FEATURE: Spotlight: Scene Queen — Music Musings & Such

FEATURE:

Spotlight

Scene Queen

_________

I am going to spend…

some time with the amazing Scene Queen. Born Hannah Collins, the New York-born artist signed to Hopeless Records. Scene Queen is known for the style ‘Bimbocore’: a subgenre of Metalcore with feminist themes. Scene Queen came to prominence through TikTok, where she has amassed over 626,000 followers. Her amazing debut E.P., Bimbocore, was released in April 2022. Its wonderful follow-up E.P., Bimbocore Vol. 2, was released in November 2022. I think that she is an artist to watch very closely this year. Someone that everyone needs to be tuned into. I am going to come to some interviews from last year. Prior to that, I am heading back to the end of 2022. Scene Queen spoke about her Bimbocore Vol. 2 E.P. Rockin’ Interviews spoke with an amazing rising artist about her captivating music:

“Scene Queen is the emo, glitter-covered heavy metal brainchild of 23-year-old Hannah Collins. After blowing up on TikTok and pioneering a new genre Bimbocore, she released her debut EP early 2022. Following the release, she took Scene Queen to the next level – stages all over the world. Opening for acts such as Palaye Royale and Wargasm in addition to her own headlining shows, Collins has become the epitome of feminism in the heavy music space.

Rockin’ Interviews – How are you?

Scene Queen – I’m back and more Bimbo than ever. (So good)

Rockin’ Interviews – Releasing Bimbocore Vol. 2 only seven months after your debut EP Bimbocore, I was wondering what the writing and recording process was like? Did this follow up EP come together very quickly or was it always the plan to release them so close together?

Scene Queen – I wanted to write an albums worth of music, but had only put out one song prior to getting signed, so I figured it would be best to get my music out there in segments that way I could grow a fan base and actually have them around by the time all the music was out. So for Vol 1 I wrote 9 songs so I had three ready to go by the time I got around to writing Vol 2.

Rockin’ Interviews – How do you feel you’ve grown as an artist since your debut EP?

Scene Queen – Honestly, I think my confidence in myself has grown almost as quickly as the project itself. Which is something I never thought would happen. I feel so much more sure of the message I’m bringing and my own writing voice. I mean you can even visually see that in the music videos, the way I carry myself in camera like I’ve been holding my head just a little bit higher and more willing to take risks.

Rockin’ Interviews – What was it like working with MOTHICA on The Rapture (But It’s Pink)?

Scene Queen – I wrote The Rapture to be on Vol 1 but ended up scrapping it because it just didn’t feel like it fit. I ended up posting the song on TikTok as part of a “songs I cut from the EP” series and fans loved it. I still wasn’t going to put it on the EP though because I just felt like something was missing even though I LOVED the message of the song. Fast forward a few weeks and I get a text from MOTHICA saying she wanted to be on it. It had been so long since I wrote it that I forgot I had sent it to her casually because I was proud of it. MOTHICA brought a whole new life to the song and was 100% the part that was missing all along. So, in hindsight I’m really glad I scrapped it because nobody would’ve gotten to hear her on it

Rockin’ Interviews – How and when did the aesthetic of Scene Queen come to be?

Scene Queen – I grew up around emo music, cut my own side bangs with kitchen scissors, wore rubber bracelets etc. but from college onward as a surprise to no one I dressed pretty feminine. Especially around the time I was in a sorority. Before Scene Queen came to be, I dropped an active rock song and was just my blonde girly looking self. The comments I got were filled with men saying I was too “prissy” to make that sort of music and it sparked a rage in me. I was already switching up my sound at this time, but I made a promise to myself that I would make my branding as overtly feminine and pink as humanly possible because I never want another woman to look at my project and have to wonder if it’s a place where they’re accepted. You can visibly see my message. Also I wear pink quite literally every single day so it’s perfect”.

Fem Metal spoke with Scene Queen early last year about her then-new single, 18+. It is a brilliant song but one that conveys quite a dark and disturbing message. Concerning some heavy themes. To Scene Queen, it is important to convey truth and speak about these things. That idea of predatory men in bands. Women feeling unsafe and open to abuse:

“Great! You are about to release your new single “18+”. What was your inspiration behind the song and what is the message you’d like to convey through it?

