesus Was A Rockstar’.
The track was announced earlier this month and is the German singer’s first release since her chart-topping collaboration with Sam Smith on ‘Unholy’. It was officially released today, November 11th, via Republic Records, and sees Petras opening up on her own difficult relationship with spirituality.
“It’s a fun song, but it’s also really lyrically intense,” Kim told Dork in this month’s cover feature. She describes it as a choose-your-own-adventure track in terms of what it could mean to people, but for her, it was written after she struggled with her spirituality over the pandemic. “As a kid, all my friends would go to things like communion, but I always felt excluded. Maybe if religion was cooler and more accepting of LGBTQ+ people, maybe I would have gone to church and found a place for myself in it, but I didn’t and probably never will. Today, I just believe in my own things.”
The track was a dream come true moment for Kim, with Max Martin producing the song as well as providing backing vocals: “I didn’t even know he was going to be there. I went there to work with Savan Kotecha and Ilya, and he was just sat on the couch, saying hi. I’ve studied the guy for so many years, so I was starstruck and nervous, but I played it pretty cool,” she laughs. “We all got together, talked about the song, then threw spaghetti at the wall to see what stuck. It was so much fun.”
‘If Jesus Was A Rockstar’ is also the first solo song Petras is releasing without controversial producer Dr. Luke on the credits. “I just wanted to try something new,” they declared. “I tried a million new things and worked with other people for this album, and it was great and really inspiring. It’s just fun to switch things up.”
It marks the start of a new era for Kim. “No one’s heard anything like this from me before. Gay club music was always my shit before, but now everyone is doing that, so where’s the excitement? If I did it again, it would just be boring.” Instead, she decided to “sing about something deeply meaningful, something that I struggle with and something that is just honest.”
You can listen to ‘If Jesus Was A Rockstar’ here, and watch the official lyric video below:
You can read our full Kim Petras cover feature online here, and you can order a print copy of November’s issue of Dork below.
