{"id":9882,"date":"2026-04-01T12:57:26","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T12:57:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/slayyyter-is-the-best-when-shes-at-her-worst\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T12:57:26","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T12:57:26","slug":"slayyyter-is-the-best-when-shes-at-her-worst","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/slayyyter-is-the-best-when-shes-at-her-worst\/","title":{"rendered":"Slayyyter Is the Best When She\u2019s at Her Worst"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.spinmagazine.com\/files\/2026\/03\/Lead-Press-Credit-Alexa-Zeliger.jpg\" width=\"1200\" height=\"796\" alt=\"Slayyyter. (Credit: Alexa Zeliger)\"><figcaption>Slayyyter. (Credit: Alexa Zeliger)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><strong>Before Slayyyter became the <\/strong><strong><em>Wor$t Girl in America<\/em><\/strong><strong> in 2026<\/strong>, she was just a typical kid named Catherine Grace Garner who grew up in the suburbs of St. Louis surrounded by bunnies.<\/p>\n<p>They weren\u2019t the cute, furry kind that kids love to cuddle, but rather 400 sterile porcelain figures, decorated ceramic plates, Easter-centric needlepoint towels, and lifeless statues with big ears and immovable cottontail puffs that her mom collected and littered throughout the home.<\/p>\n<p>More from Spin:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.spinmagazine.com\/2026\/04\/bruce-springsteen-tour-opener\/\">Bruce Springsteen Preaches Hope, Defiance At Tour Opener<\/a>\n\t\t<\/li>\n<li>\n\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.spinmagazine.com\/2026\/04\/weezer-new-single\/\">Weezer\u2019s Back \u2018Again\u2019 With New Single<\/a>\n\t\t<\/li>\n<li>\n\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.spinmagazine.com\/2026\/04\/daniel-pemberton-wanted-the-project-hail-mary-score-to-do-something-ai-wouldnt-or-couldnt-think-of\/\">Daniel Pemberton Wanted the \u2018Project Hail Mary\u2019 Score to Do Something AI Wouldn\u2019t (or Couldn\u2019t) Think Of<\/a>\n\t\t<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\u201cI feel like when you get to a certain age as a woman, you pick an animal that becomes your house motif, and hers is definitely a bunny rabbit,\u201d Garner jokes as she hops on our call from her now-adopted hometown of Los Angeles to talk about the making of her new album, including just what in the <em>Donnie Darko <\/em>is going on in the music videos she has been releasing the past few months.<\/p>\n<p>Punchy electro-noise singles like \u201cOld Technology,\u201d \u201cCrank,\u201d and \u201cCannibalism!\u201d are given Lynchian interpretations, all tied together by the presence of a deranged, life-size voyeur bunny who watches as Slayyyter tortures and slays men, fires off shotguns at imposing father figures, and films snuff videos as she wears a pair of Playboy-style ears. It\u2019s so diabolical, that \u201cworst girl\u201d doesn\u2019t seem severe enough.<\/p>\n<p>But as she talks about the nightmare-inducing bunny hutch she grew up in and how it all relates back to this album\u2014which at its core is about going home again as a means of self-discovery\u2014it starts to make sense.<\/p>\n<p>The videos represent \u201ca bit of a symbolic fever dream for me, but a dream where I\u2019m remembering something being very wrong,\u201d Garner says, adding, \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of symbolism of things from my childhood. This album is really about how you can\u2019t get away from where you came from, even if you try. Things will follow you for the rest of your life. Things that hurt you or things that have harmed you. It sounds so dark, but it\u2019s been my whole thesis every time I make a project.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Since the launch of Slayyyter in 2018 with her Y2K dance-pop debut \u201cBFF\u201d (and even before), Garner has been trying to get out of Dodge. The blonde starlet alter ego she birthed into the world with 2021\u2019s <em>Troubled Paradise<\/em> and continued with 2023\u2019s <em>Starfucker <\/em>and now the <em>Wor$t Girl <\/em>is a more or less hyper-realized version of herself\u2014the quintessential small-town girl with dreams of escaping a broken home and making it big.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1200\" height=\"800\" src=\"https:\/\/static.spinmagazine.com\/files\/2026\/03\/Press-3-Credit-Kait-Muro.jpg\" alt=\"(Credit: Kait Muro)\" class=\"wp-image-657407\" srcset=\"https:\/\/static.spinmagazine.com\/files\/2026\/03\/Press-3-Credit-Kait-Muro.