Soundcheck with Ethan

By: Ethan Barrocas

Kim Petras just dropped the best album of her career. Detour is electric and full of identity, while also being wholly reflective on everything that’s brought her to this point.

One of my biggest flexes is that singer-songwriter Kim Petras follows me on TikTok. Unfortunately, it’s my old RuPaul’s Drag Race fan account and not my main, but I digress. That tiny connection made me pay closer attention to her career over the years, and it stood out to me how committed she is to being a pop star. Her first-ever project, Era 1, is nothing short of pop perfection, and her 2022 EP Slut Pop is a campy orgasm. However, my main issue with Kim before the release of Detour is that most of her music lacked a connection or a sense of identity. I felt like I didn’t know the artist behind such amazing songs like “Heart To Break” or “Future Starts Now.”

Petras’s debut studio album Feed The Beast was released in 2023 after years of dropping mixtapes, singles, and EPs. While it had multiple pop highlights, the record often felt sanded down in an attempt to gain mainstream appeal. Songs were crafted for radio, showcasing her ability to make hits but lacking a sonic identity. Ultimately, Feed The Beast only amplified the question that followed as I navigated her career; beyond the hooks and the engaging production, I kept asking: Who exactly is Kim Petras?

The years that followed Feed The Beast were anything but smooth. In the summer of 2025, Kim began to tease a new era with the release of her song “Polo.” Immediately, the sound was unlike anything she had ever done; it was experimental, with tons of edge, and it wasn’t safe at all. The next two singles that followed were just as good or even better. This new era began to seem promising. But on January 20th, 2026, Kim went onto Twitter to explain her frustrations with her label, “My album has been done for 6 months, but my record label has refused to give me a release date or pay my collaborators for the work they’ve done,” as well as, “I’m tired of having no control over my own life or career. I want to continue to self-fund and self-curate my own music. This is why I have formally requested to be dropped by Republic Records.” 

Hearing these tweets made me panic because I wanted this album so god damn bad. Fortunately, my prayers were answered on February 3rd, when Kim announced Pretour, a special drop in which she would drop one new song each week for 4 weeks.  The release date for Detour was still unknown at the time, but she wanted to keep us fed, and I was definitely full by the time it ended. The four songs we received were amazing, especially the first, “Pop Sound.” Reminiscent of the mid-2000s electro scene, it’s a perfect preview of Detour’s sound to come.  

After what felt like forever, Detour was finally released to the world on May 29th, 2026. This album wasn’t just Kim’s first time experimenting; it gave her something that her previous releases lacked: identity. She steps out of the polished box her label forced onto her and channels her frustration and newfound creative freedom into a fully realized body of work.  It’s where she stops asking for permission and lets herself fully go; it’s the record she was destined to make. Much of that transformation can be credited to the producers of this record: Margo XS, Frost Children, Nightfeelings, Porches, and the forever iconic SOPHIE are the glue that binds Detour together, turning Kim’s newfound sense of self into something daring, eccentric, and without a doubt her own.

The title track, “Detour,” opens the album with a fourth wall break: “This is the beginning of the end/Everything before was just pretend.” We see Kim throw her past to the wind over a hard-hitting, distorted bassline. Overall, it’s a double entendre that has her pressuring a lover to let go but also freeing herself from anything that held her down in the past, for example, her label. It’s a remarkable opening that throws you straight into Kim’s vision for the album.

The utmost level of swaginess takes over Kim on the next track, “DTLA,” a love letter to Downtown Los Angeles. Her pen has never been this clever and witty, my favorite lyric being “101 when I’m on my way/running over bitches like GTA.” Each verse perfectly paints a scene of a reckless excursion from having sex to a Drake song or partying at a high-rise. Everything then shifts in the outro, becoming more melancholic and dreamy, revealing a sadness beyond the illusion of thrill, suggesting that a life of glamour and riches might not fully satisfy her. 

“101” takes the explosive production from “DTLA” and multiplies it by ten. It’s the biggest serve I’ve heard from anyone in a hot minute. The constantly shifting soundscape is exhilarating, and Frost Children absolutely demolish this song. There’s a sort of arrogance in the level of confidence she has on this track, but it’s something you can’t even be mad at; it’s just something you stare at in awe. Even if you never listen to Detour, you owe it to yourself to give this track a spin. 

“Polo” shares the same level of confidence, but Kim actually claps back. Veiled behind the booming production, assisted by Margo XS, Kim herself mentioned that it’s inspired by a meeting she had at the Polo Lounge, where executives were trying to tell her to be something she’s not. It feels like a release at the end of the track, where she says “You want it so bad,” and then the beat rattles and distorts, turning the song’s climax into a pure, freeing moment. 

The bridge of “Need For Speed” continues the narrative of “Polo”: “You don’t really know me/no one really knows me.” Beneath the glitz and glamour of the electropop banger lies a sense of isolation, with Petras reflecting on her disconnect from fame and the pressures of maintaining her public image. The song’s relentless production echoes the early works of Timbaland, but it also mirrors a frantic lifestyle that leaves Kim no room to breathe. The music video perfectly visualizes what the track is about: entrapment in the machine of pop stardom. Satirical imagery fills the video, from brand endorsements to a pentagram that magically changes her outfit. It emphasizes Kim driving herself off the edge in pursuit of success and fulfillment, which literally happens at the end of the music video, when she drives off the cliff.

“Korea” used ingenious wordplay, utilizing the country Korea as a homophone for “career.” We see Kim at a low point, continuing to highlight industry pressures and her dissatisfaction with her career trajectory. The song ends and then immediately whips into the final track of the record, “Freak It.” It’s unlike anything I’ve ever heard. I could go as far as to call it a masterpiece of electronic music. Celebrating sex and freedom, Kim fully submits herself to letting go, embracing hedonism and confidence without ever looking back. It’s a full circle moment that closes the album perfectly. The production on this thing is ruthless and brash, ready for high-energy settings and maximal impact. 

But to fully understand Detour, you have to step back to its center, to the sixth track “Brutalist.” It stands as the emotional core of the album and Kim’s most personal song to date, built around a metaphor of a demolished brutalist building that she and her father once admired during childhood trips to her psychiatry appointments. She digs deeper into the metaphor and juxtaposes it with how people talk about transgender individuals ruining their “god-given” bodies. Her identity is compared to the brutalist building that people want to tear down for something boring, something that isn’t authentically her. It’s a beautiful moment for the pop star, using the building’s deconstruction to dial back and discuss the importance of one’s identity. The track lingers in sadness at the end, leaving the issue unresolved. It should be a moment of empowerment for the singer, but instead, she’s left constantly judged by idiots just for being who she is. In the context of Detour, it recontextualizes the entire album, revealing that her confidence is overshadowed by people who want to see her fail and by questions about what self-definition truly means. “Brutalist” marks a turning point in the album because it shifts from simply showing Kim’s internal struggles to showing how those struggles are affected in the face of the public eye. 

Detour finally has Kim stepping out of the mold her label forced onto her and building herself a new one full of wondrous possibilities.  She finally takes her undeniable confidence and adds so much identity that the project is blooming with all different flavors. More importantly, this feels like just the beginning of something spectacular for the global star–an opening rather than just an end, suggesting she is only getting started.