I’ve been in the alt scene since I was a kid. I’m almost 26 now and working in the scene finally and realized how much of how I have to carry myself in this scene was affected by the subject matter of 18+. The alternative scene is meant to be a safe space but for the longest time, I’ve felt like as a woman I have to always watch my back, never get too comfortable, and guard myself around men. But so much of that is stemmed by things I experienced as a teen. So this song is my first real criticism on the scene I love so much. And talks about all the trauma I’ve faced in my work life and teen life in the industry.

That’s brilliant. I have a bad habit of reading comments, and I noticed some people commenting on posts by musicians who decided to sound their opinion on political or social issues through social media saying things like “stick to music and stay away from politics”. As an artist whose music is directly connected to a social movement, what is your opinion on the notion that “musicians/celebrities should not sound their political or social opinions”?

I think this is the most outrageous opinion you could have about musicians. I don’t talk about politics in a song and my song is too mainstream sounding and I’m an industry plant. I make a song too political and suddenly I’m disrespectful of the scene. The entire joy of making music is writing how you feel. I will never since a song that’s not how I feel. Whether that be political or if I just feel like making jokes that day. My brain is in the DNA of my songs.

We live in an era where social media has become essential for musicians to reach fans and promote their music. In your opinion, what are the cons and pros of social media having all that power in the music industry?

I think social media is great in the sense that it allows artists to reach all corners of music and the internet so for genre-bending artists like me where it would be harder to grow on tours that focus on one style it’s extremely beneficial. On the other hand, social media is ever-changing so even tho I spend most days glued to my phone I’m still worrying about the next thing. So it’s definitely a bittersweet time for musicians.

Many of our readers face sexism on daily basis. What advice would you give young people around the world who face any kind of discrimination?

Nobody’s opinion of you has any reflection of your abilities. As unfair as the world is to certain groups, I think it’s important to remember that the people telling you no have had to deal with half as many no’s so they have half as thick skin. At the end of the day, your strength is so much greater. And if you have the ability to speak up please remember that your voice always matters even if when the people in your immediate space don’t hear it”.

I want to move on to DORK and their chat with Scene Queen from last August. Reacting to some of the reception of 18+, she noted how anything worth doing is going to come with a degree of backlash and controversy. She is someone delivering such important songs. Rather than shy away, her music does deal with some of the more unsettling themes:

“After releasing two editions of her ‘Bimbocore’ EPs back in 2022, Scene Queen (real name Hannah Collins) established herself as a giddy force that wasn’t to be messed with. 2023 single ‘18+’ only underlined that fearsome attitude. A ferocious call-out of the predatory behaviour of men in bands, the track continues to cause waves.

Her label, Hopeless Records, did warn Hannah that the track was going to cause backlash and people were going to get mean. “Anything worth doing is going to come with controversy,” she explains, with the label backing her whole-heartedly.

Inspired by the awful things she witnessed as a teenager in the Midwest scene, ‘18+’ sees Scene Queen carry out her mission to make any show she plays feel like a safe space. Clocking up over 3 million streams, it’s clearly resonating with people. “I left it broad enough that it could apply to any number of bands,” explains Hannah. “The unfortunate fact it’s connecting is proof there’s clearly an epidemic within the scene.”

The track will feature on Scene Queen’s upcoming debut album, which will be released as soon as she’s able to. “I hate waiting to put out music,” she says. It’s not finished, but she has a vision. “’Bimbocore’ is always going to be the vibe musically,” she explains. “I love the contrast between super girls vocals with heavy guitars or screaming over a twinkling track. My whole thing with the hyper-femininity is to show the strength and power within femininity. It’s also a fuck you to misogynists, so I’m keeping that attitude, but not every song will be called ‘Pink something’. It’s more of a concept album,” she promises, with ‘18+’ fitting into the “theme”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Frances Beach

Hannah goes on to explain that humour is everything when it comes to delivering the message of Scene Queen. “The easiest way for me to digest things and process them is to have them delivered in a jokey way.” It’s why songs like ‘18+’ and ‘Pink Rover’ (“a song written to explain the rage I feel towards a society that allows women to be treated the way that they are”) are full of so many smirking one-liners. “If you come into something too seriously, people will back away and miss the message.”

