- RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 8: Grand Finale - 19 May, 2016
- RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 8 Episode 9: The Realness - 6 May, 2016
- RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 8 Episode 8: Book Ball - 28 April, 2016
It’s not unusual for former Drag Race contestants to put out singles/albums to try and milk the last drop of success from the show – Manila Luzon, Latrice Royale, Alaska, Willam, Jinkx Monsoon, Adore Delano, probably others but we’ll be here forever if I list them all – but this year has seen them appear with uncommon swiftness.
There’ll probably be more to follow in the coming months – I know I can’t wait for Sasha Belle’s single ‘Please Please Please Like Me Why Don’t You Like Me’ – but here’s a rundown of what we’ve been treated to so far.
Cocktail – Mrs Kasha Davis
Oh gosh. I wish I liked this more because Kasha is fun and she’s really giving it her all here, but this song is just fucking bad. Not helped by how cheap the whole thing is.
You can see the disdain in Darienne Lake’s eyes as she bops along in Kasha’s brown and yellow living room: last year I was in a RuPaul video, and now this? It’s more than you deserve, sweetie.
Anyway, it looks like everyone had a great time making this – including Mr Davis, who sings the chorus into a ladle for some reason – but it’s just plain bad
Points for chucking in the Liza impersonation she was clearly preparing for Snatch Game, but this is not something I ever want to listen to again.
3/10
Rubber Doll – Miss Fame
The song starts out sounding a lot like ‘Toxic’ by Britney Spears, which is no bad thing because Jesus I don’t have to explain myself, who doesn’t like ‘Toxic’? According to the blurb on this ‘Miss Fame is the Full Latex Fantasy Fetish Fashionista’ and she delivers: she looks absolutely fantastic throughout this video, and avoids the bin bag effect you sometimes get with latex fashion (see Max on the finale red carpet, thank you to Raja and Raven for pointing that out).
But we all know that Miss Fame can wear dresses and do her make up, the question is: can she sing? Well, no, but for this song and the way it’s produced, her speak-singing is fine. It fits with the kind of cool ‘untouchable’ effect she’s going for.
It’s catchy, I have found it stuck in my head since I first heard it, and it’s not been unwelcome. Hardly ground-breaking, but a decent pop song with a fabulous video.
7/10
Pearl Liaison – Love Slave
What’s with these girls’ obsession with BDSM this season? It’s like yes, we get it, we’ve all heard of 50 Shades of Grey too. Anyway, Pearl doesn’t sing on this track: she produced it, and the rest of her album. While unusual for a Drag Racer – Jinkx Monsoon and Adore Delano both wrote the songs on their albums, but the singing’s all theirs – it’s exactly what you’d expect from anyone who looks like Pearl as a boy.
If I met boy-Pearl at a party, I’d be counting the seconds before he said ‘I also DJ at…’ and then I’d leave before he tried to get me to note down his Soundcloud.
The track is fine, if it came on at a club it wouldn’t feel out of place but I wouldn’t be rushing to find out what it was. It’s very Pearl, quite chilled-out in a drug-assisted way.
I suspect I’d like it better if I was off my tits, but I’m not, so it’s just alright. Also, Detox guests in the video and makes out with Pearl, if that’s of interest.
Ginger Minj – Ooh La La
Ginger can actually sing – not a hint of Autotune on this song – and the video is fun, I like her big gang of cheery people wearing matching T-shirts, and it comes with a dance routine which is always good, but the song itself is a bit boring. Ginger’s got energy, but the song really doesn’t. It just plods along, and oh here’s a guitar solo and now it’s done and blah. It sounds like the songs they give to the queens for challenges on Drag Race, and you never want to hear those more than once. I love Ginger, and she deserves better.
5/10
Violet Chachki – Bettie
I. Hate. This. Song. My disdain for Violet Chachki is well-documented, but by the end of the season when she’d calmed down and wasn’t such a bitch all the time, I actually quite liked her. So I was prepared to like this.
It’s another BDSM-themed song, but the burlesque/Bettie Page/fetish thing is integral to Violet’s aesthetic, so it’s not just accessorising (it’s notable, for one thing, that someone who knows a thing or two about rope bondage worked on this video).
Violet looks great in the video, we get some nice sexy naked boys – but UGH, the Skrillex screeching noises on the chorus are just obnoxious, and Violet does even less singing here than Miss Fame. It sounds like she’s shouting in your ear at a particularly shit club night.
Love Pearl rolling her eyes at Violet in her French maid cameo.
4/10
Which means the winner is Miss Fame! Let’s encourage her to keep singing so she doesn’t talk so much.
