Although ostensibly a competition to become "America’s Next Drag Superstar," "RuPaul’s Drag Race" has really always sought (and crowned) drag queens who can best expand and carry on RuPaul’s cultural legacy in drag, fashion, and beyond. Perhaps because of the enduring appeal of RuPaul’s music in the 1990s (especially "Supermodel (You Better Work!)", which Kurt Cobain praised as a favorite in 1993), music has become the most hotly contested territory among past "Drag Race" contestants. The manic output of "Drag Race" stars is so strong that pursuing music has become almost a given—indeed, Season 5 winner Jinkx Monsoon even titled her debut album The Inevitable Album. Still, the battle for RuPaul’s musical mantle continues among this slew of potential heirs making music ranging from brilliant to cringe-worthy.
With Season 7 having just ended, a new mélange of drag acts will soon offer up anything from a joke track to a "serious" full-length album, and so a critical appraisal of all the "Drag Race" divas to-date seems appropriate. Which queen-turned-singer thus far leads the race to become the next "Supermodel" of the music world, and do any of the new girls stack up as true contenders for the RuPaulian crown? Find out below as we run through the best and (often fabulously) worst music unleashed by "RuPaul’s Drag Race" and its family of drag queens turned pop divas.
BEST:
1. Alaska Thunderfuck 5000: "Your Makeup Is Terrible"
If any "Drag Race" diva rivals the immaculate confection of "Supermodel", it is Alaska Thunderfuck with "Your Makeup Is Terrible". In her indescribable voice, Alaska satirizes the dance genre’s formulaic predictability on the song’s bridge, narrating its rhythmic shift as if surprised herself: "Oh my gosh!/ This is the really serious part of the song, do you hear that?/ Oh my god."
Ultimately, "Your Makeup Is Terrible" emblematizes the RuPaulian tradition in Alaska’s ability to bridge the song’s queer, camp elements with pop music aspirations through a club-ready beat that aims to trick mainstream audiences into jamming along as a man in drag exclaims that the listener’s face is busted. Alaska may mock the generic conventions of dance music, but the song succeeds because she nevertheless invests in the dance diva’s glamorous sound—giving us a banger that reps for odd balls while simultaneously catering to the FM sound du jour.
Though Ru made a classic with the "everything looks good on you!" affirmations of "Supermodel", Alaska emerges as the next drag pop star with an entirely different sentiment, a message suited for the millennial queers who grew up with a chorus of reassurance: "Your makeup is terrible."
2. Violet Chachki: "Bettie"
Violet Chachki won the "Drag Race" crown mere weeks before her 23rd birthday, and her debut single "Bettie" shows why Ru was right to make herstory by crowning the youngest winner ever rather than the heaviest. Co-written with Tommy Lee (yes, the Tommy Lee), "Bettie" arrives fashionably in step with the nascent "dragdustrial" EDM trend on the horizon. Amid racecar sound-effects and digital androgyne cries of "ohh!," Violet’s scratchy voice (think Madonna on "Erotica") drones over the drum-machine pounding and the grating, wobbly synth riff—an electric drill spinning into a ringing alarm.
And why wouldn’t the alarms be set-off? After all, "Bettie" and its video transgress sexual norms by invoking them, Violet promising "I’m a good housewife/ I respect and obey" in the opening shots of her as 1950s good girl. When the chorus arrives, however, this gives way to a latex-skinned Violet announcing "It’s so nice to have a man around the house" before zapping two young men reading pin-up magazines with her e-stim wand. Of course, another wand looms large as Violet dominates the gagged youths— the video most groundbreaking for presenting a femme, genderqueer figure who subjects rather than seduces straight men. "Bettie" marks the boldness of the rising generation of queer and trans* artists, who eschew comfortably "safe" representations of sexuality in favor of discomforting the audience they still mean to attract… and arouse.
As a five-star Amazon review of "Bettie" sums up, "I highly suggest this song to anyone who likes feeling hot."
3. LaGanja Estranja: "Legs" [ft. Rye Rye]
Widely maligned by "Drag Race" viewers, LaGanja Estranja translates her melodrama into Brooke Candy-esque talk-rap magic with her debut "Legs". Forget Gaga’s "GUY"—this is a true anthem from a pro: "You like the way I bend, flex/ Toes in the air, you like my reflex, reflex." If you’ve ever had your "legs over head like a pretzel" and found yourself thinking "God, I have a gift," this is the tune you’ve been waiting for.
Atop Robyn-smooth beats, LaGanja carries the chorus’ paean to flexibility by herself. While Rye Rye’s mid-song verse may be the centerpiece, she never overshadows LaGanja but rather opens up the rest of the track for her full-force sass. "Ankles at 180, baby/ This my circus/ You my favorite trick," her final verse boasts. This is the power-bottom anthem death-dropped: LaGanja’s dipped down to the floor in her bratty, tantalizing rap, and by the song’s end you’re on the floor with her.
Come through, pretzels of the world—let’s get listening!
4. Adore Delano: "DTF"
On "Drag Race", Adore Delano always seemed like the tone-deaf friend in high school you let in your band to avoid hurt feelings (or, say, maybe because they once had a stint on "American Idol"). Lacking polish and glitz, Delano just didn’t seem ready—but her uncinched, meager aesthetic shines in her music video for "DTF". Here, she traverses working-class hangouts with a coterie of trash-glam pals including a very pregnant woman in a belly shirt. Between the laundromat and the playground, Adore uses the sexual and "street" rawness of "DTF"’s lyrics to ground the video’s more important mission of elucidating Delano’s chola drag as a deliberate and cheeky reclamation of her disadvantaged roots (rather than a novice accident). Over wonky beeps and understated drum beats, Delano leads "DTF" to Miley Cyrus territory as verses move from one intonation of "Woah-oah-oah/ Oh" to another. Party.