“When I started this project, I never knew it was going to reach the scale that it’s got to, but I always knew I wanted to shift the scene a little bit,” she continues, with her debut featuring a variety of collabs with female artists. “I just try to be as loud and out of the box as possible because somewhere down the line, there’s going to be a girl that does the type of in-the-box metalcore that people think is acceptable, but it’ll be that much easier for her. I’m cool with taking the hate,” she adds with a smirk.

But more than hate, Scene Queen is inspiring a whole lot of love. “The thing I’m most proud of is feeling like I’ve been able to foster this little community within my music,” she beams, already looking forward to a return to the UK for her biggest-ever headline shows in October. “Every time I come here, I have an exceptional time”.

In October, Metal Core spoke with Scene Queen. A pioneer of Bimbocore, she was also touring the U.K. and getting some first-hand love from fans here. She was asked about being pitted against other women, what fans in the U.K. were like, in addition to the missed opportunity of none of her songs being featured on the Barbie soundtrack:

“What’s your weirdest ambition?

“I want to do a Gathering Of The Juggalos [annual Insane Clown Posse festival] set, so badly! They’re gonna either love me, because they’re gonna get the ridiculousness of it, or they’re gonna throw beer cans at me which, like… I deserve it. You know? I need to be painfully humbled or have the greatest experience of my life.”

Could you walk us through the rules of being a Bimbo metalhead?

“Bimbos do not care about math but they do care a lot about human rights and politics – that’s important. Bimbos dress however the hell they want but, ideally, they dress insanely extra. Bimbo rules are quite literally to do and say anything as long as it’s beneficial to your mental health and the greater good of society. I feel like glitter and rhinestones are extremely necessary to my project.

It’s OK to be materialistic. Honestly, we’re all slaves to capitalism anyway, so you’re allowed to like to spend money egregiously if you feel the need to. Get a sugar daddy if you want one – you can be a girl boss and a sugar baby at the same time.”

It feels strange that we aren’t hearing a Scene Queen song on the Barbie movie soundtrack. If you had written something for that release, who would have featured on it?

“Oh, well, I mean it already happened! They have Nicki Minaj on it [with Barbie World]. You have to have Barbz on the Barbie soundtrack, for sure. Her or Ashnikko, I feel like we could make a very chaotic Barbie song, and also in general that’s just like a dream collab of mine. Probably something about expensive cars and stealing money.”

What’s your favourite memory of touring in the UK?

“I still, to this day, think about this one specific girl. This was the first time I played Reading and Leeds festivals, the first time I got to play Pink G-String to a big crowd. I asked people to open up the Twerkle Pit and immediately this girl kicks her leg and just drops into a split. I was like, ‘Thank God for the people in the United Kingdom, God save the Scene Queen.’ It was honestly so incredible”.

I will end with Kerrang! and their interview with Scene Queen from November. It is not about shock value and being explicit: it is about creating safe spaces for women and community. Making sure her music makes people feel heard and seen. There is also that electricity and sexuality that adds layers and depth to her music. A complete artist who is among the most important out there:

“Country is an extremely gatekept genre in general, and so is metal,” Hannah explains over the phone from her boyfriend’s house in Nashville. “I feel like both have these people that are like, ‘You shouldn’t be doing this, you shouldn’t be [in this genre].’ I was like, ‘This would be the perfect storm of irritating the people that I want to irritate.’

“It’s always been the joke of it all, [being] a conservative person’s worst nightmare. In general, metal, for whatever reason, has shown itself to be very conservative – it’s very not what rock is about, so I don’t really understand it. We were like, ‘Let’s be the antithesis of anything those people want to hear.’”

MILF was one of the first ‘fun’ songs Hannah wrote for the aforementioned debut album, titled Hot Singles In Your Area, which is set to land in spring next year.