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/static.spinmagazine.com\/files\/2026\/03\/Press-3-Credit-Kait-Muro-340x227.jpg 340w, https:\/\/static.spinmagazine.com\/files\/2026\/03\/Press-3-Credit-Kait-Muro-240x160.jpg 240w, https:\/\/static.spinmagazine.com\/files\/2026\/03\/Press-3-Credit-Kait-Muro-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/static.spinmagazine.com\/files\/2026\/03\/Press-3-Credit-Kait-Muro-498x332.jpg 498w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\"><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">(Credit: Kait Muro)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\u201cMy home life growing up was just so turbulent and very dysfunctional. I came from a very, very dysfunctional family life,\u201d Garner admits. \u201cI always wanted to pack my Barbie suitcase and run away. That was my big plan.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She imbues some of this turbulence into her latest material like the emotive synth soliloquy \u201cGas Station,\u201d inspired by the time her estranged father left her alone at one when she was just a kid. Even now, you can feel her pain as she sings lyrics about crying her eyes out of desperation.<\/p>\n<p>Another revealing track comes in the finale \u201cBrittany Murphy.,\u201d an homage to the late actress who Garner has often identified with. \u201cI loved and adored her so much. I remember she was the first celebrity that I was so gutted and upset about when she died because I loved <em>Clueless <\/em>and I loved <em>Uptown Girls,<\/em>\u201d says Garner.<\/p>\n<p>One other thing to know about Slayyyter is that she\u2019s a huge movie fan. If you couldn\u2019t tell by her cinematic videos, her stage name is actually not a riff on Slayer (though she loves them) but rather inspired by Rory Cochrane\u2019s Slater character from <em>Dazed and Confused<\/em>, which she\u2019s keen to remind people about on this album cycle. Her song \u201cCrank\u201d sneaks in an \u201calright, alright, alright\u201d and a reference to director Richard Linklater in the lyrics. \u201cEven though it\u2019s set in the 1970s, it really reminds me of my own high school years and the stoner boys I would hang around with,\u201d she adds. \u201cI feel like this whole album has very <em>Dazed and Confused<\/em> vibes, but in the new millennium.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>When it comes to Murphy, though, there\u2019s something deeper than a character for Garner. \u201cWhen I watched the Brittany Murphy docu series [<em>What Happened, Brittany Murphy?]<\/em>, it really struck a chord with me, the pieces of her story, like the broken relationship with her father or how Hollywood treated her and got in her head about her self-perception,\u201d says Garner. \u201cI wanted the song title to be an homage, but it\u2019s more of a song about myself and my own kind of depression and struggles with life.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1200\" height=\"675\" src=\"https:\/\/static.spinmagazine.com\/files\/2026\/03\/Press-Photo-2-and-Tour-Credit-Kait-Muro.jpg\" alt=\"(Credit: Kait Muro)\" class=\"wp-image-657402\" srcset=\"https:\/\/static.spinmagazine.com\/files\/2026\/03\/Press-Photo-2-and-Tour-Credit-Kait-Muro.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/static.spinmagazine.com\/files\/2026\/03\/Press-Photo-2-and-Tour-Credit-Kait-Muro-340x191.jpg 340w, https:\/\/static.spinmagazine.com\/files\/2026\/03\/Press-Photo-2-and-Tour-Credit-Kait-Muro-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/static.spinmagazine.com\/files\/2026\/03\/Press-Photo-2-and-Tour-Credit-Kait-Muro-498x280.jpg 498w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\"><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">(Credit: Kait Muro)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>At 29 years of age, it seems that Garner has finally found the way out and created the life she long craved to have. After innocently coming up in the scene by posting songs on Soundcloud, Slayyyter finally signed to a major label last year. <em>Wor$t Girl in America<\/em> is her third album but her first for Columbia Records\u2019 imprint Records. It\u2019s also the strongest of her career, a tour de force that combines her electro-pop power with some heavier, angrier noise and distortion that comes off like the perfect soundtrack for screaming into the void and then violently shaking it off.<\/p>\n<p>The accompanying tour is also completely sold-out, and in April, another marquee moment will happen as Garner makes her Coachella debut (followed by Governor\u2019s Ball and Lollapalooza this summer) where she will bring along a full band for the first time. After years of paying her dues on tours with Tove Lo, Kesha, and Charli XCX, it only seems right that she sarcastically gloats about getting a taste of the high life in songs like \u201cI\u2019m Actually Kinda Famous\u201d and \u201cBeat Up Chanel$\u201d where she rattles off her wish list of \u201cmoney, drugs, chains on my chest, that vintage Celine, diamond grills, champagne bottles, swagger I bleed.