Photo by Kaio Cesar
Audio By Carbonatix
From the time Spencer Joseph was a child, it was clear that he would grow up to be some kind of artist.
“My parents always say, ‘We knew you were never going to do something typical,” the Denver-based pop musician says. “Not in a, ‘You’re-destined-to-be-a-star’ kind of way, but more like I just refused to do anything that didn’t interest me.”
First, Joseph thought he would be a painter. Then he took up the cello in middle school. By high school, he was singing in choir and taking voice lessons independently. Sine 2018, Joseph has been making high-octane electropop under the name That Kid, and after a series of mixtapes, recently released his debut studio album, “So Famous.”
Like many kids raised on the internet, Joseph discovered around that all he needed to start making music was a computer, when he was around 13.
“One day I was, like, ‘I’m bored of drawing and painting,’ so I figured out how to record my voice on my laptop,” he remembers. “I just started ripping beats from Youtube, and did it that way for a really long time.”
Kaio Cesar
Joseph posted demos on SoundCloud, but music was mainly a hobby until he started talking to producers through internet forums. One of the artists he met online was the still-undiscovered pop star Slayyyter, with whom Joseph collaborated with on his first official single, “Dial Tone.” Released in 2018, “Dial Tone” has since racked up over 12 million streams on Spotify.
A year later, Joseph was featured on “E-Boy” from Slayyyter’s self-titled 2019 debut album, which catapulted Slayyyter to viral fame. In the same forum where he met Slayyyter, Joseph also developed an ongoing collaborative relationship with hyperpop artist and producer Ayesha Erotica, who produced two tracks on “So Famous.”
“With the Slayyyter and Ayesha collaborations, I met both of them in the early days of Twitter. I’m talking, Slayyyter maybe had 1,000 followers, I had maybe 200, and we met in a group chat,” he says. “That’s how I’ve gotten a lot of my collaborations, is just being online and establishing real friendships before working with them.”
Across his four previous longform projects and many singles, Joseph has worked with an impressive roster of queer underground hitmakers, including Jane Remover, underscores and Chase Icon. His music lives in the same realm as their sometimes glossy, sometimes grungy electronic-based hyperpop, but he’s inspired by pop stars of all genres.
“It always kind of changes, but I would say my core influences would be Prince, Mariah Carey and this one artist who doesn’t make music anymore, named Unicorn Kid. He made this really crazy electronic music,” he details.
Joseph’s sound has evolved over the last eight years, but he describes his music as, “Very electronic, lots of autotune, crazy lyrics, and sparkly. It always sounds really sparkly to me.” Coming from a DIY background, recording “So Famous” was a new experience for Joseph, however.
“A lot of those older projects were just me at home recording with no budget, completely self-funded,” he explains. “This is the first time I’ve had any kind of financial backing, and was able to record the entire project in L.A. in a studio. It was a really different process from how I’ve done any of my previous projects.”
While his past mixtapes were more experimental, Joseph had a specific intention in mind while creating “So Famous”: a tongue-in-cheek tribute to Y2K pop culture and stardom. “This is a very persona-based project. In the past I was kind of just having fun, where this time I had a concept I wanted to explore more,” he says. “I always envisioned my debut album to be almost like a cartoony, warped version of what it would be like if I was a real pop star.”
Kaio Cesar
Fascinated by the sensationalized and often dystopian ways pop stars are represented on screen, Joseph channeled these caricatures to develop his own hyperbolic persona.
“I drew a lot of inspiration specifically from ‘The Idol’ on HBO, the Ashley O episode of ‘Black Mirror,’ and these fictional versions of pop stars,” he says. “They’re always really exaggerated and over-the-top, and there’s a little darkness to them.”
On “So Famous,” Joseph playfully leans into Y2K celebrity tropes while satirizing the era’s culture of materialism, superficiality, vanity and hypersexuality. Take, for example, the chorus of “Rodeo Daydreams,” which proclaims, “All I wanna do is shop, shop, shop, shop, shop/All I wanna do is look hot, hot, hot, hot, hot.” Or perhaps the outrageous opening lines of “Lip Service:” “What’s the point of havin’ a body/If you aint gon’ fuck like a bitch in heat.” The lyrics are silly, in the best way, and the beats are fun. The whole project unapologetically revels in excess and absurdity.
“So Famous” pulls from late ‘90s and early 2000s sonic trends, as well. “Denim” has the booming bass of an early 2000s radio hit, while the R&B slow jam “Romeo & Romeo” sounds straight out of the 90s. It’s an escape to simpler times, when Von Dutch, Paris Hilton and business casual club attire reigned supreme.
At 27 years old, Joseph isn’t exactly pulling from his own Y2K nostalgia, since he was a baby at the time. Rather, “So Famous” is a Y2K revival for the generation of kids who were in diapers at the time, but now long for the days when one could dance with reckless abandon, unencumbered by the fear of being ridiculed on social media.
Now that “So Famous” is out, Joseph is already looking ahead to what’s next. “Right now, I’m so focused on the next phase. It might be another EP. It might be another mixtape,” he hints. “I’m feeling like leaning back into the grittiness, so I want it to be very electronic. I’m working with a lot of cool people, and I’m even producing some of the songs.” For now, we’ll be blasting his latest candy-coated earworms all summer long.
“So Famous” is out now on all music platforms.