PHOTO CREDIT: Megan Winstone

“I kind of forgot I was able to do songs that were meant to just be fun, because I was like, ‘I have all this stuff I need to say’, like with Pink Push-Up Bra,” she explains. “I get a little bit political, some of it’s about yelling at men who treated you poorly, a lot of break-up songs. The album has a lot of hot, sexy singles on it. I wrote it at a time where I was single and kind of reclaiming my sexuality, in a way, exploring sexuality, and knowing that initial timeframe in your life is going to be super-awkward and you’re going to have nightmarish stories, but that’s the whole fun of life – going through things you can make fun of yourself for later.”

Hannah jokes that the title was chosen because the album has “the hottest singles on it possible”, but it’s far more than a wink-nudge reference to the adverts on websites that you definitely don’t visit. It represents various dimensions to her Scene Queen identity – paying homage to Y2K culture, to the online world that launched her career, and also references the fact that her music “wouldn’t exist” without sex workers and how the internet afforded a way for sex work to grow exponentially.

“The twerkle-pit and those dance moves very much came from strip club culture, but now, it’s become so mainstream that women are very able to do sex work on their own terms,” Hannah explains. “I think working as a stripper is kind of how I came into my own in my sexuality. It was the first time I realised, ‘Oh, I’m hot, I can own my body and profit off of it.’ A lot of my fanbase are sex workers, too; some send me videos of them pole dancing to my songs. [The title] pays homage to a lot of people that my project could not exist without.”

Previously released singles 18+ and Pink Push-Up Bra are both set to appear on Hot Singles In Your Area, but fans are yet to pick up on the common thread between those titles and MILF, which runs through the entirety of the album.

“They’re very internet-themed porny titles,” smiles Hannah. “I feel like people will laugh when they read [the song titles] from top to bottom. I also wanted it to be kind of a nightmare for people to search my songs, because with those titles, a million things could come up. But also, you’re accidentally going to find my record 5,000 times because of the song titles. Some man somewhere who is not looking to find my record will accidentally stumble upon it. I want it to be an album that makes people feel empowered in some way to be themselves, or to reclaim themselves or whatever, but have so much fun while listening to it along the way.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Megan Winstone

As she grew up, Hannah would drive many hours to Cleveland every weekend to go to gigs, usually on her own. At those shows, she wasn’t just having the time of her life – she was looking at what she wanted her future to be. If she wasn’t going to be onstage, she’d be backstage, working behind the scenes. She went on to study music business at college in LA but hated it and dropped out halfway through, switching her focus to songwriting, but the call of the stage still proved impossible to resist. “I realised I wanted to stop waiting for other people to make me successful,” she says of posting her early music on TikTok, which almost instantly went viral. “It’s just been a massive climb since then and it freaks me out every day.”

It was the experience of escaping to the big city for shows that inspired Hannah to reach out to her own fans find themselves in the same position, attending gigs alone because there’s nobody else in their hometown who knows about the alternative world they’re so immersed in. She even created her own sorority, Bimbo Beta Pi, and inducts a number of people at each show on the condition they pledge to be a friend to anyone in the crowd who needs some company.

“I was like, ‘As an adult, if I’m going to start this fanbase, the most important thing is going to be the sense of community within it,’” Hannah reasons. “I never want people to deal with the same thing I dealt with, which is feeling like you didn’t fit in anywhere. Now, I’m very thankful that I play shows, people come by themselves, and then the next time I come through town, they’ll be in a group of seven friends that they made at that show. Small towns exist everywhere – going to shows in the city is an escape for so many people. Even if it’s three hours out of their whole week, I just want to make sure that it’s a time they feel completely involved and included in something”.

This year is going to be another exciting one for Scene Queen. A simply incredible artist that everyone should hear about, I am looking forward to seeing where she heads. Which festivals and venues she plays. Among those to look out for an add to your playlist, Scene Queen should be right up there! Hannah Collins’ pioneering of Bimbocore means that others will follow. Many women out there in music who are being influenced by her music. There is no doubt that Scene Queen is…