INTRODUCING: Scene Queen
With the rise of Y2K in this decade’s culture, there is also a shift in the perception of how women were treated in that time period, especially those who exhibited hyper feminine traits. Notable people in the noughties that were criticised for showcasing their femininity included BRITNEY SPEARS, and PARIS HILTON, both who have in turn been deemed icons and role models for many nowadays. Even still, hyper femininity is still villainised within our culture, especially within the music industry, as Hannah Collins, aka, SCENE QUEEN, has faced since her first single, Are You Tired?, dropped in 2020. Establishing her style of music as ‘bimbocore’, SCENE QUEEN takes on both hardcore metal and pop rap into a new and unique style that’s reminiscent of the scene sounds from MySpace, as well as challenging expectations for women within the rock and metal communities.
“For all of the songs I’ve released thus far,” she begins, “and all of the ones coming on the full-length record, I’ve been working with the same producer, my friend Zach Jones. So normally what will happen is at any random time of the day, I’ll get a general concept of a song and I’ll make a quick note of it on the notes app. I’ll float the rough idea to my label, and then we’ll schedule something through like our management. When I’m getting in the studio and then depending on the idea I’ll bring in another songwriter to come and help write the song with me. I like for each of the songs on the record to stay consistent because obviously it’s coming from my brain, but I like having different ideas to bounce off of just when I want to sonically change the soundscape of the songs I have.”
SCENE QUEEN’s first EP Bimbocore Vol.1 was released in 2022 after the viral success of tracks like Pink Rover and Pink Panther, each with their own message of feminism and queer celebration layered underneath pop gleam and metal riffs. With her latest song, 18+, SCENE QUEEN tackles the topic of musicians taking advantage of their young fans. Although many have tried to guess the specific band the song is about, SCENE QUEEN reveals that she intentionally kept the song vague. “I wrote it to be vague as I knew that it would apply to about 15 different bands. That’s actually the point of it,” she says. “I wanted people to keep guessing because I like the fact that you can’t even narrow down who it is. It shows that this is more than just an individual band problem. This is a whole epidemic in the scene, like the fact that you can’t narrow down exactly who it is, that’s the point of the song.”
“Within two hours of posting a small part of 18+ on TikTok, the song went viral immediately,” she continues. “That was kind of crazy. I was kind of excited that the one that took off was one of my more serious ones, which has kind of been the trend thus far. My first song to ever really go viral like on TikTok the first time was Pretty In Pink, which is again a serious song and then after that it was Pink Rover. I’m glad people can actually look past the joky-ness of it all and can see what’s underneath the hidden messages, it really does mean a lot.”
As mentioned, SCENE QUEEN’s idols include PARIS HILTON and DOLLY PARTON, women in the music industry who have also utilised their femininity and ‘bimbo’ aesthetic to their advantage and play into the male gaze of their respective industries. SCENE QUEEN also does this within the metal industry, garnering unwarranted comments that the music she creates “isn’t metal”. “I feel like the way that rock music likes to market women is in a sense, where you either have to be as hard as a man, like you have to to prove that I’m worthy of being in this space. So all of the vocabulary used around women is always going to be like ‘oh can run with the boys’. Or they have to be sexy but marketed in a way that still appeals to men. You’ve got to be that vixen, not that there’s anything wrong with sex appeal, all of my music is very sex positive. You can tell my music is catered to women first, and if men like it, then that’s cool, I’m glad to have them in it.”
“But I’m very tired of hyper femininity being vilified within metal music and I think there’s so much strength in femininity,” SCENE QUEEN adds. “It’s ironic that we’re gonna act like women aren’t as tough when women can populate the entire species. I just wanted to play into the hyper femme like girliness of it all and I was getting so many comments that were just like, ‘this girl is to pretty to be doing metal, like save metal for the boys or whatever’. I know I’m gonna be the antithesis of anything that those like misogynistic men want to see, you will never see a misogynist coming to a SCENE QUEEN show or bump SCENE QUEEN.”
With her brand of ‘bimbocore’ making waves within the rock and metal community, SCENE QUEEN is finally creating her full-length debut record around her tour with SET IT OFF. “I’m about a third of the way done with the record right now,” SCENE QUEEN describes to close out the interview, excitedly talking about her progress with the upcoming album. “I’ll do another third of it in June and then another third of it in July. It could come out this year, or early next year, it’s to be determined right now, but there is a full-length coming. It will not be called bimbocore, unfortunately. I needed to establish that this was the style, my style, and then in recording Volume One and Volume Two, I wrote them to be a full-length record. But I realised halfway through writing it that, at the time, I had no fans yet because I’ve never released any music, so if I were to release a full-length album, there will be no one to listen to it. In my brain I thought that if I released Volume One, then by the time Volume Two comes out, someone might listen to Volume Two. I just lucked out that people already knew about Volume One as it was dropping, so by Volume Two I wasn’t scared anymore. But I’m excited for my first full length record. Finally!”
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