Sub Pop The Starrr Of The Queen Of Life

On her kaleidoscopic second album, The Starrr Of The Queen Of Life, Debby Friday defines success on her own terms. “I want to be a starrr, I can't hide that desire,” she says. “But what I don't want is to live someone else’s dream or to follow a pre-set path.” For the Nigerian-Canadian polymath, to be a starrr is to live at the extremes: public versus private, hubris versus humility, flying versus falling. Being a starrr means embracing the apocalyptic hedonism of an all-night rave—finding communion in the “dark room, girls in line for the bathroom” on the buzzing house anthem “All I Wanna Do Is Party”. It means swapping lines about bottles on ice and getting freaky on the dance floor with Detroit techno prodigies HiTech on “In The Club”—while admitting that she is, in fact, “barely on the dance floor these days.” It’s the sound of discovering what comes after the kind of success most artists only dream about—how to burn brightly without burning out. Across 11 songs, The Starrr Of The Queen Of Life showcases Friday’s chameleonic vocals. From the sparse, gossamer beauty of the lovelorn “Leave.” to the locomotive post-punk of “Darker The Better.” Winning the Polaris Prize in 2023 for her debut LP, GOOD LUCK, only made Debby Friday want to grind harder: “I’m tryna see more/ Man, I want the payoff” she raps over laser-like synths on the effortless copycat kiss-off “Lipsync.” But life on the razor’s edge can only be sustainable for so long: During a nonstopDISABLED tour schedule in support of the album, she fell violently ill. The diagnosis? Stress-induced shingles. That experience forced Friday to turn her focus inward. The next year saw a change in management, in her routine and priorities. To help bring her vision of radical honesty on the dance floor to life, Friday recruited Australian producer Darcy Baylis (Wicca Phase Springs Eternal). Returning to their de-facto homebase in London in between touring, the pair traded ideas in the studio from morning until midnight. Layered with meaning, The Starrr Of The Queen Of Life is brimming with coded, if-you-know-you-know references—weaving love letters and innuendos from the names of it girl perfumes, French cognac, and Hellenistic prophetesses who speak in tongues. It reads like a manifestation of Friday’s pursuit of an experimental pop sound that still feels distinctively hers. “This album is about the idea of reaching towards something,” she says. “It’s about seeing the signs and following that impulse, always with the potential of either flying into the sun or falling back to earth.” On The Starrr Of The Queen Of Life, Debby Friday takes flight, fastening her wings, following the sound of her own voice.