5. Miss Fame: "Rubber Doll"
"Rubber Doll" is a stunningly well-crafted pop song, its instrumentation cut from Top 40 radio trends by Miss Fame’s ambitious scalpel. Anyone from P!nk to Gotye could take this instrumental and, with different lyrics, have a fine lead single. Of course, Miss Fame wrote an ode to plasticity that’s far too weird for the mainstream. Yet that’s the great gift of the drag queen turned pop singer: she begins knowing her commercial unviability, and this frees her music to be wild and idiosyncratic even as it relies on certain elements from the mainstream.
Thus, "Rubber Doll" shows yet another drag diva tuned to pop culture but singing her own exclusion—joyously free. And we can all dance, bop along to this strange mixture of fetish-themed lyrics and power pop instrumentation replete with The Lollypop Guild-esque bom-bah-dum, dum-bah-dumdum-bah-dum effusions.
In a way, then, all good drag pop divas are rubber dolls: "Untouchable, unbreakable/ Detachable, and flexible," they are full of contradictions and uncertainties, sovereignties and submissions. Irreconcilably elastic, drag pop is greatest when a queen takes aim at mainstream audiences but not mainstream success.
WORST:
1. Sharon Needles: "I Wish I Were Amanda Lepore" [ft. Amanda Lepore]
Sharon Needles’ "I Wish I Were Amanda Lepore" is an ode to the legendary performance artist whose early music ("Champagne", "My Hair Looks Fierce") influenced the aesthetic of today’s trans* and drag pop. Not even Lepore’s presence can save this turgid Eurodance cheese, however—with its behind the times synths and sappy lyrics. There’s always been a dissonance between the sincerity of Sharon’s music versus her reckless and ludic persona in live performances. Although Lepore’s cameo and the saccharine honesty put "I Wish I Were Amanda Lepore" in so-bad-it’s-good territory, one can’t help suggesting Sharon take some notes from ex-boyfriend Alaska.
2. The Heathers (Raja, Manila Luzon, Delta Work, and Carmen Carrera): "Lady Marmalade (Moulin Rouge Version)"
The Heathers are the Season 3 clique too bitchy to love but too talented to hate; similarly, their cover of "Lady Marmalade" is awful but occasionally delights. In Raja’s ploy at pop star realness, she breaks RuPaul’s cardinal commandment: Don’t take life so seriously. Luckily, Delta’s breathy, Peggy Lee-style delivery adds that missing irreverence with drag slang lyrical revisions. The "black satin sheets" are now where "she spilled the tea."
But this is just a stop gap until the song’s real savior arrives. "Oh my, how you blossom, Carmen," Raja intones, referencing Carmen coming out as a transgender woman but also her body as she struts through the door topless—only pasties covering her "blossoms." Carmen’s dragcentric rewrite of Lil Kim’s rap rivals the original. "Four bad ass chicks, make room, coming through," Carmen concludes, but when a autotuned Manila shrieks the climactic verse, it’s clear only one bad ass chick is present.
3. Pearl Liaison: "Love Slave"
I get it: Pearl is a drag queen with a Spotify account, priding herself on lipsyncing "underground" music like "Short Dick Man". Debut single "Love Slave" reiterates Pearl’s hipster-connoisseur appeal, sounding akin to the Knife in the song’s drone ambient percussive beat—processed into clicktap futurism—and warped vocals pitched into exaggerating the voice’s gender or androgynously obscuring it. Though impressive that Pearl self-produced "Love Slave", ultimately the song and video just seem to try too hard. Trying to measure up to Fever Ray or other "experimental" acts, Pearl proves her competence but misses the bigger opportunity to add a drag twist to the ambient EDM formula.
4. Phi Phi O'Hara: "Bitchy"
As you might expect from the title, "Bitchy" testifies to Season 5 villain Phi Phi O’Hara’s reputation as a bitch. Much like her real life meanness, there’s not much to justify "Bitchy". The melody and rhythm sound like a Daniel Powter B-side, and the lyrics are chock full of self-pity… But why waste my time saying more? For as Phi Phi sings, "Call me what you want/ I’ll keep making that money."
5. Alaska Thunderfuck 5000: "Hieee"
In true drag fashion, Alaska gives us not only the very best of "Drag Race" music but also the worst with "Hieee". Titled after Alaska’s signature greeting, the song sounds like the catchphrase-ready queen running out of new material live on the studio mic. Apparently, this isn’t a problem—the track thumps the hollow but always captivating reservoir of Thunderfuck tonality and delivery. Alaska relies on her performative ability to transform what amounts to "Drag Race" word salad into an unstoppable (though certainly clockable) listen. What follows justifies the first three minute’s price of listening: 40 euphoric seconds of "Hieeeeeeeeeeeee" refrains.
When drag divas produce garbage, at least we’re laughing with them.
Finally, Alaska alone seems fit to conclude our look at the worst drag divas. As she sings in "Hieee": "If you think you can do better, sweetheart/ I implore you:/ Put on a wig…/ It’s not as easy as it looks."