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It took years to get to this point though, and Garner was *this close* to giving it all up, especially after <em>Starfucker <\/em>failed to move the needle in a significant way. For years she had pumped her own money into her career, nearly going broke. While she had some viral success early on with her remix of Britney Spears\u2019 \u201cGimme More\u201d and the lusty track \u201cDaddy AF\u201d that was picked up on gaydar and boosted with a placement in the Oscar-winning movie <em>Anora,<\/em> every album cycle had a failure to launch and continued to pin her as a promising \u201cup-and-comer\u201d without giving her credit for actually arriving.<\/p>\n<p>Despondent and broken, Garner felt like maybe it was all for naught, believing she should give up on music and finish her degree she had started at Mizzou years ago, before she dropped out to pursue being a pop star.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1200\" height=\"811\" src=\"https:\/\/static.spinmagazine.com\/files\/2026\/03\/Press-Photo-1-Credit-Kait-Muro.jpg\" alt=\"(Credit: Kait Muro)\" class=\"wp-image-657404\" srcset=\"https:\/\/static.spinmagazine.com\/files\/2026\/03\/Press-Photo-1-Credit-Kait-Muro.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/static.spinmagazine.com\/files\/2026\/03\/Press-Photo-1-Credit-Kait-Muro-340x230.jpg 340w, https:\/\/static.spinmagazine.com\/files\/2026\/03\/Press-Photo-1-Credit-Kait-Muro-768x519.jpg 768w, https:\/\/static.spinmagazine.com\/files\/2026\/03\/Press-Photo-1-Credit-Kait-Muro-498x337.jpg 498w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\"><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">(Credit: Kait Muro)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\u201cIt was a very expensive mistake where I got into a bunch of debt basically fucking off,\u201d she recalls of her first try at higher education. As she stopped going to classes, she started working at a hair salon and as a waitress, using her paychecks to buy beats from producers and stash bags of rhinestones that she would use to make her own clothing for low-budget videos, emulating the style of her personal icons like Gaga during her <em>Fame Monster <\/em>phase and Kesha\u2019s <em>Animal <\/em>era.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy dream night is rhinestoning things on my couch,\u201d Garner says laughing. She vows to stay true to that DIY spirit even as major label access gets handed to her. \u201cI have to be in the weeds on everything,\u201d she shares. \u201cYou could give me $10 million and I would still want to make things myself and do it myself.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A full circle moment came last summer as Slayyyter was tapped as the support act on Kesha\u2019s <em>Tits Out Tour<\/em>, which couldn\u2019t have come at a better time for gaining some perspective. Each night, Garner was able to witness another woman artist who was put through hell during the Dr. Luke trials go out on stage to reintroduce herself and reclaim her worth.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHer show was so inspiring and it would make me very emotional because I feel like as a woman in music, you have such a power and you have such a presence and you matter so much to people. But at the same time, you can just get kind of thrown through the wringer or people will try to knock you down and it\u2019s awful,\u201d says Garner. \u201cSeeing her take back the power and have a show that was so celebratory of her music and her freedom, it was a really cool thing to see. And it made me feel very empowered.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1200\" height=\"796\" src=\"https:\/\/static.spinmagazine.com\/files\/2026\/03\/Press-4-Credit-Kait-Muro.jpg\" alt=\"(Credit: Kait Muro)\" class=\"wp-image-657412\" srcset=\"https:\/\/static.spinmagazine.com\/files\/2026\/03\/Press-4-Credit-Kait-Muro.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/static.spinmagazine.com\/files\/2026\/03\/Press-4-Credit-Kait-Muro-340x226.jpg 340w, https:\/\/static.spinmagazine.com\/files\/2026\/03\/Press-4-Credit-Kait-Muro-240x160.jpg 240w, https:\/\/static.spinmagazine.com\/files\/2026\/03\/Press-4-Credit-Kait-Muro-768x509.jpg 768w, https:\/\/static.spinmagazine.com\/files\/2026\/03\/Press-4-Credit-Kait-Muro-498x330.jpg 498w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\"><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">(Credit: Kait Muro)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Around that time, Slayyyter made a decision: Instead of giving up, she was motivated to push forward\u2014and doing so meant going back to her Midwest roots to rediscover why she loved making music in the first place.