Kim Petras Loses Control on “Detour”
Design by Sophie Parrish
By Bennett Himmel
On the opening and title track of her third (or debut, if you ask the right people) album Detour, Kim Petras wastes no time disavowing the much-maligned last chapter of her career: “This is the beginning of the end/ Everything before was just pretend.” Petras has faced criticism from every angle basically since the beginning of the 2020s. In the late 2010s, Petras was praised for her expertly-penned fizzy fluffy pop songs, produced mostly by the incredibly controversial Dr. Luke. Her existence as a pop star posed a dilemma. Of course, many thought, we support the fledgling trans pop star with undeniable bops. But in supporting her, you were supporting an accused rapist who had been pretty much blacklisted from the music industry.
Her early singles were simply too good to ignore. Her debut single, the sugar baby anthem “I Don’t Want It At All” was her “I want” song, structured like an essay, thesis statements and all. “Hillside Boys” and “Heart To Break” earned places on every pride playlist for years to come. Her bright electro-pop stood out in a decade defined by moody, mid-tempo aesthetics. She built a following of mostly queer people who supported her despite her questionable morals, released a mixtape (read: album) of songs that can be best described as Post Malone for gay guys, started selling out bigger venues, and signed a contract with Republic Records.
In 2021, she released two singles off of what was set to be her debut album, Problematique. The songs were…cute next to gorgeous. The French electro stylings worked well with her voice, but her lyrics were drained of the Stan Twitter-infused wit of her earlier work. “Coconuts” was camp, sure, but it all felt engineered for TikTok. The singles made no impact on charts, and for a second, it seemed like Kim would never make it out of the much-prophesized Khia Asylum. Problematique was all but scrapped. Then came “Unholy.”
Her collaboration with Sam Smith was catchy, but also completely inane. Over SOPHIE-lite snares, Petras and Smith take femme fatale poses and sing about closeted men and sneaky links. This sounds like an interesting proposition, but it came off phoned-in, somehow making it to the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100. They even won a Grammy for it! The problem with “Unholy” is that this murky, incredibly trendy song cast a huge shadow over Petras’ slyly experimental, neon-washed body of work. She went from being a cult pop girlie for the gays to a major pop force and put out her “debut album” (she had released 4 full-length projects at this point) entitled Feed The Beast, a fun if compromised record perfectly engineered for radio. Its title was taken from something a label exec said to her that essentially boiled down to: “Give us a hit, and you can do what you want later.”
Most people had all but written off Kim by this point. I thought she was beyond saving, a bright talent consumed by a need to chart and please execs. So when I saw her play new music at a pride festival last summer, I was pleasantly surprised. Lead single “Polo” is simply obnoxious, with garish synths and nonsensical lyrics about taking off a polo shirt with one’s teeth. Needless to say, I was sat for her next album. And so I waited. And waited.
On January 20th, 2026, Petras tweeted: “My album has been done for 6 months but my record label has refused to give me a release date or pay my collaborator’s for the work they’ve done.” She requested to be dropped from the label, released some incredible loosies, and finally, last week, we were given Kim’s first album in three years and statement of freedom, Detour. It arrives as a confrontational, incredibly fun, and at times conflicted record, with Petras’s most personal lyrics and most experimental production to date.
“DTLA” begins as a sexy romp, with delightfully percussive lyricism — “DTF DTLA/ ETA 4 PDA/ P 4 PENTHOUSE PUSH TO PLAY/ D-D-D-D-DTLA” — but ends with a soaring, existential outro. We see Petras pacing back and forth in front of the windows of the penthouse, contemplating where she’s been and where she is. “It’s such a long way downnnn!” she howls, turning a twerkable club anthem into a panicked plea for help. It’s stunning. Single “Need For Speed” has a similar structure, with an infectious chorus and an absolutely fabulous video.
“Polo” finds a sister in “101,” an ear-splittingly loud song completely devoid of structure that will please those who love chaos and piss off those who like Kim for her prettier pop stylings, and that’s obviously the point. “Jeep” is one of Kim’s most fascinating songs to date: a faux-country, indietronica ballad, described as Petras’s contribution to the Great American Songbook. It somehow works, with guitars reminiscent of Madonna’s American Life and uncanny autotune. “We can just drive around/ Listen to teeeechno/ Listen to Eminem/ Listen to Slipknot,” she deadpans, painting a picture of Sugar Free Monster-soaked Middle American soil, lost somewhere between SALEM’s twilight haze and Ethel Cain’s tall grass ballads. It grabs you by the neck for its entire runtime and never lets go.
The SOPHIE-produced archival cut “Basketball” is delicious, and almost reminds me of Tinashe’s “Bouncin.” The album’s ethos is best shown in its final two tracks. “Korea” is a ballad where Kim contemplates quitting music altogether, mispronouncing “career” while surrounded by synthetic birdsong. But closer “Freak It” is an unabashed embrace of everything that made Kim undeniable in the first place. The choruses smack you in the face, and her unironic howl of “FO SHO!” in the chorus somehow works. On Detour, Kim Petras careens between being existential and earnest and being trashy and annoying, but what she never is is boring. It’s good to have her back.