I prance around the stage in a holographic leotard and thigh-high silver cowboy boots, my sheer tights sucking it all in. I’m performing at Primavera Sound festival in Barcelona, a.k.a. “the Coachella of Europe.”
The crowd is mostly young enough to be my children, and they are screaming the lyrics of my songs so loudly that I can’t hear the playback. “Watch me work it, I’m PERFECT!!!,” they scream. A fan in his early 20s, with eyeliner and spiked hair, holds up an iPhone horizontally. The words “Kiss Me!” are on the screen. He’s looking up at me hopefully.
I have to squint to read the phone from the stage because I am a woman in her early 50s. Squinting while looking sexy is not easy, but I prevail. It has been over 15 years since I have had a hit as Princess Superstar. Yet, somehow, here I am.
A pop star in her 50s? Let me rewind. It was 2023, Christmas break, and I was at home in our Santa Monica, Calif., rental, buying last-minute gifts on Amazon. My 14-year-old daughter, Siren, yelled out, “MOM! Your voice is all over my feed!” She didn’t seem happy about it. I grabbed her phone and saw that my 2007 song “Perfect (Exceeder)” was all over TikTok.
How did that happen? Earlier in 2023, I had licensed the song to a small film production company for a small fee. It had not occurred to me that this would change my life. But then the film “Saltburn” became a sensation, and so did my song. It accompanied Instagram reels of women making elaborate cakes and doctors delivering babies. Often the clips were simply of women staring into the camera and mouthing the lyrics while hitting sexy poses.
I wondered what they were thinking when they sang “Watch me work it, I’m perfect.” I had meant it ironically; they mostly seemed to sing it un-ironically. I worried that it had become a self-indulgent look-at-me anthem, though that was probably a very middle-aged thought.
As the song went viral, my outdated iPhone began to ring off the hook with managers, booking agents and labels. I was an exhausted mom, carrying 15 extra pounds, but I was also a sensation. Discovered — or rediscovered? Either way, I was catapulted into the limelight on the back of a song I had written as a tongue-in-cheek ode to my imperfections when I was babyless, single, and well … young. My easy mom-do was switched out for hair extensions. I needed reading glasses to read my lyrics.
“Perfect” was from my album, “My Machine,” a sci-fi dance rock opera about how a megalomaniac superstar takes over the world and is defeated by her own ego. Looking back, that is more or less what ended up happening to me.
I started my music career in the early 90s while a student at N.Y.U. I wanted to be a rapper. I hustled to make that happen, playing downtown clubs and starting my own record label with credit cards. I called it “A Big Rich Major Label” so that I could phone distributors and say I was calling from a big rich major label. In 2002, I had a hit in Britain with the song “Bad Babysitter.” The London press called me “Feminem” because, Eminem. I toured the world. Little girls cried when they met me.
I took to the fame with abandon. One-night stands, trashed hotel rooms. One time, I D.J.ed a club while on ecstasy, and I just played the same song over and over again while the crowd stared at me, dumbfounded. There’s something uniquely destabilizing about being surrounded by people who say “I love you!!” though they don’t actually know you, and then trudging back to an empty hotel room. I’ve heard the opposite of addiction is intimacy. I had no intimacy with anyone.
I had originally invented the persona Princess Superstar to make fun of fame. In the East Village in the ’90s, we were all post-punk kids refusing to sell out. And then, with a sprinkle of fame and way too much cocaine, I became the very thing I was ridiculing. My ego ran the show. I was mad when someone’s name was bigger than mine on the festival marquee; mad when my calendar wasn’t filled up; mad at my manager. I took everyone and everything for granted.
I canceled important shows because I was too hung over; I showed up hours late to interviews; I was rude to fans. I berated one of my bandmates until he left in the middle of a tour. I justified it: “We don’t really need a guitar player, do we?” But the answer is, yes, yes, you do need a guitar player in a three-piece band.
Addicts make lots of rules: “I’ll only do it on weekends,” for example. For me it was, “I won’t do drugs on consecutive days” and “I will only party in Europe” (since I was pretty much always on tour in Europe). And then I broke all of my rules. I got back to New York, realized I had hit bottom, and got sober. I got a second hit of fame when “Perfect (Exceeder)” — a collaboration with the Dutch musician Mason — went to No. 3 on the British singles chart in 2007.
But though I had cleaned up my life, as the years went on the gigs dried up and so did my bank account. Every time I tried to write a song, an awful voice would whisper: “You messed up your career! You had everything, and you lost it!”
Eventually, I began to write again. I released my music myself, got only a thousand streams or so, and kept writing. I got a “real” job. I focused on my marriage and raising my daughter.
And then: lightning struck. “Perfect (Exceeder)” went viral. I was on the Billboard Top 10 dance charts in the United States for the first time in my career. I was off to London and Australia and Spain and more. I felt the same kind of ecstasy I’d tasted when I was younger, but this joy was deeper, and it came without a hangover. At the end of that show at the Primavera festival, the applause sounded like thunder. Tears of gratitude streamed down my face. I stood frozen, struck by awe, receiving the fans’ love.
I did not kiss that boy, but that evening I found myself making out with my husband with extra passion. Midlife stardom can really juice up a long-term marriage, if you don’t let it go to your head. Being onstage, brazenly adored by younger guys, puts you back in touch with your sexuality. It’s fun.
The earlier version of me wrecked her life chasing that attention. I’m not perfect. But I am older and wiser now. Watch me work it.
Concetta Kirschner performs under the moniker Princess Superstar. Her song “Perfect (Exceeder)” was on the Grammy-nominated soundtrack for the movie “Saltburn.”
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