<\/p>\n<p>That journey bleeds through on <em>Wor$t Girl In America<\/em>. While the aforementioned visuals are an obvious play on the doldrums of small-town life that she circumvented\u2014the hunting and baseball games, the boring suburbs and escapist strip clubs, cringey pageants and cheap PBRs, RVs and fireworks\u2014the music more directly harkens back to the sounds she pored over in her childhood bedroom that influenced everything that came after.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI would spend hours curating music on my iPod, just sitting in my room and closing the door and listening to music to get away from the outside world. From a very early age, music became such an escape,\u201d she explains.<\/p>\n<p>Beyond just a tough home life, Garner also struggled at school where she was admittedly the weird, chubby, awkward kid trying to fit in. \u201cI feel like when someone is not cool at school, they become chronically online, and that is definitely my story,\u201d she says, laughing. \u201cI spent so much time on the computer. I was always on the internet. I was always on iTunes looking at new releases, or other different pockets like Tumblr, Myspace, Twitter. I would comb the internet and would make it my mission to find a cool band that no one knew at school so I could feel cool. I would be like, \u2018I have the Gaga album and Kid Cudi and I listen to Gossip. You don\u2019t know what that is. And Vampire Weekend, you don\u2019t know what that is.\u2019 I was just so annoying and insufferable.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1129\" height=\"782\" src=\"https:\/\/static.spinmagazine.com\/files\/2026\/03\/OLD-TECHNOLOGY-Lead-Credit-Kait-Muro.jpg\" alt=\"(Credit: Kait Muro)\" class=\"wp-image-657408\" srcset=\"https:\/\/static.spinmagazine.com\/files\/2026\/03\/OLD-TECHNOLOGY-Lead-Credit-Kait-Muro.jpg 1129w, https:\/\/static.spinmagazine.com\/files\/2026\/03\/OLD-TECHNOLOGY-Lead-Credit-Kait-Muro-340x236.jpg 340w, https:\/\/static.spinmagazine.com\/files\/2026\/03\/OLD-TECHNOLOGY-Lead-Credit-Kait-Muro-768x532.jpg 768w, https:\/\/static.spinmagazine.com\/files\/2026\/03\/OLD-TECHNOLOGY-Lead-Credit-Kait-Muro-498x345.jpg 498w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1129px) 100vw, 1129px\"><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">(Credit: Kait Muro)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>With <em>Wor$t Girl, <\/em>the Y2K queen is back in her self-proclaimed \u201ciPod music\u201d era\u2014 and proud of it. \u201cI bought a ton of iPods like a year or so ago, when I very first started this album and everything was so cheap, and now the prices are skyrocketing,\u201d she says, clearly also proud of the people adopting the throwback trend with her. \u201cIt almost feels like vinyl, where everything is so accessible that people are gravitating towards listening to music on an iPod again, which may seem really inconvenient, but it\u2019s the charm of curating it yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She explores this theme on the quick hit \u201cOld Technology,\u201d which espouses the merits of going analog as a way to be real again. \u201cI think that with how advanced everything is getting and with AI and people editing their photos, I am excited for a realness and a rawness that cannot be faked by a computer coming into fashion,\u201d she says. \u201cI see it a lot. I feel like people are down to put photos out that maybe don\u2019t look like the most perfectly perfect best. And I think that\u2019s a very healthy thing that needs to happen because it\u2019s been such an airbrushed, robot, no pores on the skin vibes for so long. We need to put our real selves out there again.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.spin.com\/2021\/07\/the-greatest-rock-stars-of-all-time\/?utm_source=yahoo&amp;utm_medium=bottomlink&amp;utm_campaign=yahoolink\">click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Slayyyter. (Credit: Alexa Zeliger) Before Slayyyter became the Wor$t Girl in America in 2026, she was just a typical kid named Catherine Grace Garner who grew up in the suburbs&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,24,5778],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","category-pushly","category-slayyyter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9882\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}