"I feel like I went through labor with [Cheap Queen]," she says. "I feel like it's very reflective of the moment I was in, and this year that I've had—because what the fuck happened?" She answers her own rhetorical question: "I put out ["1950"], and it popped off, and I had to play catch-up with my own ability set for a year. I didn't know how to do all this shit. I didn't know how to tour. I didn't know how to do photoshoots… [I felt] like I'm just going to fake it 'til I make it—doing everything to the best of my ability, figuring out if I'm any good at this shit. Turns out, I am."By the numbers alone, this rings true. At the first show she headlined in New York, at Elsewhere’s Zone One in June 2018, she played to a room of 200. The Cheap Queen tour's upcoming two-night November run at Terminal 5, which has a capacity of 3,000, sold out weeks ago. Although Straus seems to handle herself with ease, she acknowledges that putting out a debut record like Cheap Queen has been viewed by some as a bit of a risk: "You're told by a million people what's a fucking hit and what's not, and what your music should sound like," she says. "And even on my team—I love my team and everything—but I'm signed to a major label… it's just very challenging to shut out all opinions and just be like, 'I'm going to put out my fucking record.'" Or, in other words: "I'm a pop girl and I'm going to continue to write pop songs," she says, "but this specific record isn't about that. This record is about me having my gay sob.""I'm a pop girl and I'm going to continue to write pop songs," she says, "but this specific record isn't about that. This record is about me having my gay sob."
"Growing up, I thought it was much more simple," Straus says of her own identity. "I was just like, ‘I'm gay.' But now that I have the words to describe how I've always felt, it makes it complicated. But I like that complication, because we are all walking dichotomies of some sort. We are all just walking contradictions. I don't think any of these identities are mutually exclusive. That's what makes somebody interesting and beautiful and intersectional."