Slayyyter

Kirkwood, a salon job and Stan Twitter

Slayyyter was born Catherine Grace Garner on 17 September 1996 in Kirkwood, Missouri, a suburb of St Louis that has stayed at the centre of her writing. She has described her teenage self as weird and artsy, a chronically online kid who found music through SoundCloud producers and the iTunes free single of the week rather than the radio. Lady Gaga's The Fame sat alongside Metronomy, Gossip, Crystal Castles and the Ed Banger catalogue, with Kid Cudi and the Black Eyed Peas in the mix. She dropped out of college and worked at a hair salon while recording in her bedroom. The stage name comes from Slater, the stoner in Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused, with the extra letters typed the way Stan Twitter typed everything.

That corner of the internet was her first audience. She began posting to SoundCloud in 2018, and the debut single BFF, with Ayesha Erotica, circulated through fan communities before anyone in the industry had noticed. Mine, in February 2019, and Daddy AF later that year travelled far enough that she could give up the day job. There was no label, no managed rollout and no radio plan, just a fan base that treated her as its own discovery.

Three records and a long apprenticeship

The self-titled mixtape arrived on 17 September 2019, her 23rd birthday, a run of dance-pop and hyperpop tracks that read as a manifesto for a certain kind of internet pop maximalism. Troubled Paradise followed on 11 June 2021 through Fader Label, and Starfucker on 22 September 2023, a more conventional electropop record that entered Billboard's Top Dance/Electronic Albums chart at 17 and peaked at 10. Along the way she collaborated with Charli XCX, Kesha, Big Freedia and Rose Gray.

Respectable numbers, growing rooms, the same tag in every headline. Speaking to The FADER in February 2026, she admitted the up-and-comer label had started to grate to the point where she considered quitting. "How many more years is that going to be my title?" she asked. Approaching 30, she made the next record as if it might be her last, and asked herself what she would want to say if it were.

Pop chaos at a Missouri dive bar

The answer was Worst Girl in America, released on 27 March 2026 through RECORDS/Columbia after a deal she credits with changing everything, because the label left her vision alone. Recorded between 2023 and 2025 with producers including Austin Corona, Hamish, Owen Jackson, Valley Girl, Wyatt Bernard and Yakob, it swaps the gloss of Starfucker for what she called pop chaos at a Missouri dive bar. Grit and grime were the brief.

The rollout began with Beat Up Chanel$ on 1 August 2025, a single she branded recession pop and which broke past her existing fan base. Cannibalism! followed on 12 September and Crank on 24 October, and Crank found a second life online when it was paired, improbably, with Judy Garland's The Trolley Song. Dance... on 16 January 2026 and Old Technology on 24 February completed the singles before the album, and Broke Bitch Freestyle appeared without warning on 17 April. Every track came with a video, making it a visual album in the full sense. The promotion became part of the story, a campaign of surreal fancams and shitposting on X that she ran in her own voice.

The record entered the Billboard 200 at 22 on 27,000 equivalent units, topped Top Dance/Electronic Albums, and charted at 36 in the UK and 28 in Australia. Critics went with her. Metacritic aggregates the reviews at 85, Pitchfork gave it 8.2 and Best New Music, PopMatters 9 out of 10 and NME four stars.

The year it turned

Coachella made the shift visible. Her festival debut on the Mojave stage on 10 April 2026 came with an afternoon slot and a crowd that spilt well outside the tent. Music Connection, reviewing the first weekend, wrote that the crowd went apeshit and Slayyyter lapped it up, picked out Old Technology, Yes Goddd and Beat Up Chanel$, and said the writer's hunch about her was the same one they had once had about Raye. She returned for the second weekend on 17 April. On 19 May she made her television debut on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, performing Dance..., and on 31 July she played the Bud Light stage at Lollapalooza in Chicago to a crowd reported at more than 50,000.

She has been careful not to over-read any of it. In an interview with Coup de Main published on 12 August 2026 she said she never feels fulfilled by external things or a pat on the back from critics. The test, she said, is whether she is the person most obsessed with the record at the end of the day. Her mother's favourite recent song, for the record, is Dance....

The brother album

The next record is already in motion. Brand New Chanel$, released on 31 July 2026, is the first single from Worst Man in America, which she describes as a brother album to Worst Girl and an evil flip of it, with inverse song titles and new perspectives on the same themes. It began life as a deluxe edition and became a standalone companion when she found she wanted to write entirely new songs. She told Coup de Main she hoped to release it in 2026. Four of its songs were debuted on the opening night of the tour, according to Stereogum's report of 28 July, which heard bittersweet new wave in Brand New Chanel$, Nekromantik and I Think He's Got a Girl, and an all-out rave-pop attack in Crank 2.

The show now

The Worst Girl in the World Tour was announced on 16 March 2026, went on general sale on 20 March and gained an Australian leg and extra North American dates on 30 April. It runs to 49 shows from 26 July to 5 November across Europe, North America, Australia and South America, opening with three nights at the Pageant in St Louis and closing at the Roundhouse in London. One dollar, or one pound, from every ticket goes to local LGBTQ+ organisations in each city.

The set is compact. Sydney's Enmore Theatre on 9 August ran from 9.20pm to 10.30pm, 20 songs in 70 minutes, with support from 2charm. It opened with a taped Prayer into Dance..., moved through Old Fling$, Old Technology, Broke Bitch Freestyle, Crank and Crank 2, then Yes Goddd, Cannibalism!, Nekromantik, Gas Station, Unknown Loverz, I Think He's Got a Girl and I'm Actually Kinda Famous, before $t. Loser, a second taped interlude, What Is It Like, To Be Liked? and Brittany Murphy. The encore was Brand New Chanel$ into Beat Up Chanel$. Setlist.fm's average of 24 logged 2026 shows has Dance... opening 17 of them and Beat Up Chanel$ closing all 24, and roughly half the shows take an encore. Stereogum described the opening-night running order as three distinct sections. One review of the St Louis opener, quoted on the tour's Wikipedia page, called the stage design tongue-in-cheek and meticulously crafted, matching a performance that balances irony with genuine emotion.

Support varies by territory. Pearly Drops open in Europe, including London, 2charm covered Australia and Kalika joined in Paris. The Roundhouse date on 5 November has doors at 7pm, tickets from £26.78 to £40.58 before fees, and under-16s must be accompanied by